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by FredWFlintstone 2157 days ago
Kinda makes me sad how all groundbreaking & perhaps low-hanging fruits of the fundamental sciences seem already picked. Sure, working on optimization and the layers of abstraction has its importance but man it would have been crazy for the first radio transmission or the caffeine discovery. I hope miniaturized quantum sensing would be it for our generation.
3 comments

Well, its all relative.

Today's technology makes it easier to analyze and discover causative agents very easily for such issues (consider how quickly we were able to identify, sequence the current coronavirus... a virus!). The harder problems lie at the edge of where our current instrumentation is able to take us.

In the article, it took several years to identify the agent that prevented blood clots, today it would take days. But there are other things that take as long because we don't yet have the technology yet.

So at every stage in humanity, the "low hanging fruits" are so only in retrospect. For the people in 1920's, this problem was definitely not low hanging : )

I get your point, but in this case (medicine/health) we should be happy! Sucks dying from a finger infection
Don't forget... during the age of enlightenment, it was commonly assumed that everything knowable was known.