The novel coronavirus outbreak has created great havoc in the world. Many social media posts were stating, ‘This is what we get when we give less attention to research than everything else.’ Some others we’re saying, ‘It’s the time for nature to heal, Oh happy day!’ First of all, I agree to disagree with these statements. The thing is, we did give much attention to research. But it wasn’t for the right research. The priorities in the scientific research were ‘unscientific’.

When some say, in the upcoming post-COVID period (If humans are alive), the world is going to see a significant boost to research, he/she should specify that it is for biological/medicinal research. COVID destroyed economies, even the powerful ones. An Indian research student always dreams of joining the Ivy league (in my personal experience) for higher studies. Well, I believe it will remain only as a dream for many years to come. It will take much time for the world to go to the previous state.

As I already mentioned, the boost for research is going to happen only in the area of biology. Who need superconductors when everyone is dying. This thought will reflect in future physics research. Till now, if we see some statistics, funding for high energy physics and astrophysics(only) was higher than research in biology. Humans were concentrated on distant stars while they forgot about their minute DNA. The pandemic outbreak helped in this realization.

Analyzing such realities, we must understand that the future of physics research will be entirely different from the present scenario. The bright side of Computational and Theoretical physics is that it needs very little funding. Also, it is ‘Work From Home’ friendly. However, even if it’s not feasible, experimental research must be there. As Feynman said, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong”. But we can’t expect a Golden age in experimental physics research in the near future. Labs having advanced equipment will continue to work. But there will be no new ones. This is going to increase the demand of these labs, also a significant competition may arise for students willing to join such labs. So, the vital thing to note here is that students who are eager to work on experimental research must have some computational knowledge as a backup, if things didn’t work out.

Hope is the best thing. I’m not trying to say that we should lose our expectations of research. Instead, we should be aware of the situation. We should be well prepared to face the post COVID world. For that, we must have a backup plan. We should be flexible in this case. Experimental physics enthusiasts must try some computation or theory also. You are just an enthusiast now, speaking from personal experience, most of you will find computational and theoretical physics interesting, just the same way as an experimental one.

In the upcoming posts I’m planning to write more on the advantages of computational research from an ‘experimental enthusiast’s’ point of view😅. So keep in touch.