Sometimes scientists get stuck in a problem and have no choice but to use their creativity to imagine concepts that justify their theories, although they call it theoretical physics that sounds better.
In 1869 Dmitri Mendeleev had the 'inspiration' of creating a farsighted version of the periodic table of elements leaving gaps for some elements still unknown but of predictable properties. He was lucky and when they were discovered, between 1874 and 1886, he became a hero.
In 1930 Wolfgang Pauli 'invented' a particle called Neutrino as a desperate remedy to explain an incomprehensible phenomenon named Beta disintegration, knowing that perhaps its existence could never be experimentally proven. But he got lucky and the Neutrino was officially discovered in 1956.
In 1984 a physicist of the Berkeley University named Richard Mueller imagined the existence of Nemesis, a dark star orbiting at 16,000,000,000 kilometers around the Sun, to explain certain orbital alterations experienced by Uranus and Neptune. But so far, he has not had any luck.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, science became stuck again because the established paradigm of the Standard Model of Particle Physics was unable to explain the Dark Matter, the Dark Energy, the Gravitational Quantum State, and the Cosmological Constant phenomena. The theoretical physicists have been formulating models on the String Theory that are impossible to demonstrate because this would require amounts of energy that exceed the available technology.
Science or faith?
In 2018 Sabine Hossenfelder of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, published the book ‘Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray’. Sabine argues that the theoretical physicists have lost the North. We have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades. Paucity of major advances in fundamental physics is partly due to an overemphasis on aesthetic criteria such as symmetry and mathematical beauty, in the face of their inability to overcome the new challenges posed to science.
In 1453, while the Turks shelled the walls of Constantinople with 1,054 mm heavy artillery, Byzantine theologians were debating the sex of angels instead of defending the fortress. They ended badly.
Science Fiction writers have 'solved' the issue by imagining a subspace driver using Faster Than Light (FTL) technology, something that violates Einstein's established paradigm. Everyone knows this is impossible, but my neural network by defect tells me it will finally be built by someone who did not know it... or we will stay here until the Sun freezes!
The FTL hypothesis starts out from the assumption that technological progress has no upper limit. But we must consider the possibility that the human mind be incapable of solving the problem. Nor can we lift a ton of weight, fly, run at 100 mph, breath underwater, or see Uranus, the heat, or the bacteria... but we have found a way to build machines that do it for us.
Maybe Artificial Intelligence will uncover the secrets of the FTL.
Interstellar travel will only stop being a utopia when the theoretical physicists became desperate to consider all the time lost in the face of a barrier that had been existing only in their own minds.
If they are unable to develop a new Physics, they will end up being replaced by an Artificial Intelligence that does not respect the established paradigm.