If the pattern Kuhn shows in The Structure of a Scientific Revolution holds, one might presume at some time a crisis will emerge which will influence the development of higher resolution tools and techniques and with them more evidence. The "nightmare" seems like exactly what is outlined as a predictable error in the model - it'll be interesting to see what happens.
I don't think that's what the book says, just that solving problems with the new framework is what makes it popular enough with the next generation.
More specificity or higher resolution is not implied, though it can happen after the paradigm has shifted as a new set of niches are waiting to be explored and filled.
I do believe that's precisely what it says: science adopts a new paradigm with a comprehensive view which predicts most cases, at some point the threshold is reached through normal science where a model falls apart, failing to predict given effects, and probity for answers surrounding that requires new tools (or techniques), which are developed to study the "unpredicted" effects mentioned above and a more comprehensive understanding is developed. At this point there may be a challenge to the paradigm, which yes, may be overturned upon favorable comportment.
See phlogiston. If we fairly assume that measurements are multidimensional and thus techniques to observe new dimensions can be conferred to have increased resolution...
But I'd absolutely concede that I may have misread. But I do believe Kuhn was fairly explicit in detailing this process. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I think your reading is about right, though I'm not sure about your application of it to the current situation. The "crisis" being discussed today in physics is quite different from the ones Kuhn describes--in some ways it is the opposite situation. For Kuhn, as you note, the crisis comes when existing theoretical models prove completely inadequate to make sense of new data, so the old model has to be largely thrown out and a new paradigm built in its place.
Today's crisis in physics (if that's what it is) seems to be that, even though our existing model seems incomplete for theoretical reasons (lack of harmonization between models, for example), it continues to fit all the empirical data we have been able to generate. Really, we are hoping to stumble upon a new paradigm, but we can't seem to make it happen.
