with colleagues such as these, who needs friends?

Reaching chapter 11 in my physics book, "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene. I found a startling and beautiful camaraderie between me and the scientists mentioned in the book, something inspiring and human about the search for super strings.

I can just image a young Dr. Brian Greene, having just received his doctorate in Theoretical Physics, excited about the possibilities of the string theory. Sitting a the Institute for Advanced Study, near Princeton, NJ. Working and working late nights, in collaboration with other experts and respected scientists in his field, to figure out the answer to the vast and basic questions of the universe.

It must have been such an exciting time in his life! Doing what he loved doing, and being on the cutting edge of research at that time. Sitting and crunching numbers that could determine what we know about how the most intricate things of the universe work. ... Now I'm not saying that mathematics sounds like the most exciting fun ever and I definitely have a distain for how confused it always tends to make me, but imagine being good at it! Having a talent for mathematics and being skilled enough to use math in a way to do such important work!

I wanna feel that way about what I end up doing and I definitely I want to work like colleagues such as these.

"Morrison sat at the computer with his finger hovering over the enter button. With the tension mounting he said, 'Here goes,' and set the calculation in motion. In a couple of seconds the computer returned its answer: 8.999999. My heart sank. Could it be that space-tearing flop transitions shatter the mirror relation, likely indicating that they cannot actually occur? Almost immediately, though, we all realized that something funny must be going on...

We had gotten the wrong answer, but one that suggested, perhaps, that we had just made some simple arithmetic error...

We needed to do another example...

Once again, we huddled around the computer and set it on its way. Seconds later it returned 11.9999999. Agreement. We had shown that the supposed mirror is the mirror, and hence space-tearing flop transitions are part of the physics of string theory.

At this I jumped out of my chair and ran an unrestrained victory lap around the office. Morrison beamed from behind the computer. Aspinwall's reaction, though, was rather different. 'That's great, but I knew it would work,' he calmly said. 'And where's my beer?'"

-The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, pg. 276