Where are the right-wing scientists? Everyone's on the left like me
Ella Al-Shamahi, presenter of the BBC's science series Human, which starts tomorrow night, said people who lean towards the right, or have strong religious beliefs, feel alienated by mainstream science.
'We do have to be a little bit honest and say that, to many, it seems like left-leaning atheists have a monopoly on science,' she said.
The dominance of a single school of political thought in science is an important context to President Trump's withdrawal of funding from universities in America, she said. 'If you can't demonstrate that scientists and research labs don't belong to just one tribe, then suddenly it doesn't become a priority to fund them.'
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Telegraph
12 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Why it's really the British we have to thank for the atom bomb
Manhattan, Mayson, Maud. One of these is synonymous with the race to build an atomic bomb during the first half of the 1940s. But we ought to have heard of all three, argues Gareth Williams in his book The Impossible Bomb – a pacy and potent mix of wartime politics and high technology. Williams sets out to recover the role of British scientists in building the bomb, but there's no triumphalism here. Pinned to a noticeboard in his study, Williams tells us, is a black lapel badge bearing the logo of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Now an emeritus professor at the University of Bristol, Williams grew up in the post-war years fearing that he might see a 'mushroom cloud boiling up into the sky above the rooftops'. Williams was motivated to write this book after discovering some declassified government papers pertaining to a secretive 'Maud Committee'. He later heard a scientist who'd worked on the British hydrogen bomb make a striking claim: that without Britain's help, the United States wouldn't have been able to create a working atomic bomb until after the Second World War ended. This isn't, it must be said, a new idea. As Williams accepts, it was put forward by a war correspondent named Ronald Clark back in 1961. But myth-making in America about the birth of the nuclear age has long sidelined British figures, and still does. American Prometheus (2005), the Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin biography on which the Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer (2023) was based, all but reduces the British contribution to a man hosting a dinner party at Los Alamos. After some helpful preliminaries on the history of atomic physics, The Impossible Bomb begins in the 1930s, as trepidation among scientists is growing. The destructive potential of splitting the atom is dawning on them, just as Europe appears once again to be moving towards war. The Hungarian-born physicist Leo Szilard begs colleagues to stop publishing their ideas on nuclear fission, and asks the editor of Physical Review to record the date of manuscript submissions on the subject – thereby preserving claims to originality – then lock them away in a drawer. When these efforts meet with mixed results, Szilard helps to compose a letter to US president Franklin D Roosevelt in 1939 – co-signed by Albert Einstein – urging that America try to beat Nazi Germany to the bomb. This moment is often treated as the origin of the Manhattan Project. But Williams argues that most scientists in the United States were, at this point, unconvinced that an atomic weapon was feasible in the near-term. They were more interested in developing radar, and were confident that if America were drawn into the war, their conventional forces would see them through. In the early years of the conflict, the most promising work on a bomb was happening in Britain. Enter Maud, a committee formed in Britain in the spring of 1940. (Though its name was written in capitals as MAUD, and thus was usually taken to be an acronym, the letters didn't stand for anything.) It came about in response to a document created by two expatriate German physicists working at the University of Birmingham: Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls. The Frisch-Peierls memorandum sketched out the theory behind a 'super-bomb', to be created using uranium-235. By the summer, Williams tells us, Maud involved four universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Liverpool, Birmingham) and boasted five Nobel laureates, including James Chadwick and John Cockcroft. In its final report, in 1941, the committee concluded that a super-bomb could be made in two years: great excitement followed, and an organisation was formed to work on the project, with the usefully abstract name of the 'Tube Alloys Directorate'. Williams excels at interweaving the technical challenges of the subsequent months with the vicissitudes of politics. We find Churchill and Roosevelt wary of one another, at first, on the question of atomic co-operation. 'Mayson' was Roosevelt's proposal for Anglo-American partnership; but for a time, at least, Churchill wanted a British bomb, independent of the Americans. It wasn't to be. American help turned out to be indispensable in building a 'super-bomb'. In the end, British scientists had to set aside their own work on Tube Alloys and travel to the USA – to Los Alamos, Berkeley and Oak Ridge – to help on what became the Manhattan Project. Chadwick was among around 84 British scientists making the journey, and neither of the bombs detonated over Japan in August 1945, concludes Williams, would have been possible without them. Through Frisch and Peierls, we experience the profound anxiety of Jewish refugees living in Britain during these years; they were only too aware of how they would likely fare if the Nazis won the race to build a bomb. Across the water in Germany, great minds such as Werner Heisenberg were hard at work trying to make that happen. We encounter British and American spies working around the clock to ascertain the state of the Nazi effort, and to thwart it wherever they could. The Americans considered abducting Heisenberg during one of his research trips to Switzerland. Williams's labours in the archive have been considerable, but the result is a significant contribution to our understanding of 'the most significant international collaboration of the 20th century'. It's eminently readable, too: to follow the development of nuclear weapons requires the explanation of plenty of science, but Williams succeeds, deploying vivid analogies and simple sketches. A spherical aluminium container for a globe of uranium oxide, constantly turning in order to keep heavy water circulating, is an especially memorable one. Williams compares it to 'an oversized glitterball that someone had forgotten to switch off after the last dance'. ★★★★★
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Herefordshire's River Lugg among worst for hazardous chemicals
The River Lugg in Herefordshire has been named as one of the worst waterways for containing hazardous chemicals known as biocides, it has been groups Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL) and the Rivers Trust examined official water quality data from English rivers for seven key biocides including fungicides, a herbicide and were widespread in rivers, the study found, but the River Lugg, along with the River Teme at Powick in Worcestershire, was among the 12 showing the highest numbers of individual government said it was committed to tackling all sources of pollution and cleaning up the country's waterways. In all, 119 sites were tested across England and at least one of the biocides was detected in 113 of them.A WCL spokesman said: "The likelihood is that a substantial proportion of biocide pollution in the Lugg will be from inclusion of these chemicals in products used in agricultural settings."He said the group was "not blaming farmers" but rather it was a "systemic issue", because the chemicals were included in "an enormous range of products". 'As harmful as sewage' Rivers Trust director of policy and science Dr Rob Collins called the findings "alarming".He said: "Though it's not possible from this data to determine the level of harm they are having on our rivers and wildlife, these are hazardous chemicals, designed to kill organisms."He said chemical pollution in rivers was "just as harmful as sewage".The groups want the government to align the regulation of such chemicals with the EU as a "quick, sensible solution to bridge the chemical protection gap in the UK", rather than bringing in River Lugg flows through Leominster before joining the River Wye near Hereford.A spokesman for the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "We are committed to tackling all sources of pollution to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas."We have already banned the use of bee-killing pesticides that threaten to cause harm to our waterways and published the first Pesticides National Action Plan in a decade." This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations. Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Husband's disgusting act after his wife was diagnosed with brain cancer: 'What the hell was going on'
A woman battling cancer has shared heartbreaking messages from her husband, who left her and took all their who is undergoing treatment for a brain tumour, said her condition has been severe, involving multiple surgeries and treatments. 'My husband of six years up and vanished, drained our mutual account and sent me this when I asked what the hell was going on,' she wrote on a post shared to social media. Despite her illness, she remained devoted to her husband. 'My condition is foul, I've had multiple surgeries, treatments, etc … But I've always been faithful, I still cooked him dinners up until this happened. He's pretty convinced I'm dead to rights, I personally think I have a chance …' Alongside her post, Marie included an MRI scan showing the tumour and a text message from her husband explaining why he left. 'Listen, it's been hard, I can't handle watching you die,' the message read. 'I feel alone, I feel trapped, I'm not sure where or what I'm going to do … I've invested a lot during your treatment so I'm recouping what I put in plus extra for my future. I can still have one.' He went on to tell Marie she should 'be happy for me, that I can live for us both.' He also sent her three disturbing videos, then appeared on camera holding a bottle of wine while talking about another woman 'She is the one that makes me happy. Everything, she meets my needs and you don't and you won't and you haven't,' he said. 'I'm at the point now where I'm feeling alone when I'm with you, and small.' A recent study published in The Times revealed men were more likely to leave their wives after a cancer diagnosis. The study looked at more than 25,000 couples across 27 countries during an 18-year period and found that divorce was more likely when the wife was sick. And if it was the husband who had health issues, the couple was no more likely to split than if both were healthy. Professor Alex Broom, a sociologist at the University of Sydney, said the findings highlight a troubling imbalance in caregiving within relationships. 'Research has often shown that women bear the brunt of caring responsibilities at both ends of life - the early years and the twilight years,' he told 'But also, that the men in their lives can be ill-equipped to provide them with care and support when they need it, whether in the context of serious illness or at the end of life.' 'The reality is, women do a disproportionate amount of informal caring, and receive less, on average, themselves -often at critical moments.'
