askchapo

You're right to be sceptical and again right to point out, that the distinction between theoretical and experimental physics is unique among the sciences. There's a good reason and a bad reason. The good reason is, that physics needs so much math, that math can't always keep up. Theoretical physics sometimes delivers the math to experimental physics that's needed to model real experimental findings.

The bad reason is that some fields of physics, like particle physics, have been stagnating for about fifty years. Many important experiments have been done since than, but they only confirmed the standard model and didn't produce any big surprises. And for what open questions exist, theoretical physics didn't produce any new models or theories that could be tested in praxis (or mostly even in principle). That's the second reason why theoretical physics split from experimental physics. The models in development diverged from the models in use and the two stopped being linked by experimental results.

However, that's only true for some subfields (particle physics and foundations). In quantum computing, quantum mechanics, solid state physics, cosmology, fluid mechanics and other fields, theory and experiment continue to work hand in hand and produce amazing results. And even in particle physics, things are not that black and white and new ideas are being tried out.