Now they can be solved, allowing physicists to better understand the theory and how it might hook up to the real world.

This allowed physicists to explore what the Newtonian limit meant in specific physical situations.

Such as: why have we spent billions on the Large Hadron Collider, allowing physicists to smash small things into each other?

Quantum mechanics allowed physicists to make some empirical tests of our general sense that the universe must be local and real.

Detecting neutrino interactions after this long journey would allow physicists to measure the rate at which neutrinos oscillate, changing from one kind into another.

This experimental confirmation of theory allowed physicists to proceed with confidence in developing what is now called the Standard Model theory of matter.

That confirmation allowed physicists to proceed confidently with developing what is known as the standard model theory of matter.

General relativity unifies special relativity with Newton's law of universal gravitation, allowing physicists to handle gravitation at a deeper level.

In 1925, the concept of spin had allowed physicists to explain the Zeeman effect, but it also created unexplained anomalies.

The tiny quantity of Element 106 decayed radioactively in less than a second, but the debris produced by its decay allowed physicists to identify it.