It's a paradox of science: How is it that researchers keep achieving the impossible while leaving seemingly simple tasks incomplete? As astronomer Martin Rees put it in a recent essay in The Atlantic, scientists can detect two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, and yet they've learned very little about how to treat the common cold.
Rees offers that it's partly a matter of scale: Phenomena on the astronomical scale of stars and the tiny scale of atoms unfold in predictable ways, while the complexity of the world in between keeps us guessing as to what will happen next. This has historically been the case. Long before people understood that germs existed, they could predict the motions of the stars and planets and use them for navigation.
But that's just part of the story. Common misunderstandings can also distort our ability to differentiate the easy tasks from difficult or impossible ones.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.