Thursday, April 24, 2008
Future of Physics - Trends and Issues
It is not an easy time being a physicist.
On the one hand, the brightest career prospects appear to be in the field of computing and software, and on the other hand, making fundamental breakthroughs and discoveries is becoming more difficult by the day
But all is not doom. The biggest crisis we are facing today is the energy crisis and sciences such as physics are the key to delivering the right solutions. With this in mind, one can expect more money and brains to be employed in this.
So with these pros and cons, where is the science of physics heading? What are the trends and challenges? Can we expect more exciting breakthroughs from this science in the near future? This post @ Future of Engineering Blog looks at web resources discussing and debating the above points.
The Future of Physics David Gross, one of the winners of the 2004 Physics Nobel Prize, gave an interesting colloquium here at CERN, presenting his list of the 25 most important questions in physics. Listed below are some interesting
1 - The origin of the Universe
2 - The nature of Dark Matter
3 - The nature of Dark Energy
4 - The formation of structures in the Universe
5 - The validity of General Relativity
6 - The validity of Quantum Mechanics
Seven questions about the past, present and future of physics? What happens when you ask some of the world's leading physicists seven questions about the past, present and future of physics
Q1. What have been the three most important discoveries in physics
Q2. Which five physicists have made the most important contributions to physics
Q3. What is the biggest unsolved problem in your field
Q4. What is the biggest unsolved problem in the rest of physics
Q5. Would you study physics if you were starting university this year
Q6. If you were starting your research career in physics again, which areas of physics would you go into
Q7. Stephen Hawking has said that there is a 50-50 chance that we will find a complete unified theory in the next 20 years. Do you agree that the end of theoretical physics is in sight
A bleak future for physics - Physics undergraduates are fast becoming a dying breed. Only months after the internationally renowned chemistry department at the University of Sussex was given a last minute-reprieve, another university has confirmed it would axe a science department. The latest casualty is physics at Reading. In the past decade some 19 physics departments have merged or closed and it seems, even a strong research record is not enough to save a department.
The Future of Physics and Society - Many difficulties faced by physics as an 'institution' and as a subject in schools and universities. These difficulties do not arise from its own subject matter and in particular the conference affirmed that the subject is certainly not 'worked out.' Nevertheless, physics as an activity and as an academic subject does face problems and listed below are two such from the article. For many students, physics can seem remote from their everyday concerns. This is true also for the general public. This is in great measure because physics is abstract and lacks visualizable elements (particularly modern microscopic physics, with astrophysics an exception). This presents a problem for teachers and those communicating with the public. The fact that physics is essentially mathematical also presents special problems.
The future of physics A hundred years is a suspiciously round number. But if researchers at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, turn out to be correct, it is exactly the period needed to build a model of how the universe works. Construction began in 1900 with Max Planck’s publication of the first incarnation of quantum theory. Since then, and particularly with the development of high-energy particle accelerators in the 1930s and 1940s, the structure of matter has been probed in greater and greater detail while theorists have sought to impose order on what has been discovered. The result of their labours, now known as the standard model, will be complete with the discovery of a particle called the Higgs boson. This would round off the 18-strong menagerie of fundamental, irreducible particles required by the model.
The Future of Condensed Matter Physics - The standard model of particle physics is extremely successful, but incomplete. Its mathematical structure suggests how it might be derived from a more comprehensive unified theory. The arguments are both aesthetic and quantitative. They predict specific new phenomena observable which will be observable at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Recent results on neutrino masses confirm and encourage this line of thought. Another problem within the standard model, the so-called strong CP problem, is one of a number of reasons to suspect the existence of a radically new class of very light, very weakly interacting particles. All these ideas have important implications for cosmology; in particular, they provide plausible, testable candidates for the ``dark matter''. For nuclear physics, the future is QCD. This theory opens new possibilities for understanding hadronic matter at extreme temperatures (as in the big bang, and at RHIC) and extreme density (as in neutron star interiors). Recent insights concerning color superconductivity are especially beautiful, and shed penetrating new light on the problem of quark confinement. Another lively frontier is the direct solution of the QCD equations using the full power of modern parallel computing. Other topics discussed are Astrophysics and Cosmology, Future of Physics in Biology The Future of String
Space-Time Physics and the Future of Time Travel - Human beings have always tried to explain the world around them. They have worked to organize it, to measure it, and to understand it. These efforts at understanding such basic concepts as space and time and light have led to many discoveries. In the last one hundred years many changes have been made to how we understand these concepts. You may not be able to move as quickly and easily through time as the hero of H.G. Well's Time Machine, but scientists have been able to understand how certain variables can affect time - to slow it down and speed it up - leading them to believe that it is possible that time travel may become possible. Before looking at time travel, an understanding of the terms and history are required. Space, time, and light have been studied and the definitions have evolved as research has advanced. Looking at these concepts as they have been explained through history will help us understand what may be possible in the future
Future Electroweak Physics - This document is the report of a working group established to evaluate the potential of an extended high p T physics program at the Tevatron Collider. The authors have found that, in addition to a complete program of top quark physics, there is a rich catalog of topical measurements and important discovery potential in many areas.
What is in the future for physics? - This page contains interesting questions and answers on the future of physics.
Predictions on the future of physics - A little over a century ago, the scientific community thought that all the questions physics were answered with the exception of one. They thought it would just be a matter of time before that question was solved using what was already known. That single, unanswered question led to an explosion of new questions and the birth of quantum mechanics. The field of physics has never been so fertile or chaotic. Physics is this century will focus on answering questions raised in the last, and will undoubtedly raise more questions. And just as in the last century, new understanding of physics will allow for new forms of technology. We may not have flying cars anytime soon (unfortunately), but we will have new tools at hand that we can hardly imagine.
World's top theoretical physicists converge to consider 'future of physics' - "The Future of Physics" is the subject of a singular conference being hosted by the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) from Oct. 7 to Oct. 9. Over 150 of the world's top theoretical physicists, including many Nobel laureates and the leaders of the various physics fields, are the participants.
On the one hand, the brightest career prospects appear to be in the field of computing and software, and on the other hand, making fundamental breakthroughs and discoveries is becoming more difficult by the day
But all is not doom. The biggest crisis we are facing today is the energy crisis and sciences such as physics are the key to delivering the right solutions. With this in mind, one can expect more money and brains to be employed in this.
So with these pros and cons, where is the science of physics heading? What are the trends and challenges? Can we expect more exciting breakthroughs from this science in the near future? This post @ Future of Engineering Blog looks at web resources discussing and debating the above points.
The Future of Physics David Gross, one of the winners of the 2004 Physics Nobel Prize, gave an interesting colloquium here at CERN, presenting his list of the 25 most important questions in physics. Listed below are some interesting
1 - The origin of the Universe
2 - The nature of Dark Matter
3 - The nature of Dark Energy
4 - The formation of structures in the Universe
5 - The validity of General Relativity
6 - The validity of Quantum Mechanics
Seven questions about the past, present and future of physics? What happens when you ask some of the world's leading physicists seven questions about the past, present and future of physics
Q1. What have been the three most important discoveries in physics
Q2. Which five physicists have made the most important contributions to physics
Q3. What is the biggest unsolved problem in your field
Q4. What is the biggest unsolved problem in the rest of physics
Q5. Would you study physics if you were starting university this year
Q6. If you were starting your research career in physics again, which areas of physics would you go into
Q7. Stephen Hawking has said that there is a 50-50 chance that we will find a complete unified theory in the next 20 years. Do you agree that the end of theoretical physics is in sight
A bleak future for physics - Physics undergraduates are fast becoming a dying breed. Only months after the internationally renowned chemistry department at the University of Sussex was given a last minute-reprieve, another university has confirmed it would axe a science department. The latest casualty is physics at Reading. In the past decade some 19 physics departments have merged or closed and it seems, even a strong research record is not enough to save a department.
The Future of Physics and Society - Many difficulties faced by physics as an 'institution' and as a subject in schools and universities. These difficulties do not arise from its own subject matter and in particular the conference affirmed that the subject is certainly not 'worked out.' Nevertheless, physics as an activity and as an academic subject does face problems and listed below are two such from the article. For many students, physics can seem remote from their everyday concerns. This is true also for the general public. This is in great measure because physics is abstract and lacks visualizable elements (particularly modern microscopic physics, with astrophysics an exception). This presents a problem for teachers and those communicating with the public. The fact that physics is essentially mathematical also presents special problems.
The future of physics A hundred years is a suspiciously round number. But if researchers at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, turn out to be correct, it is exactly the period needed to build a model of how the universe works. Construction began in 1900 with Max Planck’s publication of the first incarnation of quantum theory. Since then, and particularly with the development of high-energy particle accelerators in the 1930s and 1940s, the structure of matter has been probed in greater and greater detail while theorists have sought to impose order on what has been discovered. The result of their labours, now known as the standard model, will be complete with the discovery of a particle called the Higgs boson. This would round off the 18-strong menagerie of fundamental, irreducible particles required by the model.
The Future of Condensed Matter Physics - The standard model of particle physics is extremely successful, but incomplete. Its mathematical structure suggests how it might be derived from a more comprehensive unified theory. The arguments are both aesthetic and quantitative. They predict specific new phenomena observable which will be observable at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Recent results on neutrino masses confirm and encourage this line of thought. Another problem within the standard model, the so-called strong CP problem, is one of a number of reasons to suspect the existence of a radically new class of very light, very weakly interacting particles. All these ideas have important implications for cosmology; in particular, they provide plausible, testable candidates for the ``dark matter''. For nuclear physics, the future is QCD. This theory opens new possibilities for understanding hadronic matter at extreme temperatures (as in the big bang, and at RHIC) and extreme density (as in neutron star interiors). Recent insights concerning color superconductivity are especially beautiful, and shed penetrating new light on the problem of quark confinement. Another lively frontier is the direct solution of the QCD equations using the full power of modern parallel computing. Other topics discussed are Astrophysics and Cosmology, Future of Physics in Biology The Future of String
Space-Time Physics and the Future of Time Travel - Human beings have always tried to explain the world around them. They have worked to organize it, to measure it, and to understand it. These efforts at understanding such basic concepts as space and time and light have led to many discoveries. In the last one hundred years many changes have been made to how we understand these concepts. You may not be able to move as quickly and easily through time as the hero of H.G. Well's Time Machine, but scientists have been able to understand how certain variables can affect time - to slow it down and speed it up - leading them to believe that it is possible that time travel may become possible. Before looking at time travel, an understanding of the terms and history are required. Space, time, and light have been studied and the definitions have evolved as research has advanced. Looking at these concepts as they have been explained through history will help us understand what may be possible in the future
Future Electroweak Physics - This document is the report of a working group established to evaluate the potential of an extended high p T physics program at the Tevatron Collider. The authors have found that, in addition to a complete program of top quark physics, there is a rich catalog of topical measurements and important discovery potential in many areas.
What is in the future for physics? - This page contains interesting questions and answers on the future of physics.
Predictions on the future of physics - A little over a century ago, the scientific community thought that all the questions physics were answered with the exception of one. They thought it would just be a matter of time before that question was solved using what was already known. That single, unanswered question led to an explosion of new questions and the birth of quantum mechanics. The field of physics has never been so fertile or chaotic. Physics is this century will focus on answering questions raised in the last, and will undoubtedly raise more questions. And just as in the last century, new understanding of physics will allow for new forms of technology. We may not have flying cars anytime soon (unfortunately), but we will have new tools at hand that we can hardly imagine.
World's top theoretical physicists converge to consider 'future of physics' - "The Future of Physics" is the subject of a singular conference being hosted by the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) from Oct. 7 to Oct. 9. Over 150 of the world's top theoretical physicists, including many Nobel laureates and the leaders of the various physics fields, are the participants.
PermaLink - Future of Physics - Trends and Issues posted by Ecacofonix : 9:39 PM
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]