Nature Video presents five debates from the 2012 Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau
At the 2012 meeting, physics was on the agenda again. The hottest topic was particle physics because mid-way through the meeting, scientists at CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs particle. The following morning, we filmed George Smoot and Martinus Veltman as they digested the news with three young researchers. Veltman, who helped to shape the standard model of particle physics, was surprising cynical about the discovery. See his reaction in film 3: Is dark matter real? The other films deal with the relationship between theory and experiment, the state of science education, the looming energy crisis and in film 1 we ask: is this the golden age of astronomy? As you’ll see, the Nobel laureates and young physicists in our films have quite different views on these matters.
I found the movies quite interesting. The easily most immediately relevant movie was the state of science in the classroom.
In one clip, the researchers discuss the differ paradigms we typically bring to sports vs learning of math and science.
In a second clip, the answer given by one young researcher answering the laureate’s question “how do we know that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around” was surprising and not what I expected to hear from undergrad physics major, much less a physics PhD.