Last week we heard news of a threat facing Jodrell Bank. Local geeks and scientists have been in quiet uproar since then, and the petition started on the Downing Street website has gained nearly 3,000 signatures already.
But why is it so important? Why are we all so hot and bothered about a 60-year old observatory now we’re in a city of New Media agencies and spending our days reading RSS feeds?
Is it all just a fondness for the mighty Lovell telescope, viewable for miles across the flat Cheshire fields surrounding it?
Not quite.
Let’s first be clear about what is under threat. It’s not that the site itself is being sold off for housing, or that the entire site is under direct threat of immediate closure. Specifically it a single project – called e-MERLIN – that is likely to have its £2.7 million budget withdrawn. Withdrawal of this one project potentially makes the entire site redundant in a matter of years.
Why? e-MERLIN is hard to describe without getting a little scientific, but I’ll try.
When you get several telescopes over a large distance connected together – into what is known as an array – highly precise observations can be made. By having radio telescopes all over the UK connected up to each other listening to the same point in the sky, you can basically get observations equivalent to a single telescope of a much, much larger size. Errors at each individual telescope cancel each other out, data gets more precise and the observations get much better. This in turn makes for better science.
MERLIN was the project started at Jodrell in the mid-1970s to connect telescopes across the UK to create such an array. It has been used ever since to make some amazing discoveries.
It’s been used for highly-precise astrometry which helps us answer questions about the origin of the solar system, our galaxy and the Milky Way. It has been used to make observations of M87, a galaxy which seems to have a black hole at its nucleus throwing out a 5000 light-year long jet that was measured as moving at between four and six times the speed of light – an observation that arguably demands you either change how you measure such things in astronomy, or changes the laws of Physics.
MERLIN was also used in conjunction with the Hubble telescope to discover the first Einstein ring – to me at least, this kind of observation is awe-inspiring and advances our knowledge of how the Universe works in ways we can’t understand right now.
There is however a problem with all this. MERLIN, for all of its capability is actually not the best we could be doing. It uses microwave links that whilst capable are not as capable as fibre optic links. Microwave links are restricted in their ability by the fact they can’t move data around very quickly. e-MERLIN is the project to replace the current links with fibre optics. Here’s the kicker: this one change would make the array more sensitive by a factor of around 30.
Without it, Jodrell will effectively have reached it’s pique. Whilst the science can go on, other projects will come online elsewhere at sites that offer better sensitivity and the science will eventually move away. Jodrell will ultimately become unsustainable as an active site for radio astronomy.
Does that mean the bulldozers rolling in? Well, no. There is a chance the most recognisable dish – the Lovell Telescope – will be recognised as a Word Heritage Site, and the fact this is even on the table suggests the entire site will be listed by English Heritage if it came under threat of development.
So what would that future look like as a listed site? A museum, at best.
I don’t think places like Jodrell should be made into museums. They should be alive and working and full of people asking questions our grandparents would have considered too absurd to even contemplate. I once toured Bletchley Park shortly after it reopened as a museum and in all honesty was saddened – it was a place haunted by ideas more than it was one that celebrated them.
I signed the petition linked above. I hope you’ll consider doing so too.
Dim Sum Digital 