Perspective

Today's announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves represents "a huge breakthrough for science" and I knew [before today] that it involves someone in our department. This seemed exciting until I discovered that he's in a team of 1000 scientists who have been working for 15 years and whose equipment had a recent $200m overhaul. The BBC's gone mad over it, wheeling out Hawking to congratulate himself them and explaining "Five reasons why gravitational waves matter":

1. It's the final prediction from Einstein's general theory of relativity
2. Einstein said that gravitational waves would be too weak to detect - but we've managed to
3. We'll be able to look into the universe in a way we haven't been able to before. Right back to the Big Bang
4. We'll find out how gravity really works
5. It will help physicists develop a theory of everything

So, in other words, the work of a great theoretician has been verified, we've shown that he didn't know how good we'd get at building measuring equipment, we'll understand more about things that don't occur on earth and we've created more opportunities for physicists to spend public money.

Naturally this will do nothing to feed the hungry, house the homeless or cure the sick: it's time that science put more into tackling these harder problems.

I missed making the most of the good weather first thing, so this was an experiment on the bus home.