You can't put a price on the sense of awe particle physics inspires

Philosopher Helen De Cruz, in her new book, Wonderstruck: How wonder and awe shape the way we think, explains that “wonder is a useful emotion, because it points to gaps in what you thought you knew”. I read this line while also working my way through Annie Jacobsen’s book The Pentagon’s Brain: An uncensored history of DARPA, America’s top secret military research agency. DARPA, which stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has an annual budget of over $4 billion, comparatively almost 20 per cent of that allotted to NASA. While you…