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This is World Today.
Hello and welcome to World Today.
I'm Zhao Ying. The 2025 International Congress of Basic Science is now underway in Beijing.
The event draws over a thousand scholars from China and abroad, including Nobel laureates, field medalists, and Turing Award winners.
Initiated in 2023 by world -renowned mathematician Xingten Yao, the annual congress aims to promote basic research in mathematics, physics, and information science and engineering.
But in a world increasingly driven by fast results and commercial returns, why does basic science still matter?
What happens when artificial artificial intelligence begins solving problems that once took humans years or even decades?
And can science still be a shared human endeavor in an era of rising geopolitical tension?
For these questions and more, we are joined by Zhang Fan, Associate Professor of Astronomy Department of Beijing Normal University, Quentin Parker, Director of Laboratory for Space Research at University of Hong Kong, Andy Mock, Tech Analyst and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for China and globalization.
Welcome to you all.
And Professor Zhang Fan, I'd like to start with you.
And let's start with a simple but very important question.
What exactly is basic science and why does it matter today?
Basic science, I think it means finding out how nature works, how things work.
Once you have that sorted out, you can do something called applied science.
So basically applying the knowledge of how things work to begin to artificially manipulate nature to do some things that don't necessarily have an application yet.
And then once you become skilled at doing that manipulation, you begin to find possible uses for it.
And then this is the engineering stage where once you can make money, a lot of people come in and try to figure out how to utilize things.
So that's basically how things work.
So everything comes from this basic science.
It's the foundation of all technology.
OK, well, Professor Parker, the event is actually held under the theme Advancing Science for Humanity.
So why do you think basic science is still so important for our future?
Can you share some surprising ways like it has changed our lives?
Yes, that's a very good question.
I think humanity as a civilization, we have innate curiosity.
And it's the innate curiosity of trying to understand how the universe works, how nature works from our own environment to that in the greater universe, as what spurred us on to discoveries that have led to many advances in sometimes surprising ways.
you know as an Australian I remember that you know CSI over radio physics developed to Wi -Fi originally for solving problems in in radio astronomy and today of course Wi -Fi is everywhere not something that came out of of radio astronomy in fact it's quite a lot of things have come out of just one field of astronomy alone that we take for granted today I think you know the geopositional system the satellite system that we all used to find out where we are when we walk around cities or on traveling around comes from satellite technologies that have developed largely in the beginning for for work
in astronomy and so there's all kinds of ways that fundamental basic science have found ways of being used and driving technology that we now take for granted and that people use throughout their lives in many different ways and even understanding the basis on which that initial advance was made so yes basic science really matters today it's a foundation for innovation you know we have unexpected discoveries that come out of it you know when scientists get curious you know the fact the reason we have penicillin as a antibiotic is because uh so alexandra fleming got curious about mold when many
other scientists saw that just as a problem and threw it away because it's affecting their sample but he looked at this a bit more detail and then you know antibiotic field was born and so yes Yes, there's so many ways that, you know, basic sciences have affected societies and led to changes and, you know, led to policy and economic growth.
And even as humans understanding ourselves better and our role in the universe.
OK, that really sounds interesting.
But I mean, it sounds like basic science has brought us a long way.
But, Andy, let me ask you, some might say that now we are already living in the age of applied science.
Like we have AI, we are exploring Mars, we've decoded the genome.
So is basic science still as important today as it was maybe decades or even centuries ago?
Well, Jalien, you know, first of all, I want to say so I'm not a scientist. I've spent my career as an investor and a business person and now a policy researcher analyst. But for my entire career, I've been doing things that have involved science and technology.
I think that it's never been more important to concentrate on basic science for two reasons.
I think back to what a mentor of mine said.
He said, learn mathematics to understand physics, learn physics to understand chemistry, learn learn chemistry to understand biology, learn biology to understand psychology, learn psychology to understand economics, and learn, of course, economics to understand markets.
And markets here, of course, can be stock markets or markets for iPhones, commodities, etc. So it really all starts with basic science.
So the second reason I think basic science has never been more important is that when we see machines, computers able to replace so many things that humans can do, I think that what is the most basic part of humanity is, as as we heard from our two other guests, is curiosity, the desire to understand, the desire to know things.
So I think for practical reasons, it's very important to make sure we can still push what Vannevar Bush called the endless frontier of science for practical reasons.
But I think it also, again, is intrinsically meaningful and a core part of what it means to be human to seek to understand the world around us, the outside world, as well as the inside world.
So how humans are made, why people do the things they do, et cetera.
You are a policy analyst, so let me ask you something about policy, because we know that within a country's science policy, there is often a question of priorities.
So do you think basic science, the research without immediate commercial use, gets the attention and funding it deserves?
Well, that's really hard to say, Zhao Ying, because I think we have to look.
I would say the short answer is yes.
And, you know, we've seen this throughout the ages.
So if I think back to Italy, when wealthy patrons would fund the arts and fund Leonardo da Vinci, right, that so it has always been the case with that basic science or curiosity driven activity has always been funded.
But I think in the modern world, we have to have a more nuanced approach. So certainly a country's level of development matters a lot.
So wealthy countries, of course, have more resources to devote to everything, including basic research. I think we have to look at level of economic development.
And of course, political priorities matter as well.
So I think we're seeing now, you know, if we look at the three, if I could put it this way, the three great powers when it comes to R &D, China, the United States and Europe.
of. Certainly there is an emphasis on basic science or research versus R &D research, not just development.
Certainly, I don't know if our other guests have a different view on this, but I certainly do believe that this is an important area that is prioritized.
Okay. So, Professor Zhang, would you agree that basic science is kind of being prioritized?
Is it fair to say that basic science is about curiosity before utility and if so in today's fast -paced application driven world is there still room and patience for for pure curiosity right um i don't actually agree that is just pure curiosity there is a fundamental misunderstanding that technology comes from utility if you look at sci -fi novels from the 80s or before that so the retro sci -fi none of the stuff that they envisioned is coming to fruition.
It's basically, when you don't know how things work, you just want something, you can never make it work.
In fact, technology is mostly unintentional byproduct of basic science of once you understand things, how things work, then you can think of utilizations, it works the other way around.
So it's never just pure curiosity.
However, I think Andy was right, because basic science is kind of open source.
You don't need everybody to be doing it.
People with the resources, countries with the resources, could shoulder quite a bit more of the investment burden.
And then the benefit of science can spread around with all humanity.
So certainly if you want to have a better future, basic science has to be there.
You have to invest in it.
However, it's not necessarily that people, you know, struggling for the next meal should put in that much investment in basic science.
They can, you know, other countries, rich countries investing the money and then letting I think the scientists are inspiring young people from poorer countries to also go there and do the research. So you have a global community to do things.
I think that would be better.
You mean wealthy countries should have the responsibility to invest more in basic science?
In terms of funding, yes.
Okay. Okay. So, Professor Parker, how do you think governments can strike a balance between long -term investment in these basic research and the short -term technological or economic demands?
Yes. I mean, it's always a question of balance and resources.
And it seems to be getting more difficult in some countries, wealthy countries, to convince the political masters who hold the purse strings that certain kinds of basic science are still important, still relevant, and should be funded.
There's always battles going on for the research dollar and where that research funding should go, going into more practical areas that might have a, you know, a more immediate potential for a return in in terms of technology that enriches the nation.
And therefore, when it's rich, you can afford to do more fundamental science.
And so, you know, I come originally from the UK.
I'm Australian. And, you know, I've battled funding for research in my area of astrophysics, which for some people is pure blue sky.
And what possible practical benefit can that have to anyone, you know, apart from perhaps a better understanding of our place in the world and just how precious our planet is.
is. And when you look at it in a broader context of the universe and realize it's the only one where we know life is definitely exists for the moment, you know, we should be protecting it a bit better than we are at the moment.
So anyway, all these all these questions around it is a question of balance and a question of fighting for your research dollar.
And, you know, and that depends on, you know, how convincing your arguments are about the value of perhaps a fundamental basic basic science you're trying to undertake, the fundamental pure research, you know, it's a focus on understanding natural phenomena and doesn't maybe have any particular immediate practical application that springs to mind.
It's basically driven by scientists who just want to understand by intellectual curiosity.
So I do believe that basic science is driven primarily by the curiosity of scientists that are attracted to the field.
I mean, many scientists go into to basic science do it out of the love of that knowledge and the interest that they have in it and not in it you know to become rich entrepreneurs and billionaires and what have you that is a different cadre I think but nevertheless the political masters are the ones that decide what funding goes where rich countries have a capacity to pursue and invest there for the future of understanding as a species you know you know there's a lot of ethics about this as well I think in terms of basic science and that's not I think maybe something we could look at in this discussion you
know when we have the ability to create artificial intelligence at a level that's accelerating when we have the ability to manipulate genes in ways which might be dangerous you know there's a huge responsibility and big ethical questions about just because you can perhaps do something remarkable as a scientist with very big risk and very potentially bad outcomes doesn't mean we should do it.
And where are the controls and checks on that kind of fundamental basic science that might have unforeseen and very dangerous consequences for humanity?
Andy, let's talk about the impact of artificial intelligence because we are now living in a world of AI -generated knowledge where AI can help prove theorems, generate hypotheses, or even draft the research papers.
So what parts of the scientific process remain uniquely human?
Well, that's a great question, Zhao Ying.
And, you know, I think what's interesting about AI is that it has some important parallels to how humans interact with technology.
So, you know, one way I understand we can look at this in terms of important innovations or technological breakthroughs is there there's a pull force and there's a push force.
So pulling means, you know, we see a need, right?
We need there's this disease.
We need to find a way to cure it or to stop it.
And we figure out what works.
And often that's called engineering.
So that's how do we do something?
And engineering's goal, again, is to solve a problem.
We may not know why it works, but we do know it works.
On the other hand, from a push perspective, if we go back to basic science, why do certain things happen?
And if we can explain it, the next step then is either we can make it happen when we want to make it happen, or we can stop it from happening when we want to stop it.
And that, of course, then can also impact our world in both positive ways and negative ways.
So how does that relate to artificial intelligence?
So one of the most interesting features of generative A .I.
is that many people that have developed it describe it as a black box.
We get really good answers and we know they're useful, but we don't know why the answers are the answers or how it actually produced it.
So I think, you know, this is again, it's an interesting parallel of artificial intelligence.
But I think that humans have a role to play in every step ideation.
Posing the questions, OK, what do we want to learn more about?
Why is the universe the way it is?
Why do black holes exist?
Why do certain materials behave the way they behave?
Why can't we turn lead into gold?
right? Or why can't we make people better from a moral, ethical sense, right?
Posing the questions.
I think humans also can still play a role in basic scientific research and in the engineering aspects as well.
You know, one of the phrases I really like is what Satya Nadella, who's the CEO of Microsoft, talks about when he describes AI.
So he calls AI co -pilots.
And what this means is that AI is not really a tool, but a peer, a colleague.
And I think I can see certainly, as someone who's followed this for quite a long time, this is increasingly becoming the reality.
Okay, so Professor Zhang, how would you see the role of human scientists as evolving as AI becomes increasingly capable right um so eventually what human brain can do there's no reason why I can't do eventually but at the moment AI is it was called a universal approximator it basically learns from experience and then interpolates and extrapolates from experience it doesn't create anything new beyond just simple extrapolating so so it's basically Basically, there is a saying in China, you try to draw a tiger by looking at a cat.
That's essentially what AI is doing.
It churns out sentences that maximally sounds like it makes sense.
It doesn't care whether it's true or not.
It just happens that in a lot of cases, the true sentences are the most likely anyways.
At the moment, you can't completely rely on AI for doing a lot of the scientific deduction And especially induction work, figuring out how things work rather than just going down the logical chain.
But gradually, AI, they're doing something smart, they're doing something called deep sync.
Basically, AI is not just mimicking the results, the outcome statement, it's also mimicking how humans do the logical deduction steps.
So once you put those requirements in, the intermediate logical deductions has to sound plausible, then it becomes very similar to what a normal human can do.
Humans are basically experience -based most of the time anyways.
So right now, at the moment, how we use AI is mostly using it as a tool for doing the tedious deductive work, sort of incremental work.
But later on, I think gradually we can dedicate more of the verification step of hypothesis sort of verification.
The whole scientific process is basically you make a hypothesis from observations, from experiments, that at this stage is mostly what humans are good at.
AI is not very good at that.
But the deducing the consequences of that hypothesis and see if it matches experiments, so you can verify or disprove your hypothesis, this step can be done by AI I think reasonably well, at least in the near future.
So the collaboration between humans and machines will be like humans making up hypotheses and machines verify or disprove them.
And then, you know, that's the most tedious part of the work.
And then if they can do it efficiently, then I think that would really push science into a fast track.
So Professor Parker, what do you think?
Do you think we are approaching a point where human scientists must treat AI as co -pilot or collaborators instead of just use them as tools?
Look, the whole issue of AI and where it's going and what controls and regulations may or may not be put upon it and how once it, you know, if true AI emerges in the purest sense of artificial intelligence, then, you know, I think all bets are off.
I think, you know, there are many experts on AI to understand how AI is developing, including people like Elon Musk, who say things important about AI and other people are very concerned about where AI could eventually take us.
This is just an article today I saw about, you know, will AI make us all dumb?
Because I've written articles about this myself about AI.
I have strong concerns about AI and where it might go.
And so, yes, it can replace drudgery of human condition and do things much more efficiently and effectively, you know.
But once it starts to be able to self -improve and acquire the entire contents of the internet and more, you know, the alarm bell should be ringing.
I think AI has a potential for great harm as well as great good, actually.
You know, when I think as a human, I look at our planet and I think, well, we're not really very good.
we're not looking after our planet very well at the moment and we may be going through a big extinction event right now actually and climate change climate catastrophe I'm calling it is is serious it's happened before over geological time of course of these events but it's human driven at the moment my belief is and a lot of evidence suggests that's correct is that you know where where where will all this lead you know and you know the if AI comes and looks at the earth and says takes over and becomes all knowledgeable well what's destroying our planet and it'll look at the one species it is and think
well we've got to do something about that to protect the planet from every other living thing the entire ecosystem that we have full of millions of different species that deserve a chance so anyway i don't want to get into that debate it's uh it's an interesting one and uh it's out there for people to read up all about it but um should we treat ai as collaborators um you know as as equals i i think that's a very interesting question i am personally very concerned about ai and about the potential it has to dumb us down as a species when you know you have ai so invasive in their lives that we know
takes tells us uh when to brush our teeth how to brush it what to do turn left turn right turn this on turn it off you know at what stage could we become you know the slaves of ai rather than the masters and so there's a big debate out there about all of this it's not just me saying this and so i've heard the other speakers saying great things about ai and in an ideal world in ideal scenarios and with a benign intent but um you know we have to be careful you know once you let the genie out of the bottle as it were it's very hard and that's true of many things in science not just ai it's about you
know um you know genetic modifications to crops and things that once they get out there they might be difficult to control they might have bad effects in all sorts of areas where science is both a savior and potentially a destroyer and so we have to really really be careful and that's where ethics i think is really important where government controls and international regulation and compliance and agreements are really important because you know we really are getting to the stage now where the changes that are coming are so fast that it's difficult for the regulatory frameworks to keep up, for governments
to even keep up, to even understand where things are going.
So that's, I think, the thing that's very challenging is the speed of progress now.
Yes, yes, indeed. Things are changing so fast. But let's take a short break here.
Coming back, we'll continue our discussion.
Welcome back. You're listening to World Today.
I'm Zhao Ying, joined by Zhang Fan, Associate Professor of Astronomy Department of Beijing Normal University, Quinton Parker, Director of Laboratory for Space Research at University of Hong Kong, Andy Mock, Tech Analyst and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, Professor Parker and professor Zhang, you both work in universities.
We all have to face the reality that we are living in the age of AI.
So what does that mean for our next generation of scientists?
Let me start with professor Zhang, what do you think this shift might mean how we train our next generation of scientists?
tests right so this is the first thing is that a lot of the tedious work that uh ai can't do there's no real need for training to be experts in them anymore my opinion may be a little bit more radical than uh than what traditional education experts would uh would like but it's like learning to do woodwork or washing your clothes in the river when there's already wishing missions around you're just learning something not useful so much of the curriculum of current university education is based on that it's based on on knowledge on the things that on the past experience on knowledge on just raw
stuff that AI can do much better than humans you know it's basically an interpolator of experience right what universities are really not doing so well is for people to, you know, dream, to think outside the box, to make the inductions, to do the lateral thinking kind of things that AIs are not intrinsically built to do.
Actually, they're actively discouraged to do that.
That's called hallucination.
But that's what controlled hallucination is basically what human imagination really is all about.
So somehow Somehow finding the balance points between just pure skill and experience and knowledge and this kind of a lateral imagination, I think it will be the ongoing process.
Because as Professor Qu just mentioned, Quentin mentioned, we're at inflection points, things begin accelerating.
The time for people to adjust become really, really short.
So it got to get on straightaway.
Okay. OK, well, Professor Parker, sounds like you are more pessimistic about the future of AI.
So would you mind if your students use AI tools to do their research?
That's a very good question.
And I've already had students that have done that, and I've recognized the AI components in their work because AI is not that good yet.
And I said, look, you've used AI to do this.
You know, I can tell.
And they admitted it.
And I said, look, you know, as a student, you need to be responsible for your own thinking.
You know, still a thinking being.
You need to not just use chat GPT or some other AI tool to do the work for you.
I mean, you're seeing advertisements on the telly now or in the media.
Oh, write a thesis.
We can write you a thesis.
We can write you a book.
We can do the, you know, so we're abrogating our responsibilities as a species, as a thinking species, a civilization to do things that we should be doing ourselves.
I mean, tedious work.
No, but, you know, your own generating your own thesis using AI and what you give it to feed it to do that.
I mean, I write articles for the China Daily and South China quite regularly, and I've never used AI for any of it at the moment.
And but I'm now thinking, well, if I just put in five or six ideas, I could maybe get five or six articles.
I could just like tweak them.
I could give them all my articles.
It could train itself on all my articles.
And then it would write like it was me.
And I just give it a basic idea for an article and search the Internet, bring all the information together better than I could ever do, and then write my article.
And then I could just let it run and I never need to write another article again.
But is that really what we want to do as a species with the way these tools are used?
You know, especially for training minds, you know, to think objectively and critically on this world, we need to have critical thinkers, we need to have applying the scientific method to be able to discriminate truth from fiction fact from fake news, when we're bombarded every day by more and more information from more and more sources, only some of which are really decent.
A lot of it is now dangerous and ill -informed and plain out malign in many cases.
And how do people discriminate what to believe in, what not?
You know, that's why we had Brexit in the UK through nonsense, you know, and why the other things are the way they are in the world at the moment through this kind of thing.
so we need that humans to be educated especially those at university to understand how to discriminate you know and where ai plays a role you know we just got a story at the moment in our university about ai being used to create very disturbing images which are now leading to police action and so you know it's now impacting things in our university on a regular basis we have rules and regulations about what students can use in terms of ai tools in their work and there's limits on what they can do, but it's very difficult to police.
Sometimes it's very difficult to detect.
And so, you know, it's getting to the stage where how can you, you know, know that a student's work is really their own unless we can put some kind of encrypted watermark on things they do.
So it's, you know, it can't be done by, it has to be from their own brain.
It's a very challenging thing at the moment.
Okay, well, Andy, will AI kill critical thinking?
thinking, and is that really a bad thing for the development of basic science?
Well, I don't think it necessarily will.
So I teach a class on research methods at a Chinese university in Beijing, and I actually require students to use AI.
But the important distinction is that they should not use AI to substitute for their own thinking.
So as Quintin said, you know, if you say to an AI, an LLM, write me a research paper, that's not such a good thing.
But I actually require students to use their choice of an LLM, you know, whether that's Chad GPT, deep seek, Kimmy, Q1, whatever, as a sparring partner, meaning that they have to have a conversation and a debate about their research thesis with the AI.
And I require them to hand in a transcript of their conversation with AI as a means of challenging their assumptions, identifying any blind spots, sharpening their thinking.
And I think this is a very, very powerful tool that can actually strengthen students' critical thinking.
The other thing that's really interesting about this is not just as an intellectual sparring partner, but a very, I think, interesting and important development for many students is that AI is becoming a mental health provider.
provider. So we look at universities.
Many students feel a lot of pressure.
They may get depressed, feel anxious.
And one of the big challenges with seeking mental health is you have to make an appointment, which might not always be easy.
There might not be the right chemistry or fit with whatever the mental health provider you meet with.
And here, AI plays a very, very powerful role in that it's available 24 -7 um and it can be very very effective so what i've heard students say is that they actually like talking to an ai about very personal issues because they don't feel judged as they might with a human now of course and they also feel it's more confidential now obviously we have to recognize that um what happens to our data you know whatever we share with an llm you know we don't really necessarily know so i'm not entirely sure that their belief that uh it protects their privacy or is more confidential is necessarily true but But I
think the larger point is this, is that AI LLMs, I think, can be a very powerful accelerator of human effectiveness in critical thinking and in emotional health.
And maybe even advancing emotional intelligence as well.
Because, again, if you talk to an A &C, how do I deal with my doormate?
How do I handle the situation with a colleague?
How do I handle the situation with my boss, my husband, wife, etc.?
Again, it could be a very, very powerful accelerant to many things that we care about.
Well, Professor Parker, I'd like to get your thought on the development of basic science in China because Shigefumi Mori, the Fields Medalist, he is visiting China for the first time for this Congress.
And he spoke highly of the rapid development of mathematics in China.
So how do you see China's growing influence in mathematics or maybe other basic sciences?
How do you think they are reshaping the global scientific landscape?
That's a very good question.
And I think that's a question whose answer has evolved rapidly over the last decade or so.
Since even I've been to Hong Kong, I've seen some amazing changes when I go to the mainland and visit the various universities and institutes.
A huge advance has been made in a whole series of fields and the way to actually gauge this just through some hard data, simply to look at the number of patents that are coming out of China and the number of research articles that are coming out of China that are being published in the world's top science journals.
And if you just look at the statistics on those over the last few years, you can actually see that China now has more patents and publishes more paper in top journals than anyone else, you know, than the United States and than Japan and other major Western powers that are very strong science -based, like, you know, like the UK would be a great example.
If you look at the, you know, the metrics that are given to universities, the way they're ranked, and And Chinese universities have been moving up the ranking schemes for quite some time now.
Whether you believe in the legitimacy of these ranking schemes or not, and there are several out there, you know, the THC and QS are two of the most well -known and respected.
But, you know, they gather together all sorts of information about an institute to decide how good it is at training students, how good it is at fundamental research, blah, blah, blah.
They take it all in the round, put it together in a report and give an overall score.
you know the Chinese universities have been improving year -on -year overall I mean my own universities just somehow managed to move into almost the top 10 number 11 leaping leapfrogging Xinhua and and Peking University this year although I think it might be an aberrant year but nevertheless you know these are how students gauge where to go blah blah blah blah so yes the strength of fundamental research in China is quite impressive you know they've just created the world's largest single -dish radio telescope the fast radio telescope making some very important discoveries they're thinking of building
more they're going to be launching uh in a couple of years as yun tian uh china space station telescope two meter optical telescope bit like the hubble but with the field of view 300 times larger they've gone to the moon with the changa missions they've gone to the far side of the moon they've brought back moon rock for a great science of the geology of the moon uh near and far sides are very different geologically speaking you know they're going to Mars.
So yes, China is investing a lot in fundamental science and deep space exploration.
It's quite impressive as well as being a little challenging, I think, for other countries to just appreciate just how rapidly China's advances in science and technology that comes out of it has unfurled in the last decade or so, even, as I said, in my field of astrophysics and astronomy.
Well, Professor Zhang, Chinese mathematician Wang Hong recently made a breakthrough in the the Kakeya conjecture or the Kakeya needle problem.
That kind of sparked excitement on social media.
So can you explain in simple terms why this breakthrough is so significant?
And how can something so abstract have real world implications?
The reason why it's so high profile is because it's one of those problems that can be easily stated without knowing any terminologies.
Basically, in the simplest form, if I have a pen, if I rotate it, how do I make the shape that two dimensional shape it traces out to have the smallest area?
In their case, they put the three dimensional version of this.
This is one of those things that's easily stated, but super hard to prove, much like many famous other conjectures in mathematics.
So basically, everybody can give it a go.
And everybody can discover that it's extremely hard. So it's good for proving you're smarter than basically everybody else.
So people admire whoever managed to in the end prove it.
So that's why it's so high profile.
In terms of fundamental utility I won't go into too much details but it's related to the fact that you have a one -dimensional shape with a dimension which is a lens and then you rotate it you form an area naively you think it's that the lens -square kind of area.
Turns out it isn't and then you form some really weird shape that can have if it defined dimension differently differently, according to the area, you can have a different hospital dimension.
This actually goes into a fundamental part of mathematics, basically, was continuous but not smooth.
So a lot of the modern mathematics deals with continuous concepts.
But it turns out that our physical world may need smoothness, so mathematics needs to be beefed up to handle that case as well.
well. And having this particular conjecture understood goes a long way in terms of intuition into how these two concepts are different and how they're related.
So eventually, hopefully, it will shed some light on how you go about improving mathematics for the use of describing the physical world eventually.
Okay. Well, Andy, science is supposed to be global.
Scientists Scientists build on each other's discoveries and often work across borders.
For instance, Wang Hong's breakthrough on the Kakeya conjecture involved her collaboration with a Canadian mathematician called Joshua Zalt.
But actually, in reality, most research depends on national funding and countries sometimes limit who can access their labs, data, or technology.
So do you think there is a tension between the international spirit of science and the national interests that often shape it.
There absolutely are.
And again, I think, you know, this really depends on specific topics and areas.
So, you know, funding is one question.
And I think, you know, many funding agencies, again, depending on the topic being researched, researched, do encourage global or international collaboration just because it works, right?
So, you know, if you can draw from a larger pool of qualified people to work with, the probability of success is going to be much greater.
But at the same time, you know, that we do live in in a world where there are nation states and, you know, security is a problem, you know, as John Mearsheimer described it, right?
The tragedy of great powers is that, you know, you really can only depend on yourself for safety at the nation state level.
So, as a result, there are certain areas of research That are deemed to have national security implications and, of course, are treated very differently.
So maybe not open not only just to international collaboration, but even strictly limited within a particular country.
So, of course, we see this with nuclear weapons research, maybe certain kinds of biological warfare, cyber warfare, et cetera.
So I think clearly, you know, this is as much a political decision as it is purely a scientific one.
Professor Parker, what's your thought on this?
Because many would say that science should be a kind of global commons, it should be a shared human project.
But do you think that is still possible in today's world?
Or are we moving toward a more fragmented, competitive science landscape?
I think the ideal of a global science is fine in principle.
It's just not implementable and probably never will be.
And Andy is absolutely correct.
There are certain areas of scientific investigation which are so secret and are so, you know, in the national interest to keep secret that enormous resources are put into stopping it.
and that's why you know we have espionage and all these other things between countries and that's true in in space as well in certain areas of space activity uh but not in others and i think in terms of international collaboration i'm always extremely positive about it myself always trying to get the most out of international collaborations because you know it's true that no one country has a monopoly on expertise or on insight or even on ways of doing things and if you come together as i've done in the past at meetings or just collaborative visits you go and have that visit and you then have discussions
amongst different groups of people that you wouldn't otherwise have encountered and new ideas new ways of doing things new suggestions can emerge you know out of this uh this kind of interaction i think that's really important for advancing science it's not just collaborations from university university within your own country but internationally because the way these scientists have produced the way they think that even the culture they come from influences the way they think and behave and operate and all these things together create like a melting pot if you can get together of different perspectives
and different insights which when taken together can produce a new idea that would never have emerged if you hadn't been in that international group and i think astronomy basic other basic sciences are areas where you can do that and i think it's important because it can can build trust and for me that's one of the most important things of all is building trust between scientists at different universes in different countries that otherwise are difficult to talk to each other and you can build trust and and leverage off that developing trust into other areas and I think it probably makes us all
a little bit safer frankly although that's perhaps a slightly naive but nevertheless I think that international collaboration absolutely vital vital to the future health of our planet and to our civilizations.
You actually remind me of a Booker Prize winning novel, Orbital.
It's about the cooperation between nations in astronomy.
And then let me ask Professor Zhong, do you think that compared to applied or high tech research, is basic science more insulated from geopolitical tensions because it's more focused on knowledge itself than on direct commercial or military applications?
Yeah, sure. First of all, it's harder to understand, which is why when I apply for a visa, they ask, what can this be used for?
Oh, we answer absolutely nothing.
And then they get the maximum allowed dates for the visa.
The other thing is, because basic science is mostly open source, you publish it openly.
And in fact, a lot of countries' funding have clause saying that if it's supported by this particular fund, you have to make it public even your computer code you write that doesn't get published initially with the papers so so that's that's a strong tradition strong momentum in terms of basic scientific research if you want to curtail that you face a lot of resistance from scientists that's one thing another thing is being difficult to understand insulates some of it so yeah I hope that people can continue to to share especially in the fundamental research basic research arena because you know
i think one of the reasons why china was lagging behind in terms of scientific development in this ancient time is it's because people try to hoard trade secrets try to keep their family recipe to themselves and then once the family disaster before a family a whole skill set get lost and then also nobody can learn and improve upon any sort of particular skill it's also true on the national level if you want to keep a potentially very remote sort of military use technology or the science related to it just to yourself then you have to only let a very few scientists even in your own country know
it and then you know nobody will be able to to develop on top of it, to especially overthrow and disrupt and revolutionize it, over the longer term, you will be suffering the bad consequences.
Okay. And Professor Zhang, let me ask you something about China's education system, because many would say it is too exam -driven, it's focused too much on solving those well -defined problems. But doing basic science means you need to learn to ask new questions.
So do you think that as a fair criticism?
And if so, what changes are needed to truly foster curiosity and scientific thinking in young people?
I think it's absolutely fair.
It's actually worse than that.
It's not just well -defined problems. The answers you give, they have to follow well -defined steps.
If you're really smart, you're smarter than the people sending the questions, and you invent a new way to go around the problem to find the answer, you may not actually get a mark.
You may actually fail They hold exams. And then people basically begin to learn to walk within the steps.
They just basically write learning, just doing past exercises and is doing what AI does.
But in a manner that's even more sort of regimented than AI.
So this has to change.
And to change this, obviously, the most important thing is to reduce the importance of the exams. And I think one way you can do that is to spread the funding around, not just concentrating all your money, throwing them at the few universities, trying to get higher international rankings.
That means nothing.
You should spread money around, give the easy to get in universities to develop specialty departments.
For example, near the largest single dish radio telescope, you know, you can have a university that's really good at radio astronomy.
You know, students don't have to just all fight really hard for that one or two places at top university to be able to go into a research career.
I think that's the most immediately doable thing at the moment.
Okay, so Andy, how do you think we can build an ecosystem that really nurtures young scientists?
What does it really require, maybe in terms of institutions, mentorship, or even culture?
My experience has been slightly different.
I teach at Tsinghua, as well as the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Foreign Studies University.
In my experience, I think the traditional Chinese education system actually works very, very well because, you know, if you want to work at the frontier of any field, whether that's chemistry, whether that's economics, whether that's psychology, I think you have to master the basics.
And I think what the Chinese system is very good at, and of course, I agree with Professor Zhang that there are things that can be improved.
But I think one of the strengths of the Chinese system is that it really, really is good at ensuring mastery of at least the basics.
And the other thing that I find very exciting about China from a scientific research perspective is, of course, just the number of people.
You know, in the US, we like to say you're one in a million, meaning you are so good, so inherently talented, right, that you're very, very rare.
So in China, that means there's 1300 other people like that.
So when you have that massive talent that has been so highly trained to master the fundamentals of any particular field, I think you have the ingredients for enormous success in scientific research, which, of course, we're seeing a number of citations in top academic journals, patents, etc. cetera.
So I think fundamentally, China is in an enormously strong situation.
Okay, well, Professor Parker, one last question for you.
What are some of the most exciting unanswered questions in basic science today?
And how might solving them shape our future?
Oh, that's a very, very good question.
There's lots of, from my perspective as an astronomer, I mean, one of the biggest mysteries I think about is what are dark matter and what are dark energy neither of which i particularly like uh because we don't know what either are or why they exist and why the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate uh which is one of the nobel prizes my compatriot uh brian schmidt got in 2009 i think the other other big questions is you know uh like uh what is beyond the visible universe you know the universe has a finite size it's expanding is it part of a larger structure is it infinite if it's expanding
what is expanding into people think like this uh or is it creating its own you know um four -dimensional space -time continuum as it does that how did life begin that's another one uh the mystery of how life began in our on our planets uh i believe personally that life is ubiquitous that it's out there across the universe in some form or other but you know life was just single -celled organisms on our planet for several billion years before more complex life evolved and eventually eventually turned into humans so you know and if we understand how life began maybe it's the principles of unlocking
new possibilities of creating artificial life if we ever want to do that and engineering biological systems or extending the lifetimes of humans to much longer than they currently are beyond four score years and 10 you know and what else would there be consciousness how did consciousness arrive you know arise and now become thinking beings so yeah there's some of the the fundamentals you know forces of nature how do we unify all the forces of nature together uh et cetera unify single theory guts is what they call it grand unified theory um so yeah that for me they are they are some of the most
important questions that i can think about off the top of my head yeah the frontier is still wide open okay thank you quentin parker director of laboratory for space research at university of hong kong john fund associate professor of astronomy department of beijing normal university City and Andy Mock, tech analyst and senior research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization.
And that's all the time we have for this edition of World Today.
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I'm Zhao Ying. Thank you so much for listening.
See you next time.
