My prediction is that the stagnation of physics will continue until the money and prestige has dropped to 1800s levels. Then, the only people who do it will be "true" in that they are motivated purely by curiosity. At that point the next set of breakthroughs will come around because all of the emotional and funding-treadmill induced blindspots that we have presently will be gone. Of course this is assuming that somehow the experiments can be kept up even through the funding decline.