The LHC at CERN is one of the the biggest scientific experiments ever built, and in July 2012 after months of public interest, the discovery of a new particle looking very much like the Higgs boson - responsible for the mass of all fundamental particles - was announced.Professor Jon Butterworth will explain something about the discovery and what it means for physics, and will also discuss how CERN and the scientists coped with the huge popular interest.What are some of the possible implications for "science in public"?
Jon Butterworth is a physics professor at University College London. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group on the Atlas experiment at Cern's Large Hadron Collider

Observer columnist Nick Cohen talks about his tour de force polemic, You Can't Read This Book (fortunately you can but more importantly you should). Here's a snapshot:
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism, and the advent of the Web which allowed for even the smallest voice to be heard, everywhere you turned you were told that we were living in an age of unparalleled freedom.You Can't Read This Book argues that this view is dangerously naive. From the revolution in Iran that wasn't, to the Great Firewall of China and the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich protecting their privacy, the traditional opponents of freedom of speech - religious fanaticism, plutocratic power and dictatorial states - are thriving, and in many respects finding the world a more comfortable place in the early 21st century than they did in the late 20th.
This is not an account of interesting but trivial disputes about freedom of speech: the rights and wrongs of shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre, of playing heavy metal at 3 am in a built-up area or articulating extremist ideas in a school or university. Rather, this is a story that starts with the cataclysmic reaction of the Left and Right to the publication and denunciation of the Satanic Verses in 1988 that saw them jump into bed with radical extremists. It ends at the juncture where even in the transgressive, liberated West, where so much blood had been spilt for Freedom, where rebellion is the conformist style and playing the dissenter the smart career move in the arts and media, you can write a book and end up destroyed or dead.

How can children brought up in religious families reconcile the different 'truths' they are told about the world? And to what extent should we discuss these issues in schools: what exactly should science teachers say when asked about the 'truth' of science by religious students? In this talk, Alom Shaha will describe his personal experiences growing up in a Bangladeshi Muslim community in London, what role his science education played in his journey towards atheism and how, as a Physics teacher, he responds to the apparent conflict between science and religion in the classroom.

Alom Shaha is a science teacher, writer and film-maker and author of "The Young Atheist's Handbook". Details of his work and blog at www.alomshaha.com

After philosophy was dismissed by physicist Brian Cox, Dr. Clio Bellenis decided that she had to speak out in favour of this oft-misunderstood subject. Addressing philosophical concepts such as personal identity and free will, Dr. Bellenis will talk some modern philosophical thought and the transferable arguments between the two disciplines. She hopes to establish that philosophy can be of huge worth to scientists, skeptics and in developing critical thinking.
Dr. Bellenis is a child and adolescent psychiatrist with an MA in Philosophy. She is also an atheist,a skeptic and a feminist.

Skeptics and philosophers throughout history have never been afraid to ask the big questions. But what about the biggest questions of all - about infinity, higher dimensions and logic itself? These are questions mathematicians have been working on - but not without venturing into philosophy and even skepticism. In this talk, Katie will discuss some icons of mathematics who are also (or should be) icons of skepticism and the history of philosophy.

Katie Steckles is a mathematician who works in public engagement, giving talks about maths and performing at science festivals. She's also well totally an atheist and that.