The World Year of Physics kicks off this month with a conference at the Paris headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). More than 1500 people from around the world, about a third of them students, are expected to attend the conference, which will feature roundtable discussions on how to improve the public’s perception of physics and how physics can help solve socioeconomic problems, as well as public lectures by prominent physicists. The year commemorates the centennial of Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilis and is intended to raise public awareness of the field of physics and its importance to society.
Although the UNESCO conference marks the official start of the World Year of Physics, the festivities began months ago. At its congress in New Mexico this past October, Sigma Pi Sigma, the US college physics honors society, visited the Trinity site, where the first atomic bomb was...
