Theoretical overhang

When preliminary work based on theoretical understanding accumulates (See "exploratory engineering")
while physical development cannot keep up for a longer period of time,
it can lead to a sort of "theoretical overhang".

Such a built up theoretical overhang may accelerate progress
once a critical level of physically implemented technology is reached and pursued.

Depending on:

• how much of a theoretical overhang has accumulated
• the overlap of this theoretical overhang with practical capabilities attained earliest
• how much of discoveries/insights are relevant and actually part of that theoretical overhang
• how eager/aggressively the relevant technologies are pushed

The point when the theoretical overhang comes "crashing down"
might resemble either a conspicuous massive dam-break or just an unnoticeable trickle.

Reluctance of moving to development

• ...

Examples

All of exploratory engineering.
Especially the backward pointing parts that are worked out in more detail (in an absolute sense).

Theoretical overhang in crystolecule design

One specific example for a potential "theoretical overhang" is preliminary crystolecule design.

Till now (2017) very few crystolecules have been designed and tested by simulation. The motivation for their creation was mainly to have a few prototypical examples of specific classes of crystolecules. (bearings, gears, geartrains, differentials & planetaries, pumps, sorting devices, manipulators, ...) This was desired for an establishment the most important isolated corner spots of feasibility. Having designed and tested crystolecules on some important corner spots of design space allows one to deduce the feasibility of all the many other not yet designed crystolecules that lie in the space that is spanned open by interpolation in-between those corner spots (an abstract convex hull).
See: Convex hull crystolecule design-space stakeout

It's rather unlikely that any of these few already modeled crystolecules will be produced in large quantities for practical use, So this isn't much of a theoretical overhang yet. It's extremely likely though that crystolecules that lie inside the convex hull spanned by the already designed crystolecules will be used in high quantities for practical purposes.

When not aiming at hull spanning corner points in design space, crystolecule design stretches the "do not get to detailed" rule of exploratory engineering quite a bit. Thus to have at least some chance to design at least some parts that will be massively used in a form that is mostly identical to the original designe, very large libraries would need to be created. (The simplest classes of crystolecules (e.g. bearings) are the most likely to be usable as is).

Crystolecules are graphically pleasing and their simulations interesting to watch and interact with. Thus one suggestion to create economic incentive for crystolecule design that came up in the past was gameification. But this has not happened as of yet (2017).
(Related: General software issues)

Related

A theoretical overhang is one of the "development accelerating factors"
Another one is productive nanosystems being products of productive nanosystems themselves
thus unlike in microchip technology (which already grows in a geometrically way)
the production facilities eventually get cheaper instead of more expensive.
That sets in very late in the game though.

• Crystolecules & Design of crystolecules
• Future-backward development
• Present-forward Future-backward overlap

External links

• Video featuring John Storrs (Josh) Hall [1] "left foot theoretical overhang"
  (left foot representing science research and theoretical modeling here)