[deepsun]

I remember R. Feynman wrote that at some point in his life he reached the end of his achievements, and it was a pretty sad time. For many years he couldn't produce anything valuable anymore. So over time he gave up trying and just kept on living, doing stuff just for fun, not for value. One day he saw someone juggles a kitchen plate throwing it into the air, spinning. He got interested, why does the plate "waves" exactly twice less than rotation speed. He started computing it, just for fun. Because he was already a failure, so who cares. Over time that pointless kitchen plate computations grew up to quantum calculations, for which he much later was awarded a Nobel.