In SPIN
Ireland's science wildlife and discovery magazine
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Science Spin November 2008
Pointers for Ireland in Barcelona ESOF event
Ireland is bidding to host the European Science Open Forum in 2012, which this year was held in Barcelona. We report from the event, which is held every two years. The next host city is Munich.
Ireland is bidding to host the huge European Open Science Event in 2012, which was this year held in Barcelona.
I was there, not really to influence the future of science, but as a curious lay person who liked to know more about where we are now with regards to the understanding of the world we live in. And on this I was not disappointed.
The programme did tackle all the big scientific problems on the most fundamental unanswered questions of the universe - such as the origin of dark matter and dark energy, or the possible futures of the Universe - in a session called 'the very big and the very small'. In that session, a number of particle physicists debated along with cosmologists on matters so extreme that both fields of physics get confounded.
Special attention was of course granted to the topical Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which at the time was on the verge of being launched. The world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex should help identify elements critical to our understanding of matter - the Higgs boson for the mass, and the neutralino for the dark matter. But physicists from the CERN were also there to put things in perspective so that you wouldn't get too excited too soon. They warned us that it could take one year or more for these discoveries to materialise.
First of all the LHC has to check out the things we already know, just to be sure that the largest piece of scientific equipment ever built works properly - in particular European particle physicists are extremely keen to check out the top quark, because this very elusive particle (the final quark to be discovered) has only been observed once, and only by Americans.
In another session on the human mind and behaviour, ESOF 2008 explored some of the deepest human mysteries in biology by highlighting new advances made on the understanding of the working of the human mind. This included very practical approaches such as the neurophysiological principles of brain scans and more nebulous ones such as the nature of consciousness including attempts to find out whether animals are conscious (apparently chimps might be...).
You would also be happy or scared to learn that appropriate brain scanning can interpret your thoughts and intentions correctly about 50 per cent of the time or so. This means we are still quite far from reliable telepathy, but in the near future this technique could be useful for patients with stroke who can't move or talk -- they would just need to think about it and a machine would be able to do that for them instead!
More practical issues where also addressed -- including means of engineering the body, or down to earth questions such as what we shall eat and how we should look. Other questions had a more global scope, tackling burning issues such as means of enhancing energy security or fighting global warming. Science also mingled with politics when science policies were debated, or with art with topics encompassing science and poetry or 'drawing science from Leonardo to Edison'.
To close each day, 'X-change' sessions where people could interact and debate with each other and the speakers in a more relaxed setting were also part of the programme.
The scale of the event was huge; with some 4000 participants, it was twice as big as last ESOF (2006) in Munich and is expected to get bigger again in two years time. The bad side was that it was quite easy to get yourself lost in the abundance of topics going on at the same time. With so many rooms and floors you ended up loosing people you just met. On the bright side, scientists, members of the public, young and old were all satisfied, as there were enough variety and complexity levels to provide food for thought for everybody. There was a bit of discrimination though.
The event cost something like 70 euros if you were under 35, and over 300 euros if you were 35 or over! It was free for journalists, which was good for me. But still, this was nearly a reason for me to boycott the event - what kind of science event is it that seems to consider older brains lost for science and not worth stimulating? Unless this segregation just reflects the eternal study cycle that science students have to undergo before they can get a proper job.
Hosting ESOF 2012 in Ireland would be a great challenge and a fantastic experience.
To keep up to date on Ireland's bid to host ESOF 2012 click here
