"When I met Joe on the plane", theoretical physicist Carlos
Mendez-Guttierez recalls, "we started talking about our jobs, and
when he mentioned his work as an employee of a big company which
manufactures the little plastic figures that go into those well-known
Suprise Eggs, it suddenly occured to me: hey, what the guy is doing
is not too different from what I am doing !" "I am not sure about
who got the idea first, but at some point we converged toward
swapping our jobs, at least temporarily", Carlos continues, "I was
fascinated of finally doing some creative work that I could see
with my own eyes and could touch with my hands, while not having
any more to convince collegues why my models would be better than
theirs - all what counts are sales figures, which I felt to be
somewhat more fair than those citation scores used for evaluating
the work of scientists".
One the other hand, we learned that also ex-toy designer Joe enjoyed
the swap. After initial fears of not being competent enough, he got
thrilled to do some really cutting edge research work, especially
after Carlos' promises turned out to be true that he does not need
to know quantum gravity or string theory for being a successful
brane model engineer. "All what it takes is some elementary school
knowledge of group theory and anomalies", he confirmed, "and off
you go - all those buzzwords you always had been dreaming about
using, such as extra dimensions, warped spacetime, graviton profiles
and tachyonic inflation, are at your's disposal and just wait to
be used." Excitedly he adds: "What I really enjoy and like more as
compared to me previous job, is that anything goes! There is no
constraint that spoils the fun in designing new models - every
fancy idea that comes into my mind, can immediately be converted
into a new paper!"
After pressing him, he details his latest project: it involves a
still kept-secret number of extra dimensions, and combines the
largest number ever of fancy ingredients in a single model, including
non-commutative, non-supersymmetric triple-intersecting branes on
orbifold singularities with torsion fluxes and with modding as high
as Z_77. "After little more work", he proudly adds, "I will be able
to push this well over Z_100 while doubling the number of branes
at the same time". His secret trick to success, he concludes with
low voice, is that he is able to use the same software that he has
been using before for toy designing, and this gives him the edge over the
competiton, by being able to shell out a new model every two or
three days.
