Techno-Optimist #12
Updates on humanoid robots, fusion energy, and anti-aging progress, a company forges ahead with asteroid mining, LLMs create longer content, red blood cells get silica armor...and a whole lot more!
Welcome to the twelfth edition of Techno-Optimist, and hello to the 23 new readers looking for news and commentary on space, science, and technology without all the doomerism. This edition has reached a milestone, 501 subscribers! Thank you all for reading, your support is a real encouragement and it’s great to know so many people are enjoying this newsletter.
We’ve got a lot to cover today, so let’s dive in.
"The appropriate response to Decels of all kinds is to ignore and keep building."
–Guillaume Verdon (aka Beff Jezos)
Humanoid robot moving forward. We’re getting closer and closer to a Jetsons type future when it comes to robots. Chinese robotic company Agibot just unveiled not one, not two, but five commercial humanoid(ish) robots for home and industrial use; along with a roadmap for future development. It’s a pretty impressive lineup to be honest.
Boston Dynamics released a video of their new Atlas robot doing some pushups, which was pretty neat and highlighted its flexibility. However, it looks like they need to do something about its hands. It’s not going to be very useful without hands.
By far the most interesting of the lot this time is NEO, a very humanoid looking robot built by 1X. When I first saw this I thought there was about a 20% chance it was a guy in a robot suit, but as you can see in this longer video it’s definitely a robot in a cloth suit designed to make it appear less robotic and more human.
(@TheHumanoidHub) (@BostonDynamics) (@1x_tech)
Mini fusion update: A big issue for future fusion power plants are high energy neutrons, which are generated from the fusion reaction and can rapidly damage and degrade the vessel walls, necessitating costly repair or replacement. MIT engineers have found a way to reduce the problem by lining the reactor walls with ceramic nanoparticles to help absorb helium generated by the neutrons—aggregations of which can push open grain boundaries in the metal, eventually creating a crack.
In a nod to how good AI like Claude is getting, a university student with no hardware experience built a fusor in his bedroom with the AI talking him through the process [Sidebar: a fusor is a small device that does deuterium – deuterium fusion, but doesn’t generate net energy]. There were a few engineers who taught him things like how to solder and how not to get electrocuted, but still extremely impressive!
There’s an interesting article someone showed me last week about a private fusion company called Novatron, which plans to use a magnetic mirrors concept to achieve fusion. It’s worth a read. In a nutshell, Novatron’s machine will use “two large magnets to trap the plasma fuel within a strong magnetic field, bouncing them back and forth like a ball in a mirror-lined room.” This method has been tried before, and tends to have the drawbacks of short plasma confinement time, and plasma instabilities (the plasma tends to get out, making the reaction less efficient). But Novatron says they have a way around this that works well in simulations—I’m looking forward to seeing how it tests in a real world machine. (Interesting Engineering) (@hud_zah) (Interesting Engineering)
Antiaging progress. As I’ve said before, antiaging treatments are moving in the right direction—and the updates and advances just don’t seem to stop. Telomir Pharmaceuticals is currently running a study in dogs with their product, Telomir-1, “a novel small molecule designed to elongate telomeres…By modulating telomerase activity, Telomir-1 aims to reserve age related conditions, potentially extending healthy lifespan and improving the quality of life in both animals and humans.” Elsewhere, researchers have found that a common blood pressure drug called rilmenidine slows down aging; in worms and possibly mice anyways. It seems to mimic the benefits of calorie restriction, and if that translates to humans it could be an easy way to start us moving towards longevity escape velocity, where for every year that passes we’re adding more than one year to our expected lifespan.
Last but certainly not least, new results suggest that Ozempic—a now common drug used to treat Type 2 Diabetes and obesity—slows down aging. This is in addition to improving conditions as wide ranging as “heart failure, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, and even cancer.” The study found that people taking it died at a lower rate from all causes, an indication that both aging and age-related diseases are being ameliorated. Short explanation, maybe not being fat is a “cheat code” for living a longer, healthier life? This coming from a guy who could stand to lose about 30 pounds, so no judgement. By the way, I definitely called this back in Edition #10 when I asked “Have we checked to see if they [Ozempic & similar drugs] slow down aging? I bet they slow down aging.” (Neural NeXus) (Science Alert) (BBC)
Wow! probably wasn’t aliens, but still very cool. The ‘Wow!’ signal detected in 1977 at the Big Ear radio telescope had all the features we expected an alien transmission to have, including being “in a narrow wavelength range associated with neutral hydrogen atoms…SETI, had suggested this wavelength could be a natural calling frequency for alien civilizations.” The Wow! signal was never seen again, but researchers going through archived data from the Arecibo Observatory just found—very much to their surprise—a number of other signals that looked similar, only dimmer. The signals corresponded to cold clouds of hydrogen around our galaxy, all you’d need is a way to brighten them momentarily and you’d get a Wow!-like signal. The theory is that maybe a bright radio source could do it, an energetic burst from a magnetar would be about right. If you align a magnetar, a cold hydrogen cloud, and an observatory on Earth looking at the right time and place, you’d see it. Admittedly that’s a pretty lucky coincidence, but it could explain why the signal has only ever been seen once. (@ProfAbelMendez) (ScienceNews)
Space
Asteroid mining hasn’t taken off yet the way we were hoping, but American company AstroForge is forging ahead (pun intended) with plans to be “the first private mission to land on another body outside of the Earth-moon” system.” The company just raised $40 million, and has confirmed plans to launch its second and third missions—the first of those is planned before the end of this year, and will fly by and take pictures of the target asteroid (yet to be announced). AstroForge will target an M-type asteroid, which are metal rich, exactly what asteroid miners want. It’s third mission will fly in late 2025, and will revisit the target asteroid, preforming a more detailed survey, and using magnets to attach itself to the asteroid. (Ars Technica) (Forbes)
I learned something last week that blew my mind. Did you know what everything actually travels at the speed of light (c) through spacetime? Your speed, my speed, and the speed of every other object or particle in the universe is the sum of how fast they’re moving through the spatial and time dimensions of spacetime. According to Einstein’s theory of relatively those speeds always add up to exactly the speed of light. It’s one of the reasons you can’t travel faster than light, and also why time slows down so much as you approach c in space—because there’s very little speed left to move through time. (Big Think)
SpaceX has announced that it will provide Starlink as a free emergency service on mobile phones for people in distress anywhere in the world. It’s designed to provide service in dead zones with no cell reception, allowing emergency phone calls and alerts to be sent and received. It’s pretty incredible when you think about it, a lot of lives are going to be saved because of this. (@elonmusk)
Blue origin just set a record for launching the youngest woman so far into space—launching Karsen Kitchen, a 21 year old interning with Blue Origin, into space on August 29th on their eighth New Shepard launch with tourists aboard. The company previously launched 18 year old Oliver Daemen into space back in 2021—making him the youngest man to travel into space, and the first person born in the 21st century to make the trip. (@blueorigin) (Space.com)
NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System has now been fully deployed, unfurling to an area of roughly 860 square feet (80 square meters). The plan is to test its ability to maneuver in space around Earth, paving the way for future more ambitious missions. (@NASAAmes) (Space Daily)
First theorized over six decades ago, Earth’s electric field has finally been detected.
Called the ambipolar field, it was used to explain “a supersonic wind of particles escaping from Earth’s atmosphere” that was found by spacecraft flying over the poles. Data from a rocket launched back in 2022 was used to show that this ambipolar field has a strength of 0.55 volts, only about as strong a watch battery—which explains why it wasn’t discovered earlier. NASA has an excellent explanation of how the ambipolar field works here. (Science Alert) (NASA)
AI, Energy, Engineering, & Physics
One of the issues with LLMs so far is that they have trouble generating anything longer than about 2,000 words. Anything usefully coherent anyways. That just changed with LongWriter, a LLM developed by researchers at Tsinghua University in China that they say can generate useful output of up to 10,000 words—opening the door to “generate entire research papers, books, manuscripts, or perhaps even movie scripts.” (Interesting Engineering)
Using AI for translation is progressing in leaps and bounds. Here’s an almost 2 hour video Peter Diamandis translated into Portuguese using a program called HeyGen. I don’t speak Portuguese (anyone reading this who does want to comment on accuracy and quality?), but it looks pretty good, and it took him 10 minutes to do. That not the only news, ElevenLabs has just launched their Impact Program that “aims to empower 1 million voices through AI voice technology.” The plan is to use their technology to help people with ALS and Motor Neuron Disease keep their voices and ability to communicate. It works by patients providing recordings of their voice, which will be used to create a digital replica, allowing them to “speak” in their own voice. No more Stephen Hawking sounding computer generated voices! (@PeterDiamandis) (Peter H. Diamandis Blog) (ElevenLabs)
A plan has been laid that might be able to detect individual gravitons, particles thought to be the fundamental unit of gravity the way photons are for light. Stepping back slightly, gravitational waves were first detected in 2015, after being predicted in 1916 by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity [Sidenote: Einstein thought that gravitational waves would be forever undetectable due to technological limitations]. Gravitational waves are far easier to detect though than individual gravitons, and the technology needed to do it hasn’t quite been developed yet. It requires quantum-sensing technology slightly more advanced than what’s now available, hopefully this spurs development. (Phys.org)
Skyline Robotics has deployed their ‘Ozmo automatic window cleaning system,” robotic window cleaners that can clean windows on skyscrapers three times faster than humans can. These aren’t the first ever window cleaning robots, but they’re good enough now that commercial rollout could happen rapidly. The plan is to eventually automate the system entirely, but for now a human still operates the system, though from the safety of the ground instead of hundreds of feet in the air. (New Atlas)
I’ve talked about “forever chemicals,” or PFAS before; specifically how to break them down once they’re usefulness is done—preventing them from getting into the environment and our bodies. Canadian researchers have discovered a new way to trap and break them down, making it “possible to remove and destroy these substances in the water supply before they can harm our health.” To do it, they developed an iron oxide / graphemic carbon hybrid photocatalyst (that’s a mouthful) “and found that it trapped PFAS chemicals and broke them down into harmless components.” Just shine UV light on it, and up to 90% of the chemicals are eliminated within a few hours. (New Atlas)
Medicine
A breakthrough product called Traumagel used to “control moderate to severe bleeding in seconds” has just received approval. It’s meant to temporarily control bleeding when applied externally, a lifesaving innovation for the emergency room and battlefield medicine. Other products to stop or reduce bleeding from traumatic injuries exist, but either “require lengthy preparation or have extended application time.” This new gel comes in pre-filled syringes, is easy to apply, and works immediately. (Interesting Engineering)
Accelerated wound healing in mice has been achieved using a protein isolated from the guts of a parasitic roundworm, Heligmosomoides polygyrus. A topical application of the protein “accelerated the closure of skin wounds in mice…reduced the formation of scar tissue while enhancing skin regeneration.” Hopefully it works well in humans too. (SciTechDaily)
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest and hardest to treat. Researchers have created a new approach that could change that, using nanoparticles “to stimulate immune responses and improve drug delivery.” The lipid-based nanoparticles were very effective at delivering treatments into the tumor, and 8 out of 9 mice treated saw their tumors shrink—with 2 mice having theirs disappear entirely. (SciTechDaily)
An injectable pacemaker has been developed by Swedish scientists that is able to correct irregular heartbeats for 5 days in emergency situations before harmlessly dissolving. It works by injecting nanoparticles into the body, which then forms a patch of electricity conducting polymers around part of the heart. It needs to be powered and controlled externally, but a phone is more than adequate apparently. Animal tests are ongoing. (Interesting Engineering)
Chinese scientists have given red blood cells a “coat of silica armor” similar to the inorganic shell diatoms (a kind of plankton) create. Blood and a silicification reagent are mixed, and “at the molecular level, the silica compounds bind to the surface of the blood cells and then reacts with adjacent cell surface proteins, which cause the silica to cluster and condense at low temperatures, creating a continuous shell.” The result is almost 100% protection of the cells against the stresses of freezing or long-term storage, as well as transfusion. Despite their silica armor, the red blood cells were able to carry out their normal functions. An unexpected but beneficial ‘side effect’ of the procedure was antigenic shielding—in other words, they created universal donor blood with no incompatibility problems. It even worked cross species. Development is ongoing, but the scientists say it’s not complicated. “As easy to make as a dry martini” according to lead researcher Wei Zhu. (Advanced Science News)
Biotech & Agriculture
Cultivated (lab grown) meat is about to get cheaper with a new process that allows for the meat to be grown continuously instead of in sequential batches. The theoretical price for chicken made this way would still be $6.20/pound, but costs are heading in the right direction. While lab grown meat might not be for everyone, I see it as a great development that we’ll benefit from when we start living off world. It’s unlikely there will be cows or chicken on Mars anytime soon. (Tech Explorist)
Weird & Wonderful
Why are some people more attractive to mosquitoes than others? Researchers just published an article in Nature showing that “mosquitoes use three signals to pick their hosts: CO2 from breath, human odour, and the infrared radiation emitted by skin.” Their use of infrared radiation was found to be critical in combination with the other cues in order to “home in on humans from mid-range distance in varied and dynamic environments.” (Nature) (@SamuelBHume)
Matching dinosaur footprints have been found in Africa and South America, now two different continents that were joined back in the early Cretaceous. "We determined that in terms of age, these footprints were similar…In their geological and plate tectonic contexts, they were also similar. In terms of their shapes, they are almost identical." It’s a pretty neat thought that dinosaur footprints created in one place now exist thousands of miles apart. (SMU)
Does this fit in my newsletter? I'm going to say yes, because it's hilarious. The German warship FGS Braunschweig floated up the Thames in England as part of a training mission recently while blaring “The Imperial March (Darth Vader theme) from Star Wars. Who said that Germans don’t have a sense of humor? (Ars Technica)
Photos & Videos
A beautiful image of NGC 1333, a star forming region 960 light years away—relatively close to us. Taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, it shows a number of young stars, but also objects ranging in size from brown dwarfs all the way down to planetary masses. (@NASAWebb)
JUICE (the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) just did a flyby of the Earth and Moon, passing through the Van Allen radiation belts to help test the probe’s systems, and taking some incredible images along the way. Check out the timelapse above as it passes by the Moon and then Earth. (ESA)
The CHARA telescope array has just imaged the surface of Polaris, the north star, providing us a closeup look at the star mariners have used to navigate by for centuries. (@coreyspowell)
Andrew McCarthy is doing these incredible daily astronomy picture shares optimized as wallpaper for your phone. All his own pictures, many are absolutely stunning. (@AJamesMcCarthy)
Saturn rising from behind the Moon. (@tw_astro)
An incredible video of an M5 class solar flare on September 1st (click on the picture to see the video). (@RyanJFrench)
SpaceX now has a second launch tower ready to go at Starbase down in Texas. This is how you make civilization multiplanetary. (@SpaceX) (@daily_hopper)
Springtails are small insects commonly found in leaf litter, but they have a superpower—doing backflips in 1.7 miliseconds, and reaching heights up to 2.4 inches and distances up to 4 inches from their starting point. It’s equivalent to a human jumping 230 feet (70m) into the air and traveling 380 feet (116m), all while doing several hundred backflips. (New Atlas) (Ant Labs)
Recommendations & Reviews
I recently finished reading Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesian, by Christina Thompson. Excellent book, I'd highly recommend it. The Polynesians exemplified toughness combined with an attitude of extreme curiosity and a desire to explore and sail out into the unknown. We need more of that mindset as we set sail beyond the borders of our world, and start to settle on new ones. It’s also a great look at the history of the Polynesian people, how they settled their islands, and how we know. An engaging and informative read, exactly what a history book should be, though it's arguably broader than that in its genre.
As an interesting side note, it’s probably the best description I’ve read of what discovery means when there are already people living somewhere. Not "discovered for the first time in human history," but more like "made known to people outside the region for the first time." (@is_OwenLewis)
That’s all for today, but keep an eye on your inbox because next Saturday I’ll be republishing an article I wrote a while back on Mars colonization, which I still believe is one of the most important things our civilisation can do. Thank you all for reading—and until next time, keep your eyes on the horizon.
-Owen
Great roundup as usual. I can concur, in my experience Germans do indeed have a sense of humour, and a very dry one at that.
Great summary, as usual. Thanks for putting this together!