When the Nobel Prize in Physics was announced in Stockholm in October 2013, the world was watching. Among the names read out was Prof Peter Higgs, the British theorist who, nearly half a century earlier, had predicted the existence of a particle believed to hold the cosmos together – the Higgs boson. The announcement, broadcast live from Sweden, was what many scientists had hoped for since a year earlier, when experiments at CERN had finally confirmed Higgs's theory by discovering the Higgs boson – hailed as one of the biggest discoveries in a generation.
At the time Higgs, who died in 2024, said in a statement: "I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research." Blue-sky research asks questions to understand the universe, rather than design new products. It is what British science excels at, leading to the discovery of the electron, the structure of DNA and the development of the first computer. All of them were without any practical application when they were developed or discovered, but each of them has since formed the basis of technologies that created multi-billion pound industries and transformed our world.
But now, Britain is preparing to cancel its contribution to one of the Large Hadron Collider's next major upgrades. It is one of several proposed cuts of UK involvement across various major particle physics and astronomy projects, which could see Britain's scientists reduce or even end their involvement in the most exciting international research collaborations probing the nature of our Universe. For some, it is as if Higgs's words, celebrated back in 2013, were never uttered.
Behind the story is a row that has seen the science minister, Lord Vallance, and the head of Britain's scientific research funding agency accused of diverting money away from blue sky research towards government scientific priorities to help grow the economy. Notes taken during a high-level meeting of the funding body suggests this has happened. Vallance and those leading UK science funding have continued to deny this.
And it cuts to an issue that lies at the heart of science: to what extent should researchers focus on so-called 'blue-sky research' (which has no specific purpose other than solving the Universe's great mysteries), as opposed to 'applied' research, which has clearer real-world implications in mind? You need both and you can't have one without the other, according to Dr Simon Williams, a theoretical physicist at Durham University. His research is the bluest of blue-sky: he uses quantum computers to predict how sub-atomic particles behave.
His original aim was pure scientific understanding - but as it happens, his work is also now used by a British-based company. He thinks that cutting original blue-sky research isn't just bad for scientists - it also harms the businesses that use it. "If the research is removed from the country, then I have a strong belief that the industry will be removed from the country," he says.
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