My dad feels like high-energy particle physics today is akin to ramming sixteen vehicles together at near supersonic speeds, then looking at the broken pieces and trying to figure out how the screws, nuts and sparkplugs that fell out on the highway make the truck work.
But they don’t know if it was two trucks, two 737’s, or two VW bugs that actually collided each time.
My TEA (Theory Explaining All) is that someone's Universe Kit exploded. And yet, in some other dimension, kids are still given Universe Kits. They're said to be educational.
Good analogy. The one that stuck with me was the description of high energy particle physics as smashing two pocket watches together at high speed in order to figure out how they worked.