In many areas of data-collection and parsing from experiment and hypothesis the challenge remains: staying abreast of our various fields of interest and domains of discipline, while remaining open to shifts of meaning in what data has been gathered and how it is interpreted. The beauty of the sciences here, of mathematics and our other applications of reason, is the ability to remain confident in the face of uncertain information, of answers that have singular results with a multiplicity of implications and potential applications for the real world, the shared world.

Moving forward into the long evening of data-sifting and verification of any potentially game-changing discovery (in modern physics I speak here of the-neutrino-that-did, of our constant c getting it’s nose tweaked recently), it is important to remember that the tools that created and detected this momentous and anomalous event are part and parcel of a wondrous toolbox that will help us decipher the broader implications of such an astounding observation, if it is indeed true and not a false result. This is what our toolbox - mathematics as applied to the physical sciences and its volumes of to-be-ordered data, collected via rigorous experiment - is for. And, though this discovery may or may not bear further fruit, we can also use our tools to follow the process of separating datum from deviation, studying the statistical operations brought to bear in fine-tuning and focusing search of a definitive result, be it positive, negative or an accountable fluke, one generated by *this* kind of process under *these* specific conditions, or something falsifiable and therefore of interest, but clearly not naturally repeatable without specific parameters.

Let us speak also of the responsibility, also in our toolbox (a multitudinous source, our toolbox) to translate probable meanings of this event to our individual publics, our circles of known and interested parties, those whose lives ours intersect with, in making what can be reflected in symbolic operation become real and vivid for people for whom such efforts are un-natural, alien or anathema. The general public may only have the slightest of interests in the science and mathematics driving this event, but even as a matter of trivialities, the truth must out so as not to mislead our fellows, peers, contemporaries, and descendants. We may not have the same interests or avocations, but we all live on the same fragile globe, enmeshed in systems similar.

Remaining “on the same page” is beside the point; “yes”, “no” and “we don’t know-yet” are all equally valid answers to the existence of outside-the-cone phenomena in STEM fields, answers that can be understood and explained (in some expanded form, one hopes) to anyone without a loss of basic conceptual comprehension, without condescension, patiently, compassionately, furthering the knowledge of our fellow humans as well as constantly examining new acquisitions of knowledge to be placed in the associated canons of what is known, testable and familiar enough to explain to a curious child without rhetorical embarrassment or dumbing down.