Over the last decades, the EPS community has been promoting the role of physics in addressing some of the biggest problems humankind faces right now. But, what about the big challenges in physics on a longer term? At the horizon 2050, what might be on the world's physics agenda to solve? Predictions are difficult but we can get clues from how current trends in science and technology may play out, where physics has a key role to play.
This is the target of the EPS Grand Challenges: Physics for Society at the Horizon 2050 project, exploring our ability to imagine and shape the future by making use of the scientific method. The project is designed to address the social dimension of science and the grand challenges in physics with two pillars: physics as a global human enterprise for understanding nature and physics developments to tackling major issues affecting the lives of citizens.