Heh ... in grad school, one of my friends was a postdoc working on computing bounds for the Higgs mass. He used to tell me (theoretical condensed matter) that

Heh ... in grad school, one of my friends was a postdoc working on computing bounds for the Higgs mass. He used to tell me (theoretical condensed matter) that I worked in the dirt left over from the real physics. Fast forward 20+ years, and he is working on modeling semiconductor growth (like I was to a degree), and I am long gone from physics. Skipped postdoc/tenure track to go into industry post Ph.D. My impression dealing with HEP folks for many years, is that a fairly large fraction of folks in the field look down on the rest of the world. Similar with the nuclear people. This is anecdotal of course, and a small subjectively interpreted sampling. All that said ... One of the more interesting aspects of string theory is that it appears to have analogues and applications in superfluidity, and other phenomenon where you get spontaneous symmetry breaking[1], or where you have critical exponents and length scales[2]. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05635 https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05635 [2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/string-theory-methods-for-condensed-matter-physics/F9D08031D2147BD474C35ACBF97E6A28 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/string-theory-methods-f...