Physics Should I Pursue Physics? Uncovering the Goals and Choices of a Physicist

[Anicho]

Is it all it's cracked up to be?
I'd rather have a nice peaceful life, no kids, no wife (perhaps maybe a few close friends). I want to know everything about the world we live in, I even stress because I want to know more. :P

I have a few questions, what are the main goals of physicists? Particularly the "LHC" experiment, find the Higgs boson, then what? Grand unified theory, and ?

I want to do some theory and experiments, so am I going to have to choose between the two?
Sorry if I sound weird

 

[ferm]

I want to know everything about the world we live in, I even stress because I want to know more. :P

Then I guess studying physics is a good start. It will give you some knowledge about the basics of "everything" which are some of the hardest to obtain. In my opinion, it is much easier to switch from physics to any another field of knowledge than the inverse.

Needless to say that you don't have the time (or memory?) to know everything about our world. Nevertheless you can learn the tools to be able to understand many aspects of nature when presented upon them, and studying physics is a very good choice for getting those tools.

I have a few questions, what are the main goals of physicists? Particularly the "LHC" experiment, find the Higgs boson, then what? Grand unified theory, and ?

Physics is quite a broad field of knowledge, so there are many, many goals. From getting better materials to understanding the origin of the universe to scraping another precision digit in a particular nuclear resonance.

Talking about the LHC, I would say the main goal is to understand better how electroweak symmetry breaking works (you can google that to get some popular science explanations). In the most standard theories this requires finding this new particle, the Higgs boson, but of course there are many other theories with different experimental signals.

About the "then what"... Well, that depends on what the LHC finds. I have to say that it is very likely that the LHC won't reach enough energies to give a full explanation of this, however. So a new accelerator will need to be built, and it can be very difficult to get the money for that. The energy required to test grand unification is much, much larger than the LHC range (except in some theories), so most probably it won't be tested in the next century.

I want to do some theory and experiments, so am I going to have to choose between the two?

There are some fields in which you can do that, mainly those involving small-scale experiments (such as condensed matter, biophysics, etc.).