If you haven’t come across it yet , the “why” of Julia was written about at its first release: Why we created Julia.
It’s not only feasible, its currently being done! The prime example is the SciML ecosystem that powers all kinds of research using all the attributes you mention.
I think this is where there can be misunderstandings, in part because of all the things that Julia allows. Writing fast code in Julia is can be very easy for beginners with very little low-level fiddling simply by following the performance tips, which themselves are mostly beginner level (don’t use globals, write functions, etc.). Writing the fastest code can be hard and low-level, and a true beginner probably should not expect their first ever Julia algorithm to beat an optimized C library.
If you have the time (and the energy!) to read the “popularity” mega-thread, some of the questions you asked are discussed, but mabye not answered…
Another recent statement on goals is for Julia to be able to be the last language someone needs to learn. And this is indeed possible because of Julia’s flexibility.
In the end though, @algunion is spot on with “enjoy the language”, join in the Discourse community discussions, and the rest will take care of itself.