Isn't it the mathematics that is lagging? Amplituhedron? Higher dimensional models?
Fun fact: I got to read the thesis of one my uncles who was a young professor back in the 90's. Right when they were discovering bosons. They were already modelling them as tensors back then. And probably multilinear transformations.
Now that I am grown I can understand a little more, I was about 10 years old back then. I had no idea he was studying and teaching the state of the art. xD