Suzie Sheehy

The reason we can say today that we know all this stuff, that we think our theoretical models represent reality, is not because we have pretty mathematics but because we have done experiments.

I suppose I was trying to figure out the meaning of my own existence. ...I went about it in a more indirect way: I set about trying to understand the entire Universe.

[E]xperiments take us to that frightening frontier of vulnerability: the real world.

Physics will always be, at its core, about understanding our place in the Universe...

Suddenly, nothing else mattered. I wanted to know... about gravity and particles and and relativity. About stars and atoms and light and energy. Above all, I wanted to know how it was all connected and how I was connected to it. ...[I]t mattered to me as a human ...if I managed it even a little bit, I'd not have wasted this little blip of time as a conscious being. I decided to become a physicist.

Five years earlier... [a]s my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the true wonder of this designated "dark sky site" revealed itself. ...The stars and planets weren't up there and I wasn't down here: it was all part of one enormous physical system called the Universe. I was a part of it too. ...I'd never really felt my place in it until that moment.

[A]s I studied more physics the question... at the core... was: "What is matter, and how does it interact to create everything around us—including ourselves?"