Are we underfunding our future?: Brian Cox keynote
For more than 30 minutes, Cox delighted and astounded us with the extraordinary contrasts between the vastness of the universe and the intricacies of proton acceleration. There is something entirely beyond our ken when you hear that an exponential expansion of the universe began a million, million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang.
But he brought us all back down to earth, and immediate relevance, by saying that “basic, incredibly ambitious science provides the foundation on which our economy rests” because “economies need people who understand cutting-edge knowledge.” The investment in science more than pays for itself – economically, intellectually, and inspirationally. And then, in an unexpected tie-in to Dr. Starkey’s talk last night, he remarked that “the thing about CERN is the idea of the power of ideas.”
