Their Higgs numbers - Inspiration for young people around the world Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). How does the most fundamental physics benefit humanity? In an earlier paper we followed the surprisingly short connections that link a Higgs boson - a fundamental discovery of no apparent practical value - to inventions that have revolutionized human society: the World Wide Web, digital cameras, and all of modern electronics. Here we emphasize inspiration rather than invention - how a Higgs is connected to inspirational themes like international cooperation, harnassing Big Data to improve the human condition, and understanding our place in the universe. The role of science in inspiring young people is directly connected to a programme administered by the first author, in which school girls are encouraged to pursue scientific and technical careers.

published proceedings

  • Proceedings of Science

author list (cited authors)

  • Lidstrm, S., & Allen, R. E.

complete list of authors

  • Lidström, S||Allen, RE

publication date

  • January 2015