Shawn Ryan

Maybe.

So...

You're basically, quantum field theory is giving you these fields that explain why particles are identical, because they're like, the electron is just an excitation of this field, so like I have multiple electrons, they're excitations of the same field.

You can think of, say, the mechanical process of how I'd compute some amplitude, like these predictions for CERN, as a bunch of world lines coming in with some rules for how they interact and split off and create other particles.

string theory is kind of chubbying out this like graph to like a sheet kind of like a literal like a pair of pants say so interacting and like you have this world sheet so what it does for you is it kind of two things like one thing is it kind of opens up this uv behavior so this sort of points it's kind of just like this branching of like a tubing thing and then the other hand it also gives you a

It's like, you can imagine, okay, let's try to build some mathematical framework within which I have the spectrum where I have this graviton, I expect this gravitational field.

And then I avoid some pitfalls of trying to treat gravity as a quantum field theory too.

And then people just keep building off of it.

And then there's years and years of papers that you're

like behind on when you're a new grad student.

But the main idea is trying to find some underlying mathematical framework that can let you have, you know, your cake and eat it too, like gravity and quantum theory.

We go to Harvard.

I'm working on my PhD.

And I think the whole airplane story, I have a bunch of friends who are in aerospace who think, oh, this kid's cool.

I'm doing some fun research with Andy and friends with spin memory effects, stuff like that.

But then – and then you get overhyped really quickly because, you know, any press is good press if you're trying to start a company, but not if you're trying to get along with the 2,000 people in a field that, like, you know, are sometimes bombarded by, like, what is string theory doing?

That type of thing.

So, like, very much closed ranks type of thing.

So that happens in the middle of my PhD.

So I –