Tickets are now on sale for the 2009 World Science Festival, organized by physicist Brian Greene and his wife, journalist Tracy Day.
The festival will be held in New York from June 10 to 14, and opens with a big 80th birthday party for E.O. Wilson. It will bring together a number of high-profile scientists, artists, philosophers, and writers, and regular readers of this blog with recognize a number of the names, including Dr. Harold Varmus, Dr. Francis Collins, Michael Heller, Paul Davies, George Ellis, Andrei Linde, Lawrence Krauss, Frank Wilczek, Oliver Sacks, and Ken Miller. (Harrison Ford, Glenn Close, and Alan Alda will also be there, among others.) The idea is to celebrate science in a way that makes it more accessible, compelling, and inspiring.
The program covers a bunch of interesting topics, such as multiverse theory, environmental sustainability, human cooperation and altruism, fate and free will, our response to music, and the idea of nothingness.
We had heard the program would include a panel discussion on the science-religion relationship (like last year), but we don't see it listed. Stay tuned; we'll work on getting more information. —Heather Wax