Which part of science interests you the most?

[TTG4]

Ah that sucks, we might learn about it next year in A2 but I'm not too sure :/ I just found it interesting that some complex animals have the ability to reproduce asexually in situations where it is advantageous as before I had never really considered it as a possibility.

If my memory serves me right, you don't. You don't do anything fun at A-level but that's a whole other rant. If you want something really weird, the reasoning for honey bee co-operation is really awesome.

[Jubal]

You don't do anything fun at A-level but that's a whole other rant.

You can fit that into just one rant? I am in awe at your ability to condense information. 

[Tom]

Just as I was getting optimistic as well I'll have a look in to that though, it sounds interesting

[Glaurung]

To revive the original question, the part of science that interests me most is physics, and specifically that area in the overlap of astrophysics and particle physics where people are working on the origins and structure of the universe. When I was at school and university, the impression I got (probably wrongly) was that this was all settled: we understood the Standard Model and the Big Bang, and that seemed to cover everything. When I got interested in all this again, ten or twelve years ago, I discovered we knew more, and understood less (!). We had found, or were finding, the evidence for dark matter and dark energy, but there's no framework of theory to fit them into. To me, it feels rather like the state of physics in about 1900: lots of unexplained phenomena, waiting for relativity and quantum theory to tie it all together.

I probably should be interested in genetics, because it seems very likely that a lot of world-changing stuff is going to come out of it, but the biological side of science never really appealed to me (too descriptive, not enough logic and principles), and I stopped studying it at age 16.

It's not a science, but I'm very much interested in maths, particularly the intersection of group theory and geometry where things called polytopes live.

[Jubal]

I'd like to spend more time getting to grips-ish with the current state of physics research, but it just seems impossible to know where to start with it.

Genetics and evolution were always my favourite bits of biology, cells I was never such a fan of. I guess that partly must be linked to my love of world-building and such things, game theory and adaptation and so on are very much my thing.

[Othko97]

I prefer Maths. It's just so elegant, and it's the only field that is definitively the truth.

[Glaurung]

I prefer Maths. It's just so elegant,

Indeed, and I rather feel that if it's not elegant, it's a sign that there's something we don't understand yet. The four colour problem must be a classic example: we surely ought to be able to do better than a brute-force enumeration of all the possible cases.

it's the only field that is definitively the truth.

Though, as Gödel showed, some of it may not be provable.

[Glaurung]

I'd like to spend more time getting to grips-ish with the current state of physics research, but it just seems impossible to know where to start with it.

You might find Ethan Siegel's Starts With A Bang blog a good place. He's a cosmologist, posting at least 3-4 times a week on subjects in astronomy, astrophysics and particle physics. There's usually also a "Weekend Diversion" on something more worldly that interests or concerns him.

[Othko97]

I feel that the idea of an underlying connection between separate areas of mathematics is the elegance. Case and point Galois Theory, linking classical geometry with polynomial equations. I feel as though much of maths is the same principle applied in varying manners, with links between areas that we never knew existed cropping up (relatively) often, and applications of one branch reach far away from its source. Maths seems to be a study of patterns and connections which is itself intrinsically connected with itself, which I just find wondrous. Sadly I am but a lowly A-level student at the minute, so I'm not too down with higher level mathematical skills, and can only study what is accessible, so stuff like Godel's incompleteness theorems are just a tad out of my depth (read I haven't even had formal teaching in set theory).

[Glaurung]

I think it's quite possible to understand the principle of Gödel's argument without necessarily using all the conventional mathematical apparatus. You might like to find a copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter - it was popular in the 1980s, and I think an anniversary edition was published quite recently. Hofstadter summarises the basic ideas in a page or two fairly early in the book, then builds up his own apparatus to enable a more detailed exploration (somewhat more intuitive than rigorous) later on.

I agree that the interconnectedness of maths is an important part of its beauty. The polytopes I mentioned are a good example: they are geometrical objects (polygons, polyhedra and so on), but their symmetry properties are described by group theory, and the standard book on the subject draws in elements from a wide range of other areas.

I should also say I'm not a mathematician. I did maths up to A-level, and it was a minor element of my degree, but I haven't touched it in any formal way since then, and I'm sadly out of practice.

[Pentagathus]

You people sicken me.

[Glaurung]

You people sicken me.

Do I sense there may be another, unwritten, law of Wibulnubniblia: "no maths allowed"?

[Clockwork]

Star Wars.

[Pentagathus]

No, maths is useful enough but enjoying it is just perverse.

[Jubal]

I should repost my old Math-Hammer articles to Exilian...