I think you're seeing this in physics because, in terms of experimental accessibility, the low-hanging fruit are mostly picked. Most parts of the Standard Mode

I think you're seeing this in physics because, in terms of experimental accessibility, the low-hanging fruit are mostly picked. Most parts of the Standard Model are verified to 5σ at all energy levels that are accessible to us in everyday life and in contemporary particle accelerators, so it's increasingly unlikely that we've missed any obvious mechanisms. If we're going to find some completely new physics (in the same way that quantum theory and relativity theory were completely new at the turn of the 20th century), it's probably going to be at energy levels that contemporary particle accelerators cannot yet explore. EDIT: That's not to say that we know everything that is to know about the accessible energy levels. There's so much in our theory that's yet unexplained, e.g. for all I know, we still don't have any idea why time works the way it does.