Philosopher_k said:
Hey guys. I am a final year high school student and have lately been researching a career in Mathematics/Theoretical physics.
Don't try to plan things out just yet. Go to college, do some undergraduate research. If you like it, keep dong it. If you don't, then find something else to do.
I had this view that mathematicians sat around and had massive eureka moments (like Archimedes), solving problems such as fermats last theorem, or Poincare’s conjecture with flashes of genius.
Those do come from time to time, but I've found that most of my Eureka moments end up being false alarms. Just last week, I thought I figured out how to solve this problem that I was spending weeks looking at. I took a look at the problem, and I told the person next to me that I'm going to have lunch now, and enjoy this good feeling, because there is a good chance that I'll go to lunch, come back, figure out that I made a mistake, and that I really didn't solve the problem.
Which is what more or less happened...
Also you do have flashes of insight, but those are mixed in with slow, grinding work.
Yet when i look at the actual proofs just noted, i am struck by just how different my perceptions are. For example Wiles' proof is something like 150 pages long and filled with long definition/lemma/proof style formatting.
That's mathematics. Physics, even theoretical physics, is quite different. Physicists generally don't care about proofs. And a lot of theoretical physics are things like "if we assume that Y = alpha * X, then we can come up with something that we can calculate."
After all what could be cooler than discovering a theory about dimensions, tiny strings, other universes or time itself.
Except that more often than not you'll quickly find out that your brilliant idea just doesn't work. Personally, I prefer creating models for things that I can see. Like fire.
The field was all about Gauges, Metric spaces and Eigenvectors, whatsmore the questions were not as philosophical as i enjoyed, no answers to the mystery’s of time or how the universe came into being, more about how abstract mathematics was perceived to fit in with reality.
Which is pretty cool. If it were easy to figure out the mysteries of the universe, it wouldn't be nearly that interesting to me. Also, I like mysteries that are right in front of me. Light a match, and there are things about fire which people don't quite understand.
For years i have read popsci books by hawking, Kaku and greene, speaking about the exact things i love. Yet why is the practice of theoretical physics so different to these ideals?
Because reality is complex, and science is hard. If you just sit in a corner and try to "think out" how the universe works, you'll never figure anything out. You have data that you are trying to explain, and it takes a huge amount of effort to try to explain it.
I have tried to find this beauty but so far, no matter which college book i read, there is nothing like the excitement i felt when reading a brief history of time.
That's because a brief history of time doesn't have that much to do with what physicists do. Personally, I've found that this makes physics *more* interesting since I am more interested in building a better mousetrap than "useless philosophy about time" but that's just me.
Are the days of Einstein gone? Did the ever exist in the first place? I am so damn confused!
If i am right, then what the hell do i do with my life?
I think they never existed, and the problem is that reading Stephen Hawking gives you a very warped idea of what physicists really do.
. That might just be what you have to do then.
