You never know where the next breakthrough will come from, but clearly some places are more likely and some less. In this case I guess something that could happ

You never know where the next breakthrough will come from, but clearly some places are more likely and some less. In this case I guess something that could happen is that theories predict the element will last for say 1 femtosecond but experiments show it only lasts for 0.95 femtoseconds, and then the disparity helps shed light on quantum chromodynamics or something.