We’re one small species on one small planet, and we’ve still worked out black holes and read a founding father’s DNA. But our reach has limits: we can’t ban our way out of every problem, outrun a warming world or fully control what we build. This week #TheEdit asks what becomes possible once we stop pretending otherwise.

• What is humanity’s place in the cosmos? With one “cantaloupe-sized gelatinous organ” we worked out black holes. Astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan talks to David Brooks about wonder, smallness and the questions science can’t answer – The Atlantic
• The big threat has been climate change. Now comes AI. One threat is hypothetical and the other is “killing people now”. Both are man-made, both are hard to predict, and in both cases, scientists warn we can lose control – The New York Times
• Superpowers cannot solve the world’s problems. In his final address to the General Assembly, António Guterres called for curbs on AI, an end to wars and “a world built on interdependence” – The Guardian
• The lost descendants of Thomas Jefferson. America’s longest-running paternity dispute may finally be over. A Smithsonian scholar spent 15 years sequencing Thomas Jefferson’s genome, and his findings reopen every contradiction in who Americans take themselves to be – The New Yorker
• How to survive at the edge of chaos. Emergency physician Kevin Fong has worked on air ambulances, at NASA and on NHS England’s pandemic response. He explains why human ingenuity is the best asset any group has in a crisis – Babbage from The Economist  
• Teen social media bans miss the point. Bans are failing wherever they’re tried. Cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito reads that as “evidence of a misdiagnosis”, given that over half of teens turn to social media for emotional support – The MIT Press Reader  
• Why understanding limits is the key to humanity’s future. We’ve spent a century acting as if boundaries no longer exist. Richard Heinberg argues limits are what let systems work at all, from the subatomic realm all the way up to galaxy clusters – The Beautiful Truth