One of the reasons this kind of language bothers me is that it's both clickbait and a part of the general project of drumming up excitement about the sciences f

One of the reasons this kind of language bothers me is that it's both clickbait and a part of the general project of drumming up excitement about the sciences for the usual reasons. And while I suppose this drumming up of support is a net good for the sciences, at least from the standpoint of future and practicing physicists, it is fairly unrelated to the significance of these kinds of discoveries. This kind of news has more in common with a breakthrough in advanced mathematics that gets far less "salivating"-type coverage than anything in physics ever will. In other words, while this news might cause some interesting talk around the water cooler about the exciting new way the universe might be operating, it's only because folks' imaginations have been stoked in a way that I think has to be admitted is a little bit disingenuous. Headlines like this contribute to that.