You open a box

And inside are more fucking boxes! Imagine this, recursively you open a box and find more boxes. But each box is interesting, so of course you can find more interesting things inside the box. And more so, until you find an infinite number of boxes in an infinitely large box. A box so large that it would eat the universe in its great gaping maw. Omnomnomnom.

Right some one mild distraction aside, here's to a little insight into why I's does science. I've done the how, so why not the will. This will of course be narrated by a very silly story and possibly will involve Godzilla at some point.

So, picture you're walking along a footpath in the boonies one day when you come across a most curious of objects. Its a small rock like object, shaped in a peculiar manner that is rather out of whack with the surrounding objects. Pondering what it is, you decide to pick it up and investigate the matter further. Some days later, after you've battled your way through a flock of flying bears (a much maligned species), you find that this strange rock resembles the bones commonly found in lizards. Amazed you wonder how this bone got to where it was. Some epic data trawling later and you've found that lizards do not exist in the area any more. However, once in the great gasps of time there were lizards there. This opens two questions; how did the lizard bone survive all this time, and what kind of lizard did it belong to. This is already chemistry, geology and biology in one step. And them of course, being odd people we decide that the first is the most interesting question.

So of course, you read up on fossilisation, taking in the great depths of mineral deposition, geological strata and probably a good bit of physical geography to learn about land movement and what not. But in this great melange, you also find out that there are other examples of this kind of bone lying around. So you obsessively collect them over the next few weeks, becoming some sort of finger kleptomaniac, probably driving some of you friends/acquaintances mad with bemusement. Religiously examining these little things you find out that there are different compositions of elements in them. Carbon, various minerals... exciting stuff! But them it strikes you, should not they have the same elements in them, being the same thing? So why does this little bony thing have slightly more C-14 than this other one? Then you think, and whilst enjoying some liquid sustenance, enough to create a supersaturated area of booze haze, you notice little tracks. From you tiny bone things. By god... particles from the lizards bones! But wait, this means stuff comes from it! So maybe the particles there can change! Egads... that would explain the different compositions!

Excited by this you get a bit overexcited and count the number of trails. But them you notice that different rocks have different quantities of trails. Oh no! More questions! But looking at your great list of components of each rock you notice that those with more of some material (C-14 for arguments sake) give out more trails. So maybe they're related. So you note this, and after 10 years of laboriously cataloguing this information, you notice that the rates have decreased, in some vaguely logarithmic fashion. Astounded you wonder if you could relate the time to the rate of decay. And what do you know, you can! And so you find you can figure out the age of these little rocks. But then there is something else... something wonderful. During this time, some crazy man in Germany has written to you about your particles from other particles theory of emission. Just as obsessed as you (but in the wrong subject, silly man), he's looked at particles with his ridiculously huge microscope and seen things being emitted. Even better, he's seen that these particles do funny things to living tissue in high enough doses.

So seeing this and being interested, you put you favourite parrot in a path of these beams. Three subsequent destructions of Tokyo later you've realised that some times curiousity has unintended consequences. But hell, it was going to happen sooner or later so you may as well have been the first. But at least now the world fears you from your mountain-top lair!

So, this excessively silly recount of the scientific thought process over, the basic idea is... ask questions. If you're ever unsure, curious, obnoxious or just want to be an annoying bastard, ask a bloody question. If you can't get an answer from someone else, then look for one. Blow up small islands, dig through ditches, shoot particles into trees, get information to convince yourself and others that you have an answer! If you do get an answer from someone else, ask them whether they're sure its right. Why? How? Got evidence? Can it be done better? Do you fornicating with gorillas? Well maybe not that one, but you get the gist.

So... go ask you gribbly monkey!

P.S. Just to note, anyone that subsequently uses the response "You can't prove me wrong!" to any question can, and should be punched repeatedly in the balls/ovaries until they cry. As should anyone that tries to use logic as an argument against evidence. What the universe shows is generally the actual truth. That it doesn't comply to your seemingly elegant logic/description is your own damn fault. Stop whining and come up with a better one you lazy twunt.

The pitter patter of tiny feet

And overwhelmed PC fans. That mechanical grinding noise pitches itself into your brain, slowly but surely mining away at your will to continue. You lurk around a corner... blackness. Nothing but the incessant grind, grind, grind of plastic on plastic. Sputter sputter, crunk... kaboom. That's vaguely the sound a computer makes when one tries to run a memory intensive EM simulation on it. Or more correctly when I run one. That's right, trying to simulate a particle beam (represented by the awesomeness of a wire carrying an electrical pulse. Oh yeah!) running through a small aperture in a ferrite magnet is capable of bringing 8GB of RAM-my goodness to its knees.

And thus rears the ugly head of doing science computationally. Sometime, somewhere you will want to simulate something. Nay, need to simulate something big. And as big and as fast as your machine might be, you'll run out of RAM. For those lucky enough to be able to push data to the Grid this isn't normally an issue. But for us poor plebs that can't use parralelised code the RAM hungry monster rears its head with astounding frequency. Take my present machine for instance. Core 2 Duo. 8GB RAM... by any sensible standards this should own anything that's thrown at it. But this is CERN. We do not do sensible. So... give said beasty 7 million mesh cells and tell it to carry out a FEM EM algorithm. And then watch it cry. Current usage... 2.5GB of RAM. And this is with a simple conductor. Lob in some lossy materials and watch it implode.

The solution? You get a supercomputer or big arse cluster. I live for the day.

One day when the world sleeps...

The clicker-clacker of keyboards shall reverberate in these hallowed halls of learning.

So, picture this, it's Saturday night. It's fairly warm outside. The world is abuzz with news and new things for us all to explore. One could cross from country to country seeing new things. And what am I doing at 12.30 on Sunday morning? Writing a progress report for my home institute (I've started taking up the European habit of calling them institutes, I feel it represents reality more closely). Such is the high flying life of physics graduate student. But given I barbecued half a cow last night I consider this a fair trade off.

But on a more serious note, the importance of writing and paperwork more than ever in sciences. Science is a funny old fellow. In nothing else does reputation matter so much as in science. You see, when you have no reputation, people don't know whether to think your crazy or actually saying something useful. Given how... erm... focused (yes that's the best word. Obsessive-compulsive doesn't have the same ring to it) a lot of research is, sometimes this s literally the only point of reference many people as to whether you're work is going to be interesting or not.

This leads us to the existence of that most strange of beasts, the academic conference! What a cesspit of sin and inequity these things are! Anywhere from 20 to several thousand people all grasp for your attention, with posters, presentations, talking, grabbing innocent passers by... its so... random. Admittedly I've only been to one (but that's soon to change...) but holy tit creepers. Sitting through 9 hours of presentations in one day... well fine that happens on occasion. Doing it for a week is pushing human endurance however (although the guy from Oxford that sounds like Brian Blessed is a riot. On a random note here's the one I went too, the second week I started my PhD). Which is occasionally a downright shame because of the presentations are exceptionally interesting (RF breakdown science for instance). This is of course padded out by the 60 pages in 20 minutes on brazing techniques.

But think about, in a week you have to get a scope of what possibly hundreds of other scientists in your area are working on. Not just this, but you have to show off to these people as well. Talk to them, tell them about your work (and get told about theirs. Quite a lot) and generally make yourself known in the world of *insert your subject here*. But then on the other hand you get to generally brag about how awesome you are. Technically you're showing off rigorous and respectable contributions to public knowledge, but I still maintain that there's still an air of just showing off whatever clever/impressive new thing you've done. Even if impressive is analysing data from a giant box of argon for 3 years to pick a statistically significant data sample to detect little particles. But such is the life of scientist.

But what happens when your name is tarnished? Well... in short, you're fucked. I don't mean a Peter Mandelson, "Blink and I'll be back!" screwed. I mean you'll have to change you career screwed. Like everything, you won't be remembered for the potentially good work you did, but for the epic fuck up you made. Be it for a sense of justice, the keeping the good name of science clean or just because people want to prove that you're wrong and their data is right, pain comes your way.

But seriously, its awesome!