If nerds rule, the brainy man-boys from Caltech on The Big Bang Theory are King Arthur’s Round Table. Sweet and valiant, if awkward, they’re obsessed with finding a greater purpose through small things like particles and molecular structures—a bit like the theory the show is named after. And who among us hasn’t had an embarrassing moment where we revealed too much about our comic book collection/favorite quark theorist? Not you, you say? Oh. Well. Anyway.
“The big bang is the idea that everything starts together in one infinitely small, dense, starting point and then explodes and cools and differentiates,” Cornell planetary scientist and former Caltech grad student Don Banfield says. “These guys are very much like the students at Caltech—their interest in the science is so great that they are compelled to work on it nearly all the time.” Sometimes at the expense of seeing the world around them.
Think they’re adorable now? Take a look at them before the Bang…