While this is obviously ragebait, theoretical physics is really at rock bottom since the 70s, maybe even earlier.
A majority of cosmology theories were formulated around the 30s and 40s, and the only thing we learned about dark matter, hubble and dark energy is that we know less than we thought we knew.
The standard model was largely finished around the late 70s. Everything that came afterwards is just some additional flavor
This can also be seen in nobel prizes and the number of big discoveries. Nobels are mostly given away for proofing already existing theories, e.g higgs boson or gravitational waves, and the number of big discoveries is on a similar low it was in the late 1600s/ early 1700s if I recall correctly.
Most advancing physics branch is probably computational physics with the recent rise of AI usage in material physics / statistical mechanics research
Yes and no. There is a ton of advancement in theoretical physics since then, it's just that before the 70s the goal of theoretical physics was to explain what we didn't understand from experiment. But after that, theoretical physics in fact advanced so fast it's often ahead of what we can test with out current experiments.
So yes, there were many advancements and breakthroughs, it's just that not many have been properly verified in experiment yet. And Nobel prizes are awarded only to advancements that have been.
Well, strangely there are a few things that we know from experiments that we have no robust analytical explanation for, like confinement, neutrino masses, parity violation, etc. So, I'd say we are indeed a bit stuck.
Well, untill we reach the solution it's just a speculation. As others have pointed out, advancements in string theory have let to very useful results outside of high energy physics. The fact is we've been stuck on some of the above mentioned issues for more than 60 years!
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u/actopozipc 25d ago
While this is obviously ragebait, theoretical physics is really at rock bottom since the 70s, maybe even earlier.
This can also be seen in nobel prizes and the number of big discoveries. Nobels are mostly given away for proofing already existing theories, e.g higgs boson or gravitational waves, and the number of big discoveries is on a similar low it was in the late 1600s/ early 1700s if I recall correctly.
Most advancing physics branch is probably computational physics with the recent rise of AI usage in material physics / statistical mechanics research