To be honest, you can't know exactly where you are going to find things. I think the rapid discoveries that particle physics were known for within the last centuries maybe are the limits of our current technology. It is not that we lack the ideas, it maybe that we have squeezed the remaining bits of hanging fruits left.
When considering how vacuum tubes were used for a lot of discoveries in physics (nuclear physics in particular) and compare it with the technologies we had to use for things after that you will find a huge gap. Maybe we are pushing the limits of our current technology but the problem is that we don't know. If we know then it wouldn't be research. The only way to find out if something is going to work is at least do R&D work and design a plan and maybe execute it. In the current scheme this is expensive projects. Although if you divide the cost per personnel you will find that it is comparable to other fields.
Lets not talk about how the R&D benefit whole industries because this is a cliche by now (although it is a valid argument in itself). But the only way to advance is to try new things. When people actually say a crisis in particle physics, they usually mean in terms that we did not discover the whole big new thing. But each day we gain more understanding on details of standard model and how interactions work. These things are not sexy enough to be reported by the mainstream media. I post some of these on HN and rarely they get any traction and I get why. It is usually hard to explain and very specialized. But this is not excuse for people to claim that we are not advancing.
When considering how vacuum tubes were used for a lot of discoveries in physics (nuclear physics in particular) and compare it with the technologies we had to use for things after that you will find a huge gap. Maybe we are pushing the limits of our current technology but the problem is that we don't know. If we know then it wouldn't be research. The only way to find out if something is going to work is at least do R&D work and design a plan and maybe execute it. In the current scheme this is expensive projects. Although if you divide the cost per personnel you will find that it is comparable to other fields.
Lets not talk about how the R&D benefit whole industries because this is a cliche by now (although it is a valid argument in itself). But the only way to advance is to try new things. When people actually say a crisis in particle physics, they usually mean in terms that we did not discover the whole big new thing. But each day we gain more understanding on details of standard model and how interactions work. These things are not sexy enough to be reported by the mainstream media. I post some of these on HN and rarely they get any traction and I get why. It is usually hard to explain and very specialized. But this is not excuse for people to claim that we are not advancing.