You don't have to be a scientist to get excited about breakthroughs in theoretical physics. Discoveries such as gravitational waves and the Higgs boson can inspire wonder at the complex beauty of the universe no matter how little you really understand them.
But some people will always question why they should care about scientific advances that have no apparent impact on their daily life – and why we spend millions funding them. Sure, it's amazing that we can study black holes thousands of light years away and that Einstein really was as much of a genius as we thought, but that won't change the way most people live or work.
Yet the reality is that purely theoretical studies in physics can sometimes lead to amazing changes in our society. In fact, several key pillars on which our modern society rests, from satellite communication to computers, were made possible by investigations that had no obvious application at the time.
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