World-class Jodrell Bank is under threat and UK risks a physics brain drain

Funding crisis could lead to an exodus that would be a blow for British science and national growth On a chilly day in December 1945, Bernard Lovell, a physicist at the University of Manchester, struck out for the Cheshire countryside to study cosmic rays, the streams of high-energy particles that crisscross the universe. Peering at the signals from his army surplus radar, he made an unexpected discovery: radio reflections from the ionised trails of shooting stars. The work marked the birth o...

By Ian Sample Science editor