There is nothing that is more guaranteed to make a normal rational person feel stupid than hearing someone talk knowledgably about particle physics.
Since many physicists are actually very kind people, they often try really hard to find ways to communicate tricky science to the rest of us. Some of them are creative and artistic too, which is a real bonus, and so we get valuable avenues of understanding like Tom Stoppard’s plays and Douglas Adams’s novels. These have the useful function of making us laugh and feel thoroughly entertained while terribly difficult ideas about things like the space-time continuum creep into our consciousness via the back door.
Professor Brian Cox is a new and highly valuable asset in the ‘Oh, now I see!’ industry of explaining complicated things to ordinary people.
