A £10 million Institute for Shock Physics will study how materials behave under extreme pressures and impacts. But is there a military agenda?

Tristan Farrow

Imperial’s nascent centre for shock physics has won a five-year funding contract from the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the company that designs and maintains Britain’s nuclear arsenal. When the institute opens next year, it will house a gas-gun and a ‘z-pinch generator’—a device used fancifully in the Hollywood movie Ocean’s Eleven to cause a blackout in Las Vegas.

Imperial’s present generator, nicknamed Magpie, is being upgraded to help produce plasma capable of squeezing materials slowly to pressures of one million atmospheres. Similar pressures are found inside planets. "Earth scientists are particularly interested in how complex materials such as iron undergo interesting phase changes at the high pressures encountered inside the earth,” says the institute’s interim director, Professor Steven Rose.

Unlike the gentler Magpie, the institute’s new ‘gas-gun’ will use compressed gas to propel a slug along a ten-metre barrel up to speeds of several kilometres a second, before slamming it into a target. “High-velocity impacts happen throughout the universe and diagnosing what happens as shock waves travel through materials will help us understand asteroid impacts better,” says Rose.

Soldiers in the laboratory?

But not everyone is cheering the new institute. Dr Chris Langley, a Hertfordshire-based neurobiologist and author of More Soldiers in the Laboratory, a report published last August by Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), is concerned that research at the institute will have military aims also. SGR is a lobby of 600 scientists, including Stephen Hawking and Royal Society presidents Sirs Martin Rees and Michael Attiyah. Langley’s report argues that Britain’s status as the world’s second biggest spender on military research after the US means we can afford to spend less on military science and more on the fight against climate change and ill-health.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said the ministry “actively seeks to work with academia” and that “defence research covers a vast array of areas and much activity involves research into force protection, including individuals and infrastructure”.

According to Rose, “there was a clear understanding in the contract with AWE that no defence work would be carried out and that research would be published”. The connection to the defence world, he said, “is through the people who may be recruited later by AWE, which is a matter for them”.

“It may be cynical of me”, said Langley, “but I doubt this will lead to an open academic environment given the institute’s funding comes from a source which has major military corporations behind it, including Lockheed Martin which manages AWE”. He also voiced concern that British universities are increasingly funded through military research contracts he valued at more than £44 million a year.

Independence of research must be upheld

Phil Willis, chair of the Commons Innovation, Universities and Skills select committee, said the debate should be put into context: “In the last nine years, we’ve seen a doubling in investment into universities through the research councils to £6bn, so there is a strong sense that the independence of research is being upheld”. He added that it would be wrong for universities to turn their back on lucrative private research contracts, but cautioned that they should be “very wary” of collaborations that threatened their independence. “It raises enormous concerns that large American corporations run a large part of Britain’s nuclear science establishment, but also that they are directing the research. It should be a major concern for the nuclear science community,” he said.

Meanwhile, anyone looking to make an impact in their career should consider applying to the institute. They are recruiting physicists, earth and material scientists, and hope to attract 20 PhD students with scholarships. The director’s chair is empty, too.