I had always had an interest in physics, but at school was persuaded by a combination of factors to do other things.   So, now I've returned to physics - but why?   As best as I can make out, it's because physics at the moment is supremely exciting - with the prospects at CERN (with the LHC), and at Fermilab (the Tevatron) of finding physical evidence of the Higgs boson, and therefore start to unravel the secrets of mass.    Of the chance to see how the universe formed in its earliest moments - and lest anyone think that the early universe is irrelevant, one only has to think that each one of us has atoms in our bodies which were formed inside stars, and those stars could not have formed without the energy created in the early universe.