Fundamental research, why should you invest (Nobel Laureate Venki Ramakrishnan)

Venkatraman ‘Venki’ Ramakrishnan is the President of The Royal Society and Group Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. In 2009 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry ‘for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome’. In this interview he explains why governments should invest more in basic scientific research rather than simply on applied science and engineering. He also discusses interdisciplinarity, collaborations, and public engagement.
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This production was sponsored by Khalaf Al Habtoor, chairman of Al Habtoor Group.
We also thank the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the Royal Society for arranging the interview with Venki Ramakrishnan.
Venki's book is available here: amzn.to/2wB8eVY

[@kaavyasri2705]

Indian education system, tests, admission etc., needs 1000000% reforming.. Refining...A separate budget is needed... Hope FM (2024-2029) will try to think and implement 🙏🙏🙏

[@RR-gr1ni]

What if I say I have an answer to solve the cosmological constant problem.. theoretically?

[@BULLAKI]

You can write a paper, submit it to ArXiv. I would love to see the preprint. Once you are done, submit the paper to Nature. Please keep me updated.

[@RR-gr1ni]

@@BULLAKI thanks for the reply first,i have already written the paper in an informal manner as I have zero experience in it. Can you tell me how to present it. I even have mathematical model to support it And I don't have practical data either, just theoretical prediction+ educated guesses+ mathematical equation and the means how to solve it.. unfortunately I don't have the necessary equipment to do it, so I don't have data to prove my hypotheses, so will Nature except such a paper

[@BULLAKI]

Apologies in advance, but I don't know what's your background. My suggestion is that you might want to get a university degree in physics, and then look for a suitable research group in theoretical physics to work on your problem as a PhD project. Although I have a PhD in physics, it's applied physics, therefore I am not qualified to provide help on the topic, and above all I know almost nothing about theoretical physics. Obviously my suggestion above is not the only possible path. You might want to go through a series of peer-reviewed articles of your choice from top theoretical physics journals. Again regarding measurements, there isn't much I can say, apart from the fact that most research would conducted in academic environments.

[@RR-gr1ni]

@@BULLAKI it's ok if you doubted, I am not coming from a physics background... i got my revelation a bit late..ok I understand you are more into application part and I am happy you didn't talk about a subject that you don't know just to show off thank you for that...I actually went through your conversation with another guy in the comment section about Peter Higgs, who got recognized with just theoretical data..ie even before it was discovered, so I thought, you know maybe even I could do that too

[@BULLAKI]

@@RR-gr1ni I'm not the one in the video. I'm the one that directed/produced the show. I was behind the cameras. You can see me here in the conversation with Sergio Santos on Artificial Intelligence and Human Decision kzbin.info/www/bejne/gn_Lo6qgqaehaZo. You might want to join Eric Weinstein's group ericweinstein.org/ and discuss with them on the subject. Peter Higgs received a formal academic education. But it is also true that some people achieved exceptional results without formal education (e.g. Srinivasa Ramanujan).

[@99bits46]

Today the gap between Experimental and Theoretical Physics is over 100 years. On average, there are 50 applicants for a academic position as a Theoretical Physicist. Professors encourage you to go for Experimental Physics. For the last 2 decades, nobel prizes were given to Scientists discovering or coming up with an experiment. We really need a John Bardeen or Tesla today in this field.

[@BULLAKI]

Hi Salman....there are some exceptions, the Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider." [www.nobelprize.org]. You mentioned 'On average, there are 50 applicants for a academic position as a Theoretical Physicist', where is that? In your Department/University (which one)? Country wise (which one)? Worldwide? In general Experimental and Theoretical Physics would be both in the domain of fundamental science, which is discussed in this video.

[@99bits46]

@@BULLAKI yea there were some exceptions. There are several theories waiting to be disproved by experiments. Either they are costly, time consuming or we are just not advanced enough. There is a major gap which needs to be filled.

[@99bits46]

@@BULLAKI yes, in Europe. There was a good discussion going on reddit recently. www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/bx1wok/why_do_a_lot_of_theoretical_physicists_encourage/

[@BULLAKI]

@@99bits46 for example?

[@99bits46]

@@BULLAKI Theory of Emergent Gravity, even though its model fit the anomalies in distant galaxies, Physicists have taken sides those who support and others who criticize. Same for String Theorists. We know there are complications in any theory but to truly disprove them you need data. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics Cern is building bigger Particle Collider after the discovery of Higgs Boson (not to mention Peter Higgs proposed this in 1964) to solve new problems. www.universetoday.com/141252/cern-is-planning-to-build-a-much-larger-particle-collider-much-much-larger/