[Governor Dinwiddie]

It's all academic at this point. It's not going to put a loaf of bread on anyone's table, or a gallon of gas in anyone's tank.

[Rockingham]

Better physics holds the promise of new materials and new things that are highly useful, even revolutionary. In less than a century, lasers, computer chips, atomic energy, and much else that we now rely on every day came out of quantum mechanics. And without Einstein's theory of relativity, highly accurate GPS navigation and space travel would not be possible.

The point of string theories and quantum gravity theories is to unify quantum mechanics and relativity, two of the foundational and most productive theories of modern science. If that effort is successful, transformational new forms of energy and space travel could follow within a few decades. In other words, kids now in preschool could, in early middle age, enjoy abundant cheap, clean energy and undertake routine space flight around the solar system and aim for distant stars.

In the meantime, a relative handful of physicists and technicians earn enough to buy bread and fill their gas tanks as they putter about with equations on chalkboards and twiddle with odd devices deep underground. Forget Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Physicists are the world's true revolutionaries.