Part of me is excited by the possibilities of neutrino and dark-matter research, the sci-fi glitz of better health and medicine, longer and richer lives, interstellar travel. Another, quieter part of me, though, wonders. What if we have arrived at knowledge that we cannot mine or turn into something—arsenic, dynamite, trucks—that helps us mine something else and in so doing produces, always, another thing we cannot get our minds around? What if dark matter and neutrinos are so out of reach that all we can do is think about them, not manipulate or change them or mix them into new combinations? Of the many revolutions science has offered us—and challenged us with—that could be the quietest and the largest and the most interesting of all.

Kent Meyers, “The Quietest Place in the Universe”