It’s a year-end tradition to cobble together a list of the most important advances in science. But, truth be told, many ideas that change the world don’t tend to spring from these flashy moments of discovery. Our view of nature — and our technology — often evolve from a sequence of more subtle advances.
Even so, chances are good that this year’s list-makers will choose the discovery of the Higgs boson as the most important discovery of 2012.
The Higgs is a long-sought building block of the universe. It finally put in an appearance at an accelerator in Europe. But though it was big news, it wasn’t apparently a revolutionary discovery.
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