oke, ehmm, do you know the game " warzone 2100 " ?
20 years old or so, but it has an enormous tech tree, BUT you only see like 2 tech when starting the game.
In this example, lets say tech 'gun', and tech 'concrete'.
when starting a new game and the first you do is research tech 'gun', only then a new one pops up, tech 'machine gun'.
If tech 'concrete' is the second you complete, then 3 new will pop up: tech 'wall', and tech 'guntower'.
But if you start a new game and first you do tech 'concrete', only one will pop up, namely tech 'wall'.
tech 'machinegun' stays invisible because you haven't done tech 'gun' yet.
This way you can do the weapon tree all like 'gun' -> 'machinegun' -> 'canon' -> 'mortar' -> 'rocket' -> and so forth, without ever seeing tech 'wall' or any wall-mounted hardpoints.
In this factorio mod this tech-tree named above will probably be visible like 'gun' -> 'machinegun' -> 'canon' and stop here because of the filter you created.
So therefor there are in fact researches visible which cannot be started right away.
After starting and beeing busy doing the research 'gun', also the research 'mortar' will show because in the eyes of the mod, enough pre-work has been done.
This way you can plan ahead the research tree in a general direction you want to do research, this way it will not be a surprise like opening a box and say, hmm, what have we found out now?
xD I hope you understand what I mean now?
I hope you know Warzone 2100 xD