Not always, research only needs to continue until the goal has been realized, then it can cease.
A particular research may stop, if they meet the specifications…but sciences are never done, as there are always more to be learned, so there are often more researches even when one research ceased.
Take for instance, medicine, like research into virus of how they infect, the symptoms they cause, and then there are the researches into the development of treatment and development of preventative measures - the vaccine.
The thing is viruses can change - viruses can mutate into new variant or strain - which would make either the treatment and vaccine be resistant or immune to the treatment/vaccine. So a new research must start up to counter the new infections, and develop new cure & vaccine to treat or stop new strain.
The researches on study of flu viruses and the respective treatments & vaccines have been ongoing for decades. New researches are needed, just about every year, to treat the another new strain of flu virus.
Then COVID hit, and we have new problems on top of annual problems with flu viruses.
And here is the thing, the treatments and vaccines don’t always work for certain groups of the population. It is effective medicine some populations but not effective for other.
The sciences must continue…even when a particular research have stopped.
That the same with just about every fields of physical sciences and natural sciences.
Isaac Newton did wonders in mechanics (motion, forces & gravity), in astronomy and in maths (more specifically calculus), and each ones have various applications in different fields, including technology.
He was ahead of his time, but each one of these, they are approximate solutions, and incomplete.
Then in early 20th century, Albert Einstein provide new solutions - more accurate explanations and another way of looking at the mechanics to Newton’s law of motion and forces (
Special Relativity, 1905, eg spacetime continuum, the effect of something approaching the speed of light would cause time dilation, the relationship between mass and energy (the mass-energy equivalence equation), and so on) and the law of forces, particularly in connection with gravity (
General Relativity, 1915, eg gravity is the curvature of spacetime).
While General Relativity is the current standard, many physicists including Einstein himself, have tried to unify this with Quantum Mechanics, into a single theory. The unification of two different mechanics have been un successful to this day, yet theoretical physicists are pursuing there are particle associated with gravity - the so-called quantum gravity.
So the search the unified theory to the 4 fundamental forces continue. Some thought String Theory was the answer, but it turn out to be white whale, as String Theory became increasingly complex (26 dimensions have been narrowed down to 11 dimensions), and unworkable and untestable in reality.
The theory of Evolution has undergone many changes in the 165 years, since Darwin introduced Natural Selection in 1859 with On Origin Of Species, including unifying with genetics in the Modern Synthesis, the inclusion of other mechanisms - Mutations, Genetic Drift, Gene Flow & Genetic Hitchhiking, the improvement of methodology in testing DNA, and so on.
And it is the same with Physical Sciences, where they continue to advance forward, like in engineering and in technology…there are always rooms for improvement.
Sciences will always be ongoing. Sometimes they get corrected and updated, sometimes they add to the theory with something new, and sometimes they get replaced by better tested alternatives.
So yes and no to research may stop, but more often than not, new researches take its place. I have yet to see a single theory that answer everything, and they should stop…without needing new research.
