On Why I Do Physics

It is almost judgement day for me and many like me. Yes, soon we shall be receiving our A Level results and for those of us who have applied whether or not we have gotten in to our desired universities. This year I suspect is an even more tense time than before as it is when we find out whether we will get in somewhere, anywhere, this year, or have to reapply next year and suffer the drastic increase in university fees that is to come. But that is not what I am here now to talk about.

This post is a much more personal one, and the result of a number of thoughts I have had over the last few weeks regarding what I'm going to do if my grades are...sub-standard, and that is the subject of why it is I want to go into physics. Certainly it has been a long time since I have considered anything else (other than writing, but I've worked out how that fits nicely into the physics thing, so no worried there) as a career path and life goal.

My personal statement, if I remember correctly (I daren't read it again. It was such a constrained piece of writing that I feel mildly suffocated just thinking about it) talked about how I have always loved physics, I have a telescope, blah blah blah, and superficially it is true. Of course it is, or I wouldn't have put it in my personal statement. I was that quiet kid throughout primary school, and that quiet nerd throughout secondary school, until eventually I was that slightly more outspoken science geek going into Churchill 6th Form. I was still unsure what exactly what I wanted from life, but I was fairly sure it lay in a sciency direction. Then it came time to apply for uni, and I went for physics because looking back, I recognised that that is simply what I wanted. Music was always a big part of my life, and for a short time, so was art, but they didn't strike me as valid career choices. The other sciences I viewed as being less interesting and slightly derivative of what I recognised as being a kind of source code for the universe. Tell me, when I put it like that, doesn't physics seem sheer magnitudes more interesting? My other choice was something Englishy, and that was tempting but physics proved the stronger pull. At any rate I had spent the last couple of years proclaiming it to be my destiny, so it would have been kind of odd to back out now.

Then it turned out my A Levels sucked. I can lay blame in a number of places but that is irrelevant to the story I am telling. To cut a getting increasingly long story short, I went to City of Bristol college, and knew throughout that physics is what I wanted to do, and so here I am waiting for the results that will at least let me get into a foundation course through clearing. Hopefully more, but what can I say? I'm good at thinking about contingency. Let's take a quick break to explore a few of the senarios I have developed contingency plans for. (Absolutely not just an excuse to share a Cracked video)

Which Apocalypse Would Be the Most Fun? -- powered by Cracked.com

Anyway, I have continued my remarkable talent for making huge introductions, because yes, here is where we get to the main body of my thoughts. Now this is going to be some stream of consciousness stuff, so it might be kind of incoherent. I'll try to tidy it up a bit after, but you have been warned.

Actually, ok, before we continue we need to establish some assumptions. 1. The universe is real, not some simulation, I'm not in a coma, whatever. Yes, this is a genuine and constant fear of mine that I probably will explore here another time. For now however, it is irrelevant.
2. The universe is finite, has a beginning, and will likely have an end when it collapses on it's own gravity or heat death or whatever. It will end.

Anti-Depression aid.

Ok, so that last bit is a fairly large concern of mine. Humanity can keep spreading out into the stars. Maybe whatever we evolve into will meet extra-homo (as in the genus) life (I am being pretentious and avoiding extra terrestrial because it is likely by then that most of our species and its offshoots will have spread far beyond earth, and our sun will likely have red gianted long before anyway) and we will either befriend, exploit, kill or some combination them. Alternatively we may die off. I am under no illusions of the ability for a race to persist. For all the HFY stories, it is equally likely that we could be wiped out without warning. Either way it is easy to go on if we can still hope that some sign of us will remain of us forever, be it physical things, or knowledge, culture or something that we have passed on to other life. Then eventually the universe ends and everything is gone.


Not just destroyed. It is gone. Time ends, universe collapses, and it is like it never even existed. Maybe it will expand again, but that new universe might not bear any resemblance to ours. It might even have a completely different set of physics or maths.

So it's easy to think, with that idea, what is the point? Everything we achieve, what is the point if it eventually won't exist? I too felt that way for a short while. But, contrary to the beliefs of  your average misunderstood teen, Nihilism is stupid. I thought to myself there are some fairly profound choices I have to make here. I can accept that life in the universe is pointless, ultimately fruitless, and kill myself, but that seemed rather unproductive. Productivity cannot exist if all is to be reduced to nothing and everything, but whatever. Second, I could go for the old "Enjoy life while I exist to enjoy it" thing, but that seems hedonistic and again, unproductive. Or I could accept that I am scared.

I am scared, and that is why I do physics. I am scared of what I don't know. I am scared of facing oblivion unprepared, and fuck it all I refuse to submit. I do physics because I refuse to run away from my fear. I may not achieve much in my academic life. I may even achieve greatness. Either way I shall die with the knowledge that I did my damnedest to progress humanity towards the point where we can take the universe by the throat and scream "Fuck you! We will not just end!". I can accept that my work might be the spin of a particle in a drop of water in the ocean, but the accumulation of all those drops over millions and billions of years will make that damned ocean.

I do physics because I refuse to accept the limits of our own universe. I do physics because otherwise I will have to resign myself to being thrown to it's whims.

I do physics because I am terrified, and that is fucking exhilarating.