July 4, 2012 may well be a day that will be remembered as one of the great turning points in history. Yet for so many of us, this day went by without fanfare.
On this day, the scientists of the CERN laboratory in Geneva announced their discovery of the Higgs boson.
To many, this means nothing. What is a Higgs boson, and why should I care?
I suspect that future generations will find it difficult to understate the significance of this discovery.
In the words of Bill Nye, “It may mean we’d be able to unlock limitless energy.” Such wide applications won’t be feasible for a long time, but they will, in time, exist.
On June 21, just a few days before that great announcement was made, the Miami Heat faced off against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the National Basketball Association Finals.
The Heat walked away as the national champions, and there was hardly a person in Miami that night who didn’t know what happened. The streets were alive with the sounds of people cheering and banging pots and pans together. The cacophony was surely a sign of the euphoria shared by so many.
What I want to know is where those crowds were on the night of the Higgs boson announcement.
This is why I am unhappy that so many of us took no note of the discovery. Human history will utterly change because of it, but very few have cared.
The discovery of the Higgs boson is the culmination of years of scientific pursuit by people all over the globe for generations. The discoveries these scientists make will echo through the ages.
Some thinkers believe humans will one day inhabit every corner of the cosmos. When we possess such power, what are the odds that the names Lebron James or Dwyane Wade will mean anything?
I don’t wish to cheapen the place that basketball holds in the hearts of many. I just want to illustrate this rather disproportionate allocation of public attention. There is probably a big place for sports in a healthy human culture.
However, I find it troubling when such entertainment becomes the only thing that people are concerned with. The feats achieved by even the best team of basketball players are trivial when compared to the discovery of profound truths governing the universe.
If the Heat kept the streets in Miami alive for a night, then CERN should have kept every city on the planet alive for at least a week.
For too many of us, science is nothing more than a factory that gives us fancy new gadgets every few years.
The iPhone 5 release is arguably comparable to the victory of the Heat. Droves of people flocked to stores to get Apple’s shiny new phone. Some had been camping for days. I wonder how much nicer those iPhones would be if we showed such passion for science.
There are more direct threats to scientific understanding.
Paul Broun, a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said, “I don’t believe that the Earth is but about 9,000 years old.” Broun is someone who shares jurisdiction over all of our federal scientific programs. The fact that anyone who believes in such demonstrably false nonsense can even be elected to office should be great cause for worry.
I think it would behoove us greatly to reassess what we value as a culture and how much we value it. With such dire questions of human survival now facing us, our fate hangs in the balance.
Will we heed the words of scientists who warn of our self-annihilating behaviors, or will we scoff and never live to see that day when we sail cosmic seas?
Brandon Lee Gagne is an anthropology senior at UF. His column appears on Thursdays. You can contact him at opinions@alligator.org.
