The biggest restraint on discoveries is that research is only where the money is. There is a lot of Cancer research because that is where the money is.
I am only tangentially associated with research grants. While great leeway
is offered there are few grants for pure research. The discoveries made along the way come from data that doesn't fit and is unexpected. Other times scientists
have to reverse engineer into the future to get to a needed result that did not exist before almost like star trek sci-fi. The mysteries are fun to me so I can fill them with my dreams.
The scientist is bound to the data alone and has to restrain themselves from conclusions. Another barrier to discovery besides money is a compartmentalization
that keeps more remarkable findings away from the public and scientific sectors.
There are other political barriers to research. A government shutdown can wipe out a 10 year project by interrupting a process in health and life sciences.
What a waste. Agreeing on language and definitions are also barriers. There are 40 or 50 definitions of life. Intelligence has many more definitions
There are sociological barriers regarding shaming a scientist for going in a atypical direction. THOSE that ignore that social shaming by exploring beyond the
status quo do well and often lead to new companies offering new services, processes, and materials. The social shamers are practically a cult.
REMOVING these barriers is not likely but I do imagine what may have advanced without such barriers. Like a dream of a technocrat, this imagined utopia has
no limits.
I have no contact with astronomical or physics research but I have become aware of the greatest successes and failures. One failure was the Antarctic
observatory for exploring the early inflation of the universe. They don't talk about that one but we all know about The Webb and the LHC.
.