How Physics is Fighting COVID-19?

COVID-19: The Fallout!

The coronavirus pandemic could reshape how physicists go about their lives.

Like everyone else around the world, physicists have been caught up in the COVID-19 outbreak, which was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization last month. Naturally, all of us will be concerned first and foremost for our own friends and family. The disease is usually mild, but it can turn nasty – and with lots of people falling ill at once, there will be big pressures on medical systems around the world. It goes without saying that we should all look out for each other, especially older neighbours, colleagues and family members.

Closures of schools and colleges will place uncertainty on the education of physics students and on school pupils wanting to study the subject at university. Physics-based businesses could struggle with absent staff, strained supply chains and cash-flow problems. Countless physics meetings and conferences have already been cancelled or postponed. The Institute of Physics (IOP) has cancelled all branch, group and national events until the end of May, and postponed any meetings due to take place at the IOP’s headquarters in London over that period.

The situation is moving so fast that predicting exactly how things will develop over the next few months is difficult. But once this particular pandemic passes, and it surely will, we could look back on COVID-19 as the trigger for fundamental changes in how physicists behave. Last year, for example, researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada found that, while international travel makes academics more productive and have a bigger scientific “impact”, there is no benefit in doing more than one major trip a year.

There has already been a growing pressure to lower our carbon footprints – and jetting half-way round the world to deliver a one-hour physics lecture will become harder to justify. Big international meetings will continue to thrive, but smaller events will increasingly move online, which will be better for the environment and for those physicists with family commitments, disabilities or financial restrictions. Online seminars and lectures never quite replicate the experience of a live event, but that will surely trigger innovation in web-based conference platforms.

As for physics-based companies that use scientific conferences to launch new products, they too will have to seek alternatives.