Daniel Whiteson

And then you start to think about like the philosophy of the mathematics.

And we also have a great philosophy of mathematics group at Irvine.

to think about like, well, what are these things that we're dealing with?

Do you really need these numbers?

And a central part of all of our calculations in physics are something we call fields, right?

Gravitational field, electromagnetic field.

And they're actually at the heart of our explanation of the universe itself, right?

These days we think about particles, but we don't think of them as the fundamental element of the universe.

We think of them as ripples in fields.

And fields are the foundation.

We don't know if this is the end story, but the current foundational picture of the universe is space-time with a bunch of fields layered on top of it, right?

Electrons, ripples, and electron fields.

Muons, ripples, and muon fields.

Cool.

And if you ask a physicist, are fields real?

They'll say, yeah, of course.

I mean, they're the foundation of our calculation.

The problem is nobody's ever seen a field, right?

You've seen a field push on something.

You've seen a field bend a particle, the spirals we were talking about, where charged particles moving through magnetic fields.