Wonderful:) ... as a follow up to ur post i would like to show an extract from Mlodinow's, "Feynman's Rainbow"...

" When I got to him, Feynman was gazing at a rainbow. He had an intense look on his face, as if he were concentrating. As if he had never seen one before. Or maybe as if it might be his last.
I approached him cautiously.
"Professor Feynman. Hi," I said.
"Look, a rainbow," he said without looking at me.
I joined him in staring at the rainbow. It appeared pretty impressive, if you stopped to look at it. It wasn't something I normally did-in those days.
"I wonder what the ancients thought of rainbows", I mused. There were many myths based on the stars, but I thought rainbows must have seemed equally mysterious.
"All I know," Feynman said, " is that according to one legend angels put gold at its ends and only a nude man can reach it.
"Do you know who first explained the true origin of the rainbows?" I asked.
"It was Descartes," he said. After a moment he looked me in the eye.
" And what do you think was the salient feature of the rainbows that inspired descartes' mathematical analysis?" he asked.
" Well, the rainbow is actually a section of a cone that appears as an arc of the colors of the spectrum when drops of water are illuminated by sunlight behind the observer."
"And?"
"I suppose his inspiration was the realization that the problem could be analysed by considering a single drop, and the geometry of the situation."
"You're overlooking a key feature of the phenomenon," he said.
" Okay, I give up. What would you say inspired his theory?"
"I would say his inspiration was that he thought rainbows were beautiful."
I looked at him sheepishly. He looked at me. " How's your work coming?" he asked.
I shrugged. " It's not really coming."
"Let me ask you something. Think back to when you were a kid. For you, that isn't going too far back. When you were a kid, did you love science? Was it your passion?"
I nodded. " As long as I can remember. "
"Me, too", he said. " Remember, it's supposed to be fun." And he walked on. "


Along with science being fun, I think there is a certain appreciation for beauty inherent in human beings. We cannot define beauty. What we find beautiful is usually something natural. ( Personally, I find Einstein's relativity beautiful, even if eventually it turned out to be wrong).
Curiosity may drive us to do science. The fact that it is fun is another motivation. Whatever it is, these things feed on us. Curiosity transforms itself into a strong driving force that pushes us through the greatest extents. We don't know where our search will lead us, but the journey sure is fun. In the end, I think it is the journey that matters, not the destination. And that I think is one of the most beautiful things about life and physics.

What remains to be answered about present day science is whether this is what still drives every physicist? Or have the motivations changed a bit?