Comment by bmgxyz

> 25 years ago it seemed like physics was mostly complete, and the only remaining work was exploring the corner cases and polishing out all the imperfections. It doesn't feel that way anymore!

Physicists thought the same thing c. 1900, but then one of the "corner cases" turned into the ultraviolet catastrophe[1]. The consequences of the solution to that problem kept the whole field busy for a good part of the 20th century.

I'm highly skeptical of the idea that physics is anywhere near complete. The relative success of our technology gives us the illusory impression that we're almost done, but it's not obvious that physics even has a single, complete description that we can describe. We assume it does for convenience, in the same way that we assume the laws are constant everywhere in spacetime. I view this as both exciting and terrifying, but mostly exciting.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_catastrophe