'Few advancements? Dark mater/energy (assuming that it even exists) wasn't even theoretical 50 years ago, the presiding theories of the day said that the universe was slowing (current theories say it is accelerating), the Higgs Boson (still not proven) was just beginning to be theorized'
and neither of those resulted in any technology at all. And you're wrong about dark matter. It was hypothesized 80 years ago to explain orbital velocities of stars in the galaxy and confirmed by more recent and precise measurements.
'and I don't know if it qualifies as physics but it was assumed that the solar system was swept clean of asteroids millions of years ago, then Shoemaker-Levy Nine slammed into Jupiter, the resulting search eventually led to the discover of tens of thousands of asteroids and a number of "dwarf planet".'
I know, and it doesn't qualify as basic physics that would alter our understanding of what is and isn't possible, nor is it possible to base any technology on those facts.
Everything science has discovered over the last 80 years has led to the same conclusion: faster than light travel is almost certainly impossible in practical terms. The only thing that holds out any hope at all is the fact that superluminal expansion seems to have happened in the first 10^-32 sec of the universe's existence. As far as we can know, it hasn't happened since.