What tech learned from Daedalus
Today’s climate-change kraken may have been unleashed by human activity—which has discharged greenhouse-gas emissions into Earth’s atmosphere for centuries—but reversing course and taming nature’s growing fury seems beyond human means, a quest only mythical heroes could fulfill. Yet the dream of human-powered flight—of rising over the Mediterranean fueled merely by the strength of mortal limbs—was…
“I wanted to work on something that didn’t exist”
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In 2017 Polina Anikeeva, PhD ’09, was invited to a conference in the Netherlands to give a talk about magnetic technologies that she and her team had developed at MIT and how they might be used for deep brain stimulation to treat Parkinson’s disease. After sitting through a long day of lectures, she was struck…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/23/1090201/i-wanted-to-work-on-something-that-didnt-exist/
This solar giant is moving manufacturing back to the US
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Whenever you see a solar panel, most parts of it probably come from China. The US invented the technology and once dominated its production, but over the past two decades, government subsidies and low costs in China have led most of the solar manufacturing supply chain to be concentrated there. The country will soon be…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/23/1091665/canadian-solar-ira-manufacturing-us/
The Download: the future of geoengineering, and how to make stronger, lighter materials
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Why new proposals to restrict geoengineering are misguided —Daniele Visioni is a climate scientist and assistant professor at Cornell University The public debate over whether we should consider intentionally altering the climate system…
Why new proposals to restrict geoengineering are misguided
The public debate over whether we should consider intentionally altering the climate system is heating up, as the dangers of climate instability rise and more groups look to study technologies that could cool the planet. Such interventions, commonly known as solar geoengineering, may include releasing sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere to cast away more sunlight,…
This architect is cutting up materials to make them stronger and lighter
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As a child, Emily Baker loved to make paper versions of things: cameras, a spaceship cockpit, buildings for a town in outer space. It was a habit that stuck. Years later, studying architecture in graduate school at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, she was playing around with some paper and scissors. It was…
A Grammy for Miguel Zenón
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Nobel Prizes and other scientific honors are nearly routine at MIT, but a Grammy Award is something we don’t see every year. That’s what Miguel Zenón, an assistant professor of music and theater arts, has won: El Arte Del Bolero Vol. 2, which he recorded with the pianist and composer Luis Perdomo, received the Grammy…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/22/1090436/a-grammy-for-miguel-zenon/
The Download: saving seals with artificial snow, and AI’s effects on politics
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. These artificial snowdrifts protect seal pups from climate change For millennia, during Finland’s blistering winters, wind drove snow into meters-high snowbanks along Lake Saimaa’s shoreline, offering prime real estate from which seals carved…
These artificial snowdrifts protect seal pups from climate change
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Just before 10 a.m., hydrobiologist Jari Ilmonen and his team of six step out across a flat, half-mile-wide disk of snow and ice. For half the year this vast clearing is open water, the tip of one arm of the labyrinthine Lake Saimaa, Finland’s biggest lake, which reaches almost to Russia’s western border. As each…
The Download: Neuralink’s biggest rivals, and the case for phasing out the term “user”
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Beyond Neuralink: Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces In the world of brain-computer interfaces, it can seem as if one company sucks up all the oxygen in the room. Last month, Neuralink…
Beyond Neuralink: Meet the other companies developing brain-computer interfaces
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. In the world of brain-computer interfaces, it can seem as if one company sucks up all the oxygen in the room. Last month, Neuralink posted a video to…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/19/1091505/companies-brain-computer-interfaces/
It’s time to retire the term “user”
Every Friday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri speaks to the people. He has made a habit of hosting weekly “ask me anything” sessions on Instagram, in which followers send him questions about the app, its parent company Meta, and his own (extremely public-facing) job. When I started watching these AMA videos years ago, I liked them.…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/19/1090872/ai-users-people-terms/
Three ways the US could help universities compete with tech companies on AI innovation
The ongoing revolution in artificial intelligence has the potential to dramatically improve our lives—from the way we work to what we do to stay healthy. Yet ensuring that America and other democracies can help shape the trajectory of this technology requires going beyond the tech development taking place at private companies. Research at universities drove…
The Download: American’s hydrogen train experiment, and why we need boring robots
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology Hydrogen trains could revolutionize how Americans get around Like a mirage speeding across the dusty desert outside Pueblo, Colorado, the first hydrogen-fuel-cell passenger train in the United States is getting warmed up on…
How to build a thermal battery
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This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The votes have been tallied, and the results are in. The winner of the 11th Breakthrough Technology, 2024 edition, is … drumroll please … thermal batteries! While the editors of MIT Technology…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/18/1091481/how-to-build-a-thermal-battery/
Hydrogen trains could revolutionize how Americans get around
Like a mirage speeding across the dusty desert outside Pueblo, Colorado, the first hydrogen-fuel-cell passenger train in the United States is getting warmed up on its test track. Made by the Swiss manufacturer Stadler and known as the FLIRT (for “Fast Light Intercity and Regional Train”), it will soon be shipped to Southern California, where…
Researchers taught robots to run. Now they’re teaching them to walk
We’ve all seen videos over the past few years demonstrating how agile humanoid robots have become, running and jumping with ease. We’re no longer surprised by this kind of agility—in fact, we’ve grown to expect it. The problem is, these shiny demos lack real-world applications. When it comes to creating robots that are useful and…
The Download: commercializing space, and China’s chip self-sufficiency efforts
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology The great commercial takeover of low-Earth orbit NASA designed the International Space Station to fly for 20 years. It has lasted six years longer than that, though it is showing its age, and…
Why it’s so hard for China’s chip industry to become self-sufficient
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. I don’t know about you, but I only learned last week that there’s something connecting MSG and computer chips. Inside most laptop and data center chips today, there’s a tiny component called…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/17/1091441/china-chip-material-japan-abf/
The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit
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Washington, DC, was hot and humid on June 23, 1993, but no one was sweating more than Daniel Goldin, the administrator of NASA. Standing outside the House chamber, he watched nervously as votes registered on the electronic tally board. The space station wasn’t going to make it. The United States had spent more than $11…