[8note]

We already have the best disruptive model that doesn't make good predictions: string theory.

There's not really a need to come up with these alternatives when we know string theory is powerful enough to do it, and only has one free parameter. That is, unless you can come up with a theory that had no free parameters.

These theories are fundamentally math models, and I don't find it likely that we'll determine that p = np by finding just the right np problem and exploring that on its own.

In the theory department, we're fine with what we've got. What we're missing is new experiements that can actually challenge our models. We've got a couple things to push on, sure { black hole singularities, dark matter, dark energy, wave function collapse, quantum gravity } but we don't have the tools to manipulate and observe them like we do for electromagnetism or chromodynamics

[joppy]

Does string theory only have one parameter? I was under the impression that you also had to insert some very complicated underlying geometry into spacetime (the extra dimensions), which I would count as more parameters.

[dj_mc_merlin]

You would be somewhat right, this is known as the landscape problem. Technically string theory has no free dimensionless parameters (by the formal definition, values which need to be determined experimentally).

edit: to expand, the landscape problem is more about finding the right parameters for compactification (folding up the geometry) that produce the universe we all know and love, or at least a realistic one. This makes them similar to free parameters.