Posts by Pete Tong

LHC particle-punisher in record 7 TeV hypercollisions

Nice physics, shame about the funding cuts.

"That's always the challenge for pure science: demonstrating value to the bean counters."

Sadly we are failing at it - else why are we withdrawing from huge amounts of physics and astronomy projects. Myself I work on the LHC for a UK university - but I am now under threat of imminent redundancy to "save money", and many colleagues have already been made redundant.

Hands off our boffins!

Hopeless?

"The question you have to ask DBIS is this: how many boffins do you expect to leave the UK in search of better prospects?"

I doubt they care....thats part of the problem. The only hope really is things become more sensible once the tories get in power, but I suspect they will cut the science budget anyway as part of general cutbacks....

So this postdoc will be giving up on science in the near future - it just doesnt seem to be a viable career path with all these funding cuts being implemented seemingly year after year (its only 1 year since the last stfc funding crisis that lost a lot of people their jobs!).