So, physics is a dead-end? Given that Scott is running his own research lab, a year is a very long time and him working out of his field is an indication that physics is in a big trouble.
I am confused, how did you reach that conclusion? How does this announcement relate to the future of physics research? Sure, Scott's research is at the intersection of complexity and physics, but he is a CS professor at Texas working in the theoretical computer science department. His work leans far more towards TCS, with some work having connections to cosmology (he cares about physical limits of the universe and the information theory of things like black holes) and other interesting ideas from physics. But the main themes of his work have been quantum algorithms and complexity for a while. He's also nowhere near the experimental side of physics.
The original doesn't say "10-15 meters" but ten to the power of negative fifteen meters, so his guess was off from the Bohr radius of 5.3E-11 in the other direction but by much fewer orders of magnitude than as rendered above.