Ian Halliday suddenly has money to play with. The UK’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), which Halliday heads, has had a tight budget for years. But now the UK can become a real player in planning the next big particle accelerator, he says. “And we’ll most likely join LIGO”—the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory in the US.
Halliday’s newfound financial freedom is a result of the heftiest hike in the UK’s science and education budget in a decade. By 2005–06, this funding will grow by £1.25 billion ($1.97 billion), the Treasury announced last summer. Of that, £350 million is tagged for university research, and £900 million will go to PPARC and the six other research councils, to swell their combined annual funding to £2.9 billion. The new money keeps science spending on course to double in the eight-year period beginning in 1997, when Tony Blair became prime minister....
