Today’s physics news: Wednesday, 3 March

Academics should develop exam content, say The Tories
In a speech to the annual conference of the Advisory Committee on Mathematics education, Michael Gove, the UK’s shadow education secretary, has announced that a Tory government would hand control of A-level content to universities and academic experts, scrapping the current quango in control of content (the QCDA), and would offer every child the chance to study the three sciences separately at GCSE.

Guardian
Daily Telegraph

Hawking to leave UK in science funding protest
The Daily Mail reports on Professor Hawking’s plan to move to Canada.  A spokesperson for Hawking has said that the professor  ‘remained heavily critical of the Government’s policy on science funding’, saying it risked ending Britain’s history of world-class thinkers.

Daily Mail

Institute of Physics issues clarifying statement
The Guardian has reported on IOP’s latest statement about its submission to the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry into the East Anglia climate data affair. The latest statement reasserts IOP’s policy on man-made climate change.

Guardian

What to call a number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000?
A campaign to name the number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ‘hella’ is attracting strong support from scientists. An online petition started in California – where the word ‘hella’ is slang for ‘many’ – is calling for the word to become an internationally recognised prefix, joining the likes of  ‘yotta’, ‘zeta’, ‘exa’ and ‘peta’.

Daily Mail
Physics World