Critical Problems in Physics: Proceedings of a Conference Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of Princeton University

Abstract

Princeton University celebrates its anniversary every 50 years. For the bicentenary in 1946, an international crowd of famous international physicists assembled to view the future of their field, especially nuclear physics and its applications. More recently, in 1996, reports on critical problems of physics were given essentially by more local celebrities. Of the 14 talks, five were devoted to particle and accelerator physics, three to gravitational physics and cosmology, and three to non-equilibrium science including neurobiology. On the whole, the speakers addressed the left-overs from the past of physics (for example, R V Ramakrishnan on high-temperature superconductors and F Wilczek on the Standard Model of particle physics and a little beyond) rather than the fundamental properties of the universe, but whether Higgs particles and gravitino-hadron scattering will dominate the discussions 50 years ahead (S Treiman) may well be doubted. Perhaps we shall expect then, however, decisive progress in non-equilibrium questions which are not confined to the inorganic world (J S Langer, J J Hopfield, H L Swinney). Cosmological questions - at present, say, flatness of the universe or dark matter (P J Steinhardt) - have interested mankind at least since the times of the ancient Greeks and will probably remain challenging, when people have given up waiting for the over-next particle accelerator (advocated by R B Palmer and J C Gallardo) that cannot be financed even by combining the efforts of all nations of the world. Also superstrings (in spite of E Witten's optimism) can lose interest among scientists when no verifiable consequences are to be expected within centuries. What are now the critical problems in physics, especially those which can be answered within the next 50 or 100 years? Looking back to 1896, none of the celebrities of that time predicted the overwhelming progress in the understanding of so many physical problems achieved by relativity and quantum theory in the following decades, despited the fact that the exciting and crucial discoveries of x-rays and radioactivity were already at hand and eagerly discussed then. We should just hope that, for our future also, Nature has kept more suprises for us than anticipated in these 15 lectures, though we must admit that they are presented and discussed at a high level by real experts (including also T Damour, B J Hillman, D H Perkins, and A Tollestrup) in their fields.