Hello, and welcome to the Physics World weekly
podcast. I'm Hamish Johnston.
This episode looks to the future of physics
with Christophe Rassell,
a former president of the European Physical Society.
Here he is in conversation with Physics World's
Matin Durrani.
This week on the Physics World Podcast, our
guest is Christophe Roussel, a condensed matter physicist
who spent many years at IBM's lab in
Zurich in Switzerland.
And he's also been president of the EPS,
the European Physical Society.
And Christophe's recently been one of 13 editors
of a massive new
open access ebook
published by IOP Publishing on behalf of the
EPS, and it's called EPS Grand Challenges.
And it looks at the biggest challenges in
physics and how they might affect society in
the coming decades.
Welcome to the podcast, Christophe. Yeah. Thank you
very much for welcoming me. I mean, I'm
very happy to be talking to you today.
Before we come to the book, the last
time we met was in, Natal in Brazil.
You and me were on a panel debate
about the, I think it was the future
of physics, and it was at the Brazilian
Physical Society.
What what's your memories about that event 8
years ago?
My memories the first one was at Natal.
It was a very wonderful place to be
and to meet, and, we met very exciting
people also.
The roundtable you talk about was about perspective
of a development of physics in the next
2 decades. And I remember I was trying
to project a little bit,
how physics will evolve and what will be
the new discoveries and so on. And so
in some way, this is already part of
the book that we're gonna talk today.
And, there is a quote I made at
the time, which I'd like to reply to
to remember again.
There was a, a guy called Frank Wilczek
in the publishing,
Physics Today,
the physics in 100 years.
You know, a lot of things have been
already looking into the future.
And, the question what he was raising was
saying the following. The fundamental questions of the
future
will be profound,
sophisticated
and difficult to answer.
And the great projects of the future will
be great indeed.
This is a dissertation
on Frank Wilczek.
And, the other things, maybe you remember that
the time in Natal that, we visited together
the largest,
cashew tree
in, I think in the world, which is
covering a very huge area.
And it was a wonderful experience for me
because I've never seen such a big tree
in my life before. It's covering about 8,000
square meters. Can you imagine that?
Yeah. The world's biggest cashew tree.
But this so the book we're gonna talk
about, that's I don't think it's got the
world record for the world's biggest book, but
it's pretty big, and it's 830
pages. So this book, EPS Grand Challenges.
So should we start with the basics? So
what is the aim of the book? I
mean, what what is the premise behind it?
Okay.
Over the last decades, the European Physical Society
has raised many concerns
on some of the main problems that humankind
can face up, to now and examine the
role of physics to address them.
And, what are the urgent social social
challenges of the future and what holds the
world's physics agenda to solve them? This was
one of the main question that was raised
at the beginning of this project.
And one objective of the EPS Grand Challenge
Project is indeed to explore our ability
to address the social dimension of science
in imagining
and shaping the development of physics
at the horizon 2050. So it's a very
long sentence, but it's it's really looking how
much
physics can really contribute
in solving some of the main challenges which
we'll be raising in the future.
So I've been trying to tackle some of
the big society questions. So, I mean, that's
pretty ambitious. You've got over a 100 authors.
What sort of people have you got writing
for it? Because I imagine some of the,
getting those challenges, we need to know about
it from scientists. But I guess also,
you need people who are gonna put those
ideas into practice. I mean, have you what
sort of people have you got writing the
book?
Yeah. I think this was one of the
main challenge because in fact, you said 100
authors. Finally, we came up to 115
authors, which is huge.
And at the beginning, we never thought it
would be like that. So most of the
contributors were invited by the coordinators. You mentioned
there were 13 of them or the coeditors.
And, the people we were invited are essentially
people we knew in our field
and also were maybe members of a division
and the groups of the European Physical Society.
So these are many, many,
important scientists,
who were asked to write,
some analysis to illustrate the strong links between
basic research,
fundamental research and its social impact on our
world.
And of course, we were also asking to
look at what type of innovation and technology
advances could be
coming up
after the work of the fundamental research.
And just to remind
the, you and the auditors, I mean, the
editor in chief basically for this project was
Carlos Hidalgo,
he's Carlos Hidalgo,
and he's the head of a laboratory
on fusion in Spain. So it's a is
basically a plasma physicist.
In fact, the 12 coordinator we're talking about,
they are coming from 7 different countries,
Austria, France, Germany and so on. And they
are within them for women because we had
to take care of gender equality, of course.
Now about this 115
authors, they are coming from 23 countries.
So it's a very international project.
Most of them are out of Europe, but
in fact, we had also some one coming
from India,
one from Mexico, one from the USA, and
even one guy from Rwanda. So it was
a very big mix of
authors. And among these authors, we had about
25%
women.
Oh, that's very good. And how how many
years have you it must be a pretty
big project. How long when did you start
this project?
Yeah. You know, this project started,
in fact, in 2017.
This was the first discussion during the EPS
Council.
And, we were planning to,
to develop this project over the next 2
years. So 2017
to 2019.
But in fact, it took 7 years
to get over it.
And, one of the main reason, of course,
was that, 2019
and 2020, we had the COVID 19 pandemic,
and this was really slowing down quite a
bit the
project.
In fact, the official launch of a project
took place during the EPS Forum FIGS in
Society
in Geneva in 2018.
In fact, if you remember well, 2018
was the anniversary,
the 50th anniversary of EPS we celebrated, which
was founded in fact in 1968.
So at that meeting, we discussed this was
in Geneva,
and then we had a second run,
for another physics for society.
This was at the Magnus House,
of a geophysical
society in Berlin in 2021.
And I would say this is really at
that time,
2021, that the project started really to,
to move on.
So some of the there are 8 main
themes. So could you give a few examples
to listeners of some of the themes that
are in the book? I mean, what what
are the I mean, the 8. Is there
1 or 2 that you can particularly think,
you know, resonate with you and catch your
eye?
Oh, yes.
But just before going to this, I I
I just like to make a little
return to the history of this,
of this EPS Forum because, you know,
interesting enough, the whole thing started, not the
project we are discussing today, but the history
of the whole things was in 2005
during the International Europhysics,
which was called, in fact, the Einstein year
in the UK.
And at that time,
we there was a decision by Ovi Pulsen,
who was
president of the EPS, to create a new
forum, which was this forum for citizen society.
And we met
on a regular basis,
many, scientists, something like, you know, 30 to
40 people at different places in Europe
and discussing different themes. And some of these
themes have been taken over within the EPS
grand challenges we are talking about.
And, just to give you a few highlights
of the time, what we were already discussing
was, for example,
education and scientific literacy,
or we were discussing about creativity and innovation.
What is the role of science in ethics,
for example?
And we also discussed something which might be
very interesting to you. We discussed, the journalism
and the role of communication in science, which
is a very important topic
for scientists in general to discuss with the
share of a stakeholder and also to the
politicians.
So science communication,
we discuss about
all the threats of being a physicist because,
you know,
being a physicist, you have to take sometimes
the role of, selling really the truth. And
this is not always welcome by some community
and also discuss the global challenges. So this
is before it happened in the past.
And as I mentioned to you before,
all started in 2021.
And basically,
this book,
as I said also, we thought at the
beginning that we had only
about 20 manuscripts.
And now we had about over 40 manuscripts
and 115
authors.
And, so what was the what are the
main points that we want to discuss in
this book?
There are 2 parts of it. The first
part is to say
physics as a global human enterprise for understanding
nature.
So how much physics
and science in general? It could be mathematics.
It could chemistry. But in our case, we,
basically focus on physics.
What could be the interest,
for understanding nature? And the second part of
it is physics development for tackling major issues
affecting the lives of citizens.
So how can we really,
bring some kind of remedies or solution to
all the problems of our of our planets?
So what you see, it's really so called
a grand challenge.
So what do you think the big problems
for society are in your view?
Oh, you know, there are so many things,
but I think one of the big issue
today,
in my point of view would be the
physics for the environment and sustainable development because
there we are really confronted with the global
warming,
with the catastrophes all around the world. And
I believe that, scientists and physicists can really
contribute
there in a nice way.
But let me just summarize to you some
of the discussion we had in this book,
maybe some of the chapters.
Chapter is on physics breaching the infinities,
which means how can we really bridge the
nanoscale,
the microscopic
domain,
which is including,
you know,
nuclear physics,
particle, high energy particle physics and so on,
and how you can go into the large
scale
phenomena, which are basically treated by astrophysics
and cosmology,
astronomy.
And the second point, which is very interesting
to in this book is a matter in
waves.
Basically, how is matter made made out of
atoms, ions, electrons, and what is the role
of light
and the photons.
So this is basically showing us this is
a very complex system, how you build the
different structure
of
material and also how can you really develop
experiments and theories which could be explaining all
of them. So this is one part of
the second chapter.
Another chapter which I believe is also very
interesting is the physics for understanding life.
One objective is to understand life and the
human behavior.
I think we maybe will never understand the
human behavior, but we can try.
And, one
aim of this chapter is to understand the
nature of a human mind.
Does life also exist elsewhere in the universe?
This is a very interesting topic because now
we are really working on exoplanets
and we are really focusing on the possibility
of having life outside of our
universe, our own solar system.
How did life emerge on earth?
Do we expect extraterrestrial
terrestrial life around in the world? So these
are all kind of things which could be
interesting and also,
things which are much more
practical. Do we have a chance to develop
more, the humanoid robots, you know, the robots
which are basically
systematically
reproducing some aspects of life?
The second
part of,
you know, what I was talking to you
about physics development to tackle major issues, which
is affecting the life of citizen.
I think one is a chapter is basically
related to physics for health.
And, you know, physics for health is very
important because it basically touch everything which is
related to x rays, to diagnostics,
to imaging, medical imaging,
all kind of
tomography, using particle beams and so on and
treating, of course,
cancers,
using all type of technologies like photonics and
lasers and so on.
And also there's another aspect of it, which
is basically the the medical processes to understand
the role of viruses, bacterias, and can we
find new bacteria bacteria
new therapies. Sorry.
And this is very important if you put
this in, in aspect in the aspect of
a COVID
19, which was really generating a lot of,
I would say, turmoil because everybody was discussing
about it.
So this is this,
this, Physics for Health. Now we had another
chapter which is called Physics for the Environment
and Sustainable
Development. And I think this is one of
the most important things. You know, we have
to realize
that our
environment is very fragile.
And, when you know about this, you have
to find what kind of implementation,
what kind of action can we really
undertake to tackle, especially if we specifically for
climate change,
looking at the long term objectives, like,
can we limit the increase in the temperature?
You know, now the temperature has already increased
by 1.1 degree,
and there are scenarios from the,
IPCC
reports saying that we really need to
focus on,
limiting the increase of temperature to 1.5 or
maybe to 2.3
degrees in the next,
until 2050. So I don't know if we're
going to be achieving this. So all this
question is discussed in this chapter.
And also, you know, what kind of a
political
awareness and how do we have to really,
we as scientists,
convince the population, the people to do to
be active because there are always, of course,
people
who are against,
the,
idea that the climate warming is a very
important issue.
I was gonna say because to you know,
my reading of the situation is, you know,
as physicists, we cannot agree that science is
very important, but, you know, how do you
persuade
people and citizens that this is important? You
know, That that's often the hardest thing. I
mean, was there any disagreement you had in
the book about things that didn't get in
the book? Sounds pretty wide ranging.
Are there any things that you decided not
to include?
Or were there any debates about topics that
should or shouldn't go in?
There were not too many debates about, what
should be included in the book.
There is one thing which disappear. This was
a contribution about
open access and, open data.
And, there was a guy, Jean Claude Bergelmann.
He's,
he was a member of the,
of the,
of the people in Brussels discussing all the
future in this sense. And
when he found out that we have pretty
long time in publishing our book, he decided
that it would be maybe already too late
to discuss about open data and open access
because this is something which was
running during the previous,
under Carlos Moedash. You know? So this was
something completed. So this was taken away. But
most of the other things, I believe,
were still discussed, and they're still updated. So
I don't think it was really too much
discussion about modifying things.
One of the main issue with a lot
of contribution were much too long,
and we had to shorten them to convince
the authors to reformulate
a few things and so on. This was
part of the,
of a team,
of all the editors or coeditors to to
work on on this.
I mean, is there one topic that you
think,
physicists should put as their top priority? Or
is there maybe there's one topic that, you
know, if you were starting out your career
that you would go right, that's the one
I'm gonna work on yourself.
Oh, if I had to restart my my,
my career again, you say? Yeah. Yeah.
Which of these challenges in the book if
you were starting out your PhD, would you
go right? That that's the one that I
think I can make the quickest progress and
the most impact
because that's when you're a young student, you
always want to find something that you think
you can make an impact on.
You know, I think we can go always
go on with fundamental
fundamental research, you know, trying to
make a new CERN. You know?
There's discussion about creating a new LHC, which
could be,
getting more more answers to one of the
main major issue,
issue, in your class, physics and so on.
But I think what is more important to
my point of view is all the physics
for the environment and the sustainable development. I
think there we have to contribute
and be pretty quick.
You know,
sustainable development is not including also
only physics. It could be related to what
the chemists have to do, engineers,
mathematicians, and it should be really a so
called interdisciplinary
effort.
Today, we cannot really work and say, oh,
we are physicists, so we don't care about
the other things. But I believe a climate
has brought up a certain sense of urgency
and, we really need to do something about
it. And there we have to work about
scientific based evidence,
follow good practices and provide best available science
to the decision makers in a user in
useful and efficient
format. You know, we need to talk to
the politicians, but they need also to listen
to us.
And I think in this
context, the field for environment and system development
is very important.
You know, that we are really developing a
lot of
denial and fake news we hear in this
world. There are a lot of
more and more dominated by social media and
perhaps also because of the development of artificial
intelligence. There are things which are completely developing
the wrong way. And I think we have
to be very much aware of it.
Physicists and scientists have to be really
working on setting proofs and also
not trying to make politics,
but maybe as much as they can to
influence the politicians in the right way. And
I think this is something we have to
work in the future.
I mean, talking about artificial intelligence, do you
think that will play a role in how
physics develops? Is that a useful tool, or
are you worried about about it?
Yeah. You know, I mean,
for everything like discussing about climate change or
even the pandemic,
having the right tools to do that is
is very important.
And I believe
we have we are experiencing now the digital
transition.
We have a green transition and so on.
And I think the use of artificial intelligence
is very important. But we have to be
careful that we keep it into some limits
that, we don't get into crazy things because
artificial intelligence, some way, if you can really
focus on the main issues that we are,
we are
looking at today,
like climate change, like
issues like,
you know,
food,
overpopulation,
and so on, I think these are issues
which are very important. And we physicists,
we don't see we are not supposed to
say we have a big truth, but we
have certainly to work more and more in
order to advise politicians. This is what I
believe is very important.
I mean, overall, Christophe, are you optimistic about
the future? I mean, if we, came back
I don't know if we'll be here in
2050. And if we come back and look
at the grand challenges, do you think,
those will have been met? You know, are
you optimistic about that? Do you think all
those challenges in the book will be achieved
by then?
I think,
challenges will never be achieved because this is
the purpose of challenges not to be achieved.
We are looking forward in the future. It's
always coming and developing new ideas, new,
new structures, and so on. And I believe
that,
yes, I am pretty optimistic, but certainly we
have to convince, as I said before already,
we have to convince politicians
to be more
proactive
in
following the ideas of, of scientists.
And also we have to be sure that
the scientists are talking in a very unified
voice.
I was mentioning before the IPCC,
you know, the climate change report,
and, there are still people who are,
you know, against this, the main the main
reference, which are coming out from this
from this work. But I believe,
we have to be optimistic. But in some
way, I believe for me that,
we have a lot of things to look
at in the future. And what is very
exciting, for example, for me is, you know,
the discovery of gravitational
waves,
the visualization of black holes, all these kind
of things which develop in a couple of
years, a couple of years ago. I mean,
maybe 5, 10 years ago.
And we had developing a lot of new,
way of looking in space. I mean, I'm
talking about the James Webb telescopes.
I think it's a fantastic achievement that we
can really look in space in a much
better way.
And
another thing which I'm really much looking forward
in the future, but maybe this is a
bit crazy, it's,
the new program to get on the moon.
Because when I was a kid, I was
very excited about the Apollo for, the Apollo
program, you know,
When the first men,
came on the on the moon, this was
in
in July, 1969,
I believe.
I was watching the moon. I was so
excited as a as a young guy to
see, wow, there are people on the moon.
This is fantastic.
So I believe that, something would be interesting
to see with a new program if we
can really achieve to
to go on the moon. I'm not sure
that going to Mars will be very exciting
because, I mean, it takes too long to
get there, and I don't see what we
can really get there. But I mean,
it's always good to have so so kind
of a long project where we can dream
a little bit.
Anyway, we have also to realize that all
the observation that we do by satellites,
it's amazing if you think we have I
don't know. Maybe I exaggerated millions of satellites
around the Earth, and some of them are
observatory,
about the Earth, the climate change, the pollution
on the Earth. And I think this is
also something which is very important
to look at. And we need really a
scientist to play a role in informing
the ground public and educating. This is one
of the main role of a scientist.
But anyway,
I don't know. I think we also have
to show that the importance of interdisciplinarity.
This is what I mentioned to you before.
We cannot just be chemist or we cannot
be mathematicians
or
biology. We have to work together and something,
need to be done because there I believe
one of the priority
in our world is really to save to
save the earth. I mean,
just see now how many
catastrophes,
how many
dry areas and typhoons on the other side.
We have flooding and so on, and I
guess it's coming more and more often today.
So
I believe that some of the contribution that
we could do as scientists and physicists was
really to work
on such issues, which are really important. I
mean, climate change, for example.
And also,
working as I said before, in a very
interdisciplinary
way in collaborating collaborative
way in trying to solve the global crisis
that we are living in.
But, you know, I'm dreaming a little bit
here.
Certainly plenty of grand challenges. Well, I think
for our listeners, their first grand challenge is
to read the book, which is 830
pages. And I think
getting through that would be quite a grand
challenge. But, hopefully, there is something there's bound
to be something that, Physics World listeners will
find of relevance and interesting. And it's a
open access book as well, so there's no
excuse
not to go and, have a look at
that. So thank you very much, Christophe, for
talking to us about the book. It's been
great to have you on. And, maybe we
will take part in another panel debate in
Brazil, or maybe we'll do it virtually and
not to pollute the environment by by by
to Brazil.
It's a great advantage today of the communication
means that we have? We can,
be everywhere in the world by just,
with a telecommunication and all the means we
have, like, we are doing now. I mean,
using
using online,
programs and so on. I think this is
something which is very exciting.
And,
I'd like to finish also by saying that,
we had also a lot of support from
Antonia Seymour,
you know, with the publication of his, book.
She's my boss's boss. So, yeah, put a
good word in for her.
You can put her to yeah. Because I
think,
I was in the same
group of people for a certain time,
and, she,
she has been very much involved in 2
activities also via with the, European Physics Society,
and I think it would be good to,
to follow-up on this also. So anyway, I
hope that,
we can contribute with this book, the EPS
Grand Challenge in the right way. And what
is very important that you know and you
maybe you can spread this message. You don't
have to read the 800 pages.
You can really go to and each chapter
has an interest and self sustained.
So you don't have, you know, you you
can really get a lot of information out
of them.
And the
the final things or maybe it's over already.
I don't know. No. You carry on. We've
got a couple more minutes. Okay. The final
things, we had very great people working on
this. And, one of them was,
an older man, but, you know, he's a
very active person. This is,
Ernst Ulrich von Weitzacker.
And you know, the family von Weitzacker has
very great people because the,
the the president, the German president was Richard
von Weitzacker. This is the uncle of this,
Ernst Ulrich von Weitzacker.
And he's one of the member of the
of the,
Club of Rome,
which was created already in the eighties in
order to bring awareness about the climate change
of the problems of population and
our our, you know, our globe is,
is is,
is finite. And we had to be caring
about the future of our humanity. So this
is something interesting.
And,
he has been publishing
many things and he's also
one of the authors of the last things
last chapter that we have, which is called
the limit of science.
And, he's discussing about the,
the future of humankind
and behavior, something like this. So I think
for everybody, I think it would be very
interesting to read at least one of the
chapter
at the end of this book. Alright.
Well, that that's a personal recommendation from Christophe
Russell, and, I encourage all listeners to have
a read of that book. So thank you
very much for your time, and, we'll talk
to you again soon, hopefully. Thank you. Okay.
Great talking to you. Wish you all the
best. Bye bye.
That was Christophe Rassell in conversation with Matin
Durrani,
and you can find the book, EPS
Grand Challenges,
at the IOP Science website.
CERN is one of Europe's premier research facilities,
And this year, the lab is celebrating
its 70th
anniversary.
In the August episode of the Physics World
Stories podcast,
2 former public relations
gurus at CERN,
James Gillies
and Achincher
Rao, look back on some of the highlights
of their careers.
These include welcoming
Hollywood royalty to the lab for the launch
of the film Angels and Demons
and the announcement
of the discovery
of the Higgs boson.
That episode is hosted by Andrew Glester
and is called CERN at 70,
how the Higgs Hunt elevated particle physics
to Hollywood
status,
and you can find it on the Physics
World website or at your favorite podcast provider.
And the CERN celebrations
continue here at Physics World.
On Thursday,
26th September,
we present the future of particle physics.
This is a Physics World live event
produced in partnership
with the journal
Reports on Progress in Physics.
The live panel discussion will feature
Tara Shears of the University of Liverpool,
Phil Burrows
at the University of Oxford,
and Tulika Bowes of the University
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They will explore what the future holds for
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and where the next particle collider
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You can register now for this free event
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Just click on the Physics World live tab
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I'm afraid that's all the time we have
for this week's podcast.
Thanks to Christophe Rassell and Matin Durrani
for looking to the future of physics.
But what about the future of this podcast?
Next week's episode will have a quantum focus.
Our guests will be a PhD student at
Harvard
University who is working at the cutting edge
of quantum science
and the chief scientific officer of an award
winning company that's developing
a silicon based
quantum system
on a chip.