UK’s science superpower hopes hit as Labour slashes physics funding
www.thetimes.com/article/49b8...
17.02.2026 21:01
👍 4
🔁 1
💬 0
📌 0
UK’s science superpower hopes hit as Labour slashes physics funding
www.thetimes.com/article/49b8...
@ukparliament.parliament.uk @ukri.org
Red shows the number of postdoctoral positions (the time-limited job that follows a PhD) funded by STFC (~UK gov funder for fundamental physics).
Seems like a great way to lose the UK’s talent in this area to other countries / sectors / etc…
@teamlabouruk.bsky.social thoughts?
(views my own)
The MPIA call for summer interns is now live! This is a great opportunity for bachelors & masters students from anywhere in the world to come an complete a three month, fully funded research project in beautiful Heidelberg. Check it out here: www.mpia.de/en/careers/i...
New session on blocking at EGU!
Please put in an abstract and spread the word...
I feel like the leftmost and rightmost icons here might add to the confusion…
New paper on the climate and habitability of Tergarden’s star b, led by Ryan Boukrouche and ft. Me!
This planet is a promising target for characterisation by next generation observatories such as LIFE.
Take a peak to see what we found out…. (or just read the title 🙃)
arxiv.org/abs/2510.11940
New unified model of equatorial winds on giant planets helps to explain some of the zonal wind observations 🔭 I and my colleagues have made for Neptune and Uranus over the past few decades - www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🔭 It's paper day! Today I'm sharing the latest in a series of papers looking at the weather on other worlds, in this case bringing you the weather report from a nearby T-dwarf, SIMP-0136. 🪐
🧵 to follow...
ICYMI: 📰 The Leverhulme Trust September Newsletter is out!
Read it on our website now: www.leverhulme.ac.uk/newsletter
@mphiljill.bsky.social @ferreira-rr.bsky.social @manmetuni.bsky.social @sheffielduni.bsky.social
Thrilled to share that I’ve been awarded a 3 year Leverhulme ECF!
I’ll use global modeling with high-res regional ‘nests’ to take a closer look at Jupiter’s polar vortices.
As part of the project, I’ll incorporate this functionality into Isca (via a new dynamical core).
Very excited to begin!
Congrats @timlichtenberg.bsky.social !! For the Early Science Award by the @europlanetmedia.bsky.social super well deserved and amazing talk 🤩🥳🥳🥳!
Great article from the Simons Foundation about the open source MESA stellar evolution code, which has a had a huge impact on astrophysics over the past 15 years.
I had not heard that the code's architect, software guru Bill Paxton, had passed away in July.
www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/12/a...
What I said. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe Senior Fellowship programme is now open. Further details and how to apply www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/lclu-se... @leverhulme.ac.uk
Nature research paper: A prudent planetary limit for geologic carbon storage
go.nature.com/4p6MvOQ
Exoplanets 🔭 and Planetary Science 🪐 : Two Different Worlds 🌍 ?
What can planetary scientists learn from exoplanet research? Read all about it in our interview with @timlichtenberg.bsky.social
www.europlanet.org/exoplanets-a...
@europlanetmedia.bsky.social
At a planet formation seminar today, the speaker used these amazing maps of the Solar System from Eleanor Lutz: she has a great blog post on how she took 18000 asteroids, on a log(size) and log(orbit) plot, with 40-year orbit trails, to create this #planetsci #dataviz
eleanorlutz.com/mapping-1800...
Two postdoc jobs available on our Arctic Butterflies project! (Not actual butterflies - basically Arctic dynamics and predictability - the butterfly effect in the Arctic...)
Oxford job: tinyurl.com/yc6h4b35
Reading job: tinyurl.com/ypn75jh2
Please help spread the word!
I updated my website to have an interactive webpage where you can plot the exoplanet population, select different parameter spaces to explore, and overlay the observed and planned JWST observations. I think this will be a useful tool for proposal planning: www.astrojake.com/exoplanets
Predictions of climate change are uncertain. That’s why we need to keep finding out how our atmosphere works, says Tim Palmer
go.nature.com/414QrVV
📢📢 New preprint alert! 📢📢
Radiation is a key piece of climate models, but comes with a trade-off: use an accurate scheme (which is difficult to understand), or a simple scheme (which is not very accurate)...
Here I introduce a scheme which bridges this gap!
arxiv.org/abs/2508.09353
Under climate change, the polar regions warm *faster* than the rest of the world ("polar amplification", PA).
But, is this always the case?
In this preprint (with Tim Merlis) we studied the 'state-dependence' of PA—feedback welcomed! :)
andrewilwilliams.github.io/papers/pa_widerange_main.pdf
