The gates of the temple of science...

Currently engaged wracking my brain trying to come up with a research project to propose for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship application.  I feel like there are so many things that I am very curious about (which is a good prerequisite for a research project), but that at least for now, the vast majority of them are things that quite a lot is already known about.  I just need to study the topics more, which is why I want to head back to academia.  But it doesn't make a great "original research proposal" to propose to learn about things that are already known.  Trying to come up with an original, meaningful project to advance the edge of scientific knowledge, when you still can't feel quite where that line lies, and if the stuff on the other side of the curtain is worth knowing, is, well, HARD.  Not sure what to do about this.  But it did remind me of a quote that I like, by "some physicist dude"...

"Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with. "

- Max Planck

I guess I'll keep reading and thinking and see where I end up.

PS, I think this is me.