Techno-Optimist #13
Polaris Dawn mission, Elon Musk announces humans to Mars this decade, some news from Easter Island that will make the decels mad, AI leaps forward with protein design...and a whole lot more!
Welcome to the thirteenth edition of Techno-Optimist, your destination for all the latest updates and commentary on space, science, technology, medicine, energy, AI, and much more. To the 88 (!) new readers since last time, welcome aboard.
What did everyone think of last week’s article on colonizing Mars? It’s continuing to generate some great discussion, let’s keep it up!
Next Saturday, I’ll be sending out a sponsored post, the first ad that I’ve had here at Techno-Optimist. I’ve noticed that other newsletters on Substack more often have in-article / native ads, so when it comes out I’d like your thoughts on whether sponsored posts are an okay format, or whether ads should be in-article going forward.
I always say that we’ve got a lot to cover today, but there really is a ton this time—so strap on your mental diving gear and let’s jump in.
“There’s a way to do it better. Find it.”
–Thomas Edison
Polaris Dawn. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we just saw a historic space mission take place. Polaris Dawn launched on September 10th, and returned safely to Earth on September 15th; it was a commercial spaceflight collaboration between the Polaris Program—the first of three missions—and SpaceX. Polaris Dawn was sponsored and led by veteran private astronaut Jared Isaacman, and included Kidd Poteet (mission pilot), Anna Menon (mission specialist & medical officer), and Sarah Gillis (mission specialist). These last two are also leading lights at SpaceX, and last week traveled further from Earth than any women in history. The flight reached an apogee of just over 1,400km (870 miles), a record that hasn’t been broken since Apollo 17 almost 52 years ago. The whole mission was full of records and firsts, including helping boost the number of humans in orbit to an all-time high of 19 (let’s get it over 20 asap!). On September 12th the crew depressurized the capsule and opened the hatch, allowing Issacman and Gillis to conduct the first private spacewalk in history, and marking “the first time four humans are simultaneously exposed to the vacuum of space.”
On the 4th day of the mission, Sarah Gillis used her space worthy violin (how did they keep it working after depressurization??) to record a cover of Harmony of Resilience, the theme from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The recording was sent back to Earth via SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, where a video was made of orchestras around the world joining it. Give it a listen, it’s absolutely beautiful.
All in all, a big step forward for private spaceflight, paving the way for future missions and ultimately many more of us to travel to, work, and even live in space. You can check out this video SpaceX put together from clips of the mission; a couple post-mission interviews with the crew here and here; and about 600 photos from photographer extraordinaire John Kraus, who was with the crew before takeoff and after landing. (@PolarisProgram)
Humans to Mars this decade (hopefully). Elon Musk just announced a plan for unmanned Starships to head to Mars two years from now, with humans following during the next transfer window if all goes well with the first set of landings.
“The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens. These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years. Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet.”
These timelines for humans to Mars may be a bit aspirational, but my gut tells me they probably aren’t that far off. Unless bureaucrats and politicians stop them, I do expect to see Starships heading to Mars in two years. But I bet they’ll need another practice round before sending ships with people onboard (precious cargo!), meaning the first humans will likely arrive on Mars very early in the next decade. But I’d be thrilled to eat my hat and see them arrive sooner. Literally the beginning of the next chapter in human civilization if SpaceX pulls this off—it’s how we become a spacefaring, multiplanetary species. First Mars, then the broader Solar System, then the Stars. Ad astra!
News from Easter Island. Genetic analysis from the remains of 15 individuals on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) have found that contrary to previous studies, there does not appear to have been a population collapse or bottleneck in the 17th century. Easter Island has been used as a quintessential story of “ecocide” and resulting population and societal collapse. But it turns out that humans are extremely adaptable and resilient; and though the Polynesian settlers did deforest their island, they didn’t doom themselves in the process. As James Pethokoukis wrote on the news, “The ideology of societal collapse is collapsing.”
The other fascinating discovery unearthed by the genetic analysis is that past inhabitants of Easter Island were about 90% Polynesian, and 10% Native American—the contact and mixing likely taking place between 1250 – 1430 AD. This isn’t really surprising, as Polynesians were extraordinarily good voyagers; and this corroborates previous evidence of intermarriage and cultural (food) exchange. (Faster, Please by James Pethokoukis) (Live Science) (Nature)
Aerospike spaceplanes ready to fly for the first time. After its first (unmanned) testflight crashed, Polaris Aerospace is ready to fly two new prototypes of its aerospike supersonic/hypersonic spaceplane sometime in the next few weeks. If successful, they will be the first ever aircraft to fly using aerospike power. What is an aerospike engine you ask? Somewhat similar to a rocket but with a very different nozzle:
“It fires its rocket exhausts down the sides of a central surface shaped to mimic one side of the interior wall of a bell-shaped nozzle, and the ambient airflow around the rocket acts as the remaining walls of the nozzle…the aerospike's virtual nozzle characteristics change constantly in response to aerodynamic flow. The rocket naturally tunes itself as speed and altitude changes. It'll never exceed the efficiency of a bell-shaped nozzle running right in its sweet spot, but its average efficiency from takeoff to orbit should be good enough to do the job, in a way that cuts down on moving parts.”
The ultimate goal of the project is to have a rapidly reusable spaceplane taking off and landing on runways, and capable of carrying cargo and passengers into orbit as a single stage—instead of multiple stages like rockets require. Aerospike engines were invented more than 70 years ago, so hopes are high that the technology could finally be coming to fruition. (New Atlas)
AI leaps forward in protein design and drug discovery. Google DeepMind Co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis has just announced a new AI system to “design novel proteins that bind more successfully to target molecules.” It’s called AlphaProteo, and builds on the already incredible AlphaFold 3, which was able to predict the 3D structure of millions of proteins. Taking the next step and creating custom de novo proteins was obvious, but not easy. The potential for new designer drugs designed to bind to cancer, block viruses, and modulate the immune system are just scratching the surface of what might be possible through systems like this. The system has been tested and validated in a wet lab too, with its designed proteins able to bind well to targets. It’s not perfect yet of course, and not all proteins were effective binders, but the plan is to continue improving and “expand AlphaProteo's capabilities with the goal of eventually addressing such challenging targets.”
That’s not all though, a company called Chai Discovery also released their program, Chai-1, “a foundational model for molecular structure prediction that preforms at the state-of-the-art across a variety of drug discovery tasks.” The plan is to decode all the molecular interactions that make life possible. It doesn’t just predict the structure of proteins, but “enables unified prediction of proteins, small molecules, DNA, RNA, covalent modifications, and more.” Even better, the program and code have been put out on the web for free access, including for commercial drug discovery. (@demishassabis) (Google DeepMind) (Chai Discovery)
AI and robotics update. OpenAI has released their new system, OpenAI o1, which they say “exceeds human PhD-level accuracy on a benchmark of physics, biology, and chemistry problems." The model is designed to spend time thinking before it responds—like a human would—reasoning its way through complex tasks and questions that stump other AI. Its training has been aimed at helping it learn to “refine their [sic] thinking process, try different strategies, and recognize their mistakes.” Though it still has gaps and makes mistakes of course, in terms of IQ it’s now beyond average human intelligence on a variety of tasks. (OpenAI) (@sama)
AI generated video games are improving in leaps and bounds, with tech company Tencent unveiling GameGen-O, “a groundbreaking AI model that generates open-world video games from text prompts. Trained on 4,000 hours of video game footage, it can create characters, environments, actions, and events.” (@rowancheung)
Last time I showed you a video of NEO, the humanoid robot from 1x. Here’s another video of it walking through and working in someone’s home. It’s pretty impressive (click the photo to get to the video on X). (@jasonjoyride)
Google’s DeepMind is on a role, with their new ALOHA Unleashed system which is able to preform a variety of tasks requiring two arms/hands—everything from folding clothes to tying shoes. It’s not human level dexterity yet, but it’s moving down that path in a hurry. (@GoogleDeepMind)
Chinese plans for space. China isn’t slowing down when it comes to space, so we should get our collective rears in gear. Here’s some of their ambitious upcoming plans: In 2029, China intends to replicate NASA’s DART mission, crashing a spacecraft into the roughly 40m (130ft) diameter asteroid 2015 XF261. If all goes well, its speed will change at least 1cm/second, resulting in its orbit changing by over 900km (560 miles) relative to Earth after one year. China’s Space Agency has also just announced a plan to create bricks from “lunar regolith simulant” and ship them up to its Tiangong Space Station for durability testing in the vacuum of space. The plan is to use similar bricks to create future base on the Moon. It’s a good idea, we should be doing the same. Lastly, China is planning to launch a Mars sample return mission in 2028, likely sooner than NASA’s. (@coreyspowell) (@AJ_FI) (@tobyliiiiiiiii) (@AJ_FI)
Space
Images of R Doradus, a star roughly 350x bigger than our Sun, have been taken with the Atacama telescope (ALMA) in Chile. They show a spectacular view of its surface changing over time, with almost unbelievably huge bubbles of gas “appearing on the surface and sinking back into the star’s interior.” This sort of detail has never been obtained before on a star other than our Sun. R Doradus is actually about the same mass as our Sun, despite being so much bigger—providing a preview of what our star will look like in 5 billion years when it too turns into a red giant. Very cool video of it here. (ESO) (@almaobs)
It seems that galaxies are actually bigger than we thought. Beyond the visible stars is a gassy circumgalactic medium extending beyond the visible galactic disc, possibly holding about 70% of a galaxy’s mass. This is based on a study of a galaxy 270 million light years away, but is thought to apply to galaxies generally. The interesting implication of this is that the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies might already be interacting in the beginnings of an intergalactic handshake lasting eons. (@ExploreCosmos_) (Science Alert)
NASA’s New Horizon’s space probe has found more evidence either that the Kuiper Belt extends out a lot farther than previously thought, or maybe that there’s a second belt. New Horizons reported “the detection of an unexpected population of very distant bodies in the Kuiper Belt,” hinting that “the disk of planetary material from which the solar system formed was much larger than previously thought.”(New Horizons) (@ExploreCosmos_)
ESA scientists have just released a cloud atlas for Mars. With 20 years of imagery, this database was created by the German Aerospace Center from photos via the Mars Express orbiter. The atlas will help scientists “better understand how and where features arise in the Martian atmosphere and what they can tell us about the climate of Mars and other planets.” (German Aerospace Center) (EuroPlanet Society) (@elonmusk)
Jacqueline Fazekas, an observer from the Catalina Sky Survey, managed to spot a small space rock 1-2m (a few feet) in diameter hours before it collided harmlessly with Earth’s atmosphere, burning up over the Philippines. It’s only the 9th asteroid spotted before impact, according to the ESA. Totally harmless, and pretty cool that she spotted it. (@catalina_sky) (Space.com)
Despite multiple unsolved leaks in the propulsion system, Boeing’s Starliner capsule has landed safe and sound back on Earth—though just to be safe, its astronauts are awaiting pickup from a Dragon spacecraft next February. I’m sure they’re not too upset about spending more time in space, that is the goal astronauts spend years training for after all. (Spaceflight Now)
SpaceX has teamed up with United Airlines to provide high-speed internet via Starlink on their entire fleet of over 1,000 airplanes. Say goodbye to slow or unusable wi-fi during your flights! (@Gwynne_Shotwell)
A beautiful new volcano has been discovered on Jupiter’s moon Io by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. It was found by comparing images taken by the Galileo probe back in 1997 to more recent ones taken by Juno during 2023 & 2024 flybys—meaning the volcano popped up sometime in the last 27 years. Speaking of volcanoes, analysis of lunar samples brought back by China’s Chang’e 5 mission in 2020 indicated that the Moon was volcanic activity recently (geologically speaking), only 123 million years ago +/- 15 million years. That means dinosaurs in the early cretaceous might conceivably have looked up and seen it. (@ExploreCosmos_) (Space.com)
The closest pair of supermassive black holes ever detected have been found by the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes. Only 300 light years apart, they are at the centers of two colliding galaxies about 800 million light years away—that’s actually pretty close and recent astronomically. We’ll see them merge together in about 100 million years, but of course this means they already merged around 700 million years ago. The light just hasn’t reached us yet. (NASA)
AI, Energy, Engineering, & Physics
Attomicroscopy is a new technique able to capture “freeze-frame images of individual electrons in action.” Each frame in the picture is about 1.2 femtoseconds apart, or a quadrillionth (10-15) of a second. Previous speeds were on the order of a few 10s to 100s of femtoseconds, too slow to adequately capture the motion of electrons. (@coreyspowell) (Science)
xAI now has its Colossus training cluster online. Comprised of 100,000 H100 GPUs from Nvidia, it’s the largest AI training system in the world—and it will double in size within the next few months. Oracle (software, cloud systems) also just deployed a “supercluster of ~130,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs…that will be powered by 3 nuclear reactors.” This zettascale supercluster will allow customers to train and use cutting edge cloud-based AI models from anywhere on the planet. (@elonmusk) (@BasedBeffJezos) (Nvidia)
Speaking of nuclear energy, we need a lot more of it. The U.S. Department of Energy just release a report finding that “more than 60 GW of new nuclear capacity could potentially be built at currently operating or recently retired nuclear power plant sites across the country.” Depending on exactly how this plays out, between 60 and 95 GW of new capacity could be added to the grid. Now, if only the (over)regulators would get out of the way. (Office of Nuclear Energy)
Scientists are getting closer to the island of stability, a theoretical place on the periodic table where superheavy elements would be stable(ish) over long periods of time, instead of decaying in fractions of a second. The plan is to try and create either 298FL (Flerovium, element 114), or 304Unbinilium (element 120, which itself hasn’t been created yet). It’s expected that 298FL will be the easier of the two, so here’s hoping someone manages to pull it off. (Phys.org)
Waymo has been making extraordinary progress with robotaxis, giving 100,000 rides per week, with plans to ramp that number up even higher. The company has been offering autonomous rides sans drivers without safety incidents since 2020, but only in the cities of Phoenix and San Francisco for now—the plan is to add in parts of Los Angeles and the city of Austin soon. (Singularity Hub)
An incredible performance just took place in Shenzhen, China, with 8,100 drones putting on a spectacular lights show. Sounds like it might be a new drone swarm record too—America’s drone industry needs to catch up ASAP! Keep in mind to that while this was peaceful and beautiful, this sort of technology does have other applications that we absolutely must be able to match or surpass. (@ShenzhenPages)
Speaking of high-tech weapons, American company Anduril Industries has publicly revealed their Barracuda group of autonomous missiles. At half the parts and cost of traditional cruise missiles, the plan is to revitalize America’s ability to “credibly deter conflict with a near-peer adversary [China].” (@PalmerLuckey)
Japan is planning to build what will be the world’s most powerful supercomputer. Expected to be fully operational in 2030, it will blow past existing machines by about 3 orders of magnitude, creating a “zeta-class” supercomputer capable of over one quintillion calculations per second (a 1 followed by 18 zeros). (Interesting Engineering)
Medicine
Gene therapy for patients with a rare condition causing them to lose most of their eyesight early in life resulted in a 100x increase in vision, with some patients on the highest treatment dose experiencing a 10,000x improvement. That level of difference “is the same as a patient being able to see their surroundings on a moonlit night outdoors as opposed to requiring bright indoor lighting before treatment.” Technological miracles indeed. (Science Daily)
Repurposing a class of cancer drugs for Alzheimer’s Disease has shown good effects in mice, rescuing memory and improving brain function, potentially reversing the disease and giving hope to millions of people with the illness. Researchers from Auburn University in Alabama have found that another drug, troriluzole, may slow the disease by reducing harmful levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate—improving memory and learning in mice. (SciTechDaily) (Medical Xpress)
A 40-month study in cynomolgus monkeys showed that metformin (a common drug used to treat diabetes) slowed markers of aging in the brain by about 6 years, “preserving brain structure and enhancing cognition.” Interestingly, previous studies in mice hadn’t shown much effect, but monkeys are better models for humans of course, so this study could open the door to adding metformin to an antiaging cocktail. Elsewhere, researchers have found a molecule able to “restore physiological levels of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT),” which “reduced cellular senescence and tissue inflammation, spurred new neuron formation with improved memory, and enhanced neuromuscular function, which increased strength and coordination.” (@davidasinclair) (Cell) (SciTechDaily)
Nanobots about 1/20 the size of human blood cell have been built at the University of Edinburgh to treat brain aneurysms, which cause about half a million deaths every year. Each nanobot “consists of a magnetic core, a clotting agent called thrombin that treats the aneurysm, and a coating that melts when lightly heated, in order to release the medication.” Magnetic fields can be used to guide the bots to the correct location, and then heat them up to release the medication exactly where needed. (Live Science) (The University of Edinburgh)
Chronic pain is intractable for some people, causing untold suffering and greatly reducing quality of life. Engineers at the University of Utah may have opened a door to effective treatment by using ultrasound to noninvasively target deep areas of the brain to “interrupt the problematic signals associated with chronic pain.” 60% of the group receiving the treatment reported a meaningful reduction in levels of pain after a single session. (SciTechDaily)
A Swiss research team is working to make electrodes more compatible for the brain in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). The problem with traditional electrodes is they cause some brain tissue damage when inserted, effectively cutting through the “web of dendritic filaments.” Neuralink’s implants are an improvement that uses “a somewhat flexible probe,” but this new approach created ultra-flexible, thin “tentacle” electrodes that slip in without causing any harm. They need to be inserted slowly, and have so far just been tested in rats, but the approach looks very promising. (IFL Science)
Biotech & Agriculture
It required 8x more land in 1940 than in does today to grow the same amount of corn. That my friends is what progress looks like, and it’s not going to stop there. The Green Revolution was one of the most incredible things to happen in human history, and I feel like we’re nowhere near the end of its potential. (@simonmaechling)
Synthetic life takes another step forward with scientists from Scripps Research Institute using four RNA nucleotides—instead of the usual three—to code for each amino acid. This allowed them to “incorporate non-canonical amino acids [amino acids outside the 20 life on Earth uses] into proteins,” with a goal of developing “proteins with tailored functions for applications in fields spanning bioengineering to drug discovery.” (Science Daily)
Weird & Wonderful
The 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes are out! For those who don’t know, the prizes are a humorous scientific award handed out by the Annals of Improbable Research journal each year since 1991. Here’s a few of the funny highlights: The botany prize for research looking into “whether real plants will imitate fake ones they're planted alongside. The prize for medicine found that “a pain-inducing placebo could be more effective than one that does not induce pain.” Basically, people thought that real medicine should produce unpleasant side effects. An award for anatomy was given for a study looking into “whether the hair on the heads of most people in the northern hemisphere swirls in the same direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise?) as hair on the heads of most people in the southern hemisphere.” Surprisingly, results on that one found that there actually were more counterclockwise whorls in the Southern Hemisphere, but a larger study should be preformed to confirm. (Improbable Research) (New Atlas)
You might have all seen this one already, but researchers have found a simple yet ingenious way to make the skin of living mice temporarily transparent, allowing the functioning of their internal organs to be observed. The trick is mixing water with a common yellow food coloring compound called tartrazine, then rubbing it onto the mice’s skin, which became transparent once the dye was fully absorbed. To reverse the effect, just wash it off. By the way, the yellow dye is considered very safe, so sounds like you can all try this one at home—but it might not work because human skin is 10 times thicker than that of a mouse. (Science Daily)
Researchers in the Arctic have found algae under sea ice carrying out photosynthesis “near the theoretical minimum light requirement for photosynthesis.” Life is hardy, and algae particularly seems tough, able to eek out an existence in environments right on the edge of what’s physically possible. This finding will be helpful in our search for life elsewhere in the galaxy, at least when it comes to algae. (Nature)
Certain biological niches tend to be filled in a similar way throughout the history of life on Earth, likely because physics dictates certain solutions work, and others do not (or not as well). Just like some birds flap and some soar today, pterosaurs during the time of the dinosaurs either flapped or soared depending on the species. The findings were made possible by running some well preserved fossils through CT scans, revealing the different bone structures of the animals. It’s really remarkable that the largest of them could fly at all—they were the biggest flying animals in Earth’s history. (Taylor & Francis)
Photos & Videos
Have a look through these beautiful pictures from the Ocean Photographer of the Year Awards. (Smithsonian Magazine)
That’s not all, the winners for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year are out as well, and they’re incredible. For some reason they make you dig a little to actually find everything, but you can find the links here for winners and shortlists in different categories. (@coresyspowell) (Royal Museums Greenwich)
A triangular shaped solar prominence hovered over the Sun recently, and was photographed by numerous telescopes. (@apod)
NASA Astronaut Matthew Dominick took this “timelapse of solar arrays reflecting aurora and city lights as they align themselves for the impending sunrise,” all from the vantage point of the International Space Station. (@dominickmatthew)
Recommendations & Reviews
Have you ever wondered how to make a particle detector? Wonder no more! Actually, it’s even something you can do at home fairly cheaply, making a great science experiment that will fascinate kids and adults alike. If you’re interested in finding muons specifically, it’s a little more involved but still not too bad—this video has good setup instructions. (IFL Science)
I’ve been wondering for a while whether I should perhaps add a “How things work” section in my newsletter, maybe with one interesting thing each edition. E.g., what’s the interior of neutron stars like? How do biological systems use quantum mechanics?
Let me know what you all think.
That’s all for today, hope you all enjoyed what I think is a banger of an edition. Next Saturday I’ll be sending out that sponsored post so please do comment on what you think of it (the concept of sponsored posts versus in-article ads). Thank you all for reading—and until next time, keep your eyes on the horizon.
-Owen
another great, thought provoking note. i always look forward to it.
it is great to be fascinated and humbled by the topics each week.
How do biological systems use quantum mechanics?
great suggestion !!
It's always great to find your newsletter in my inbox!
The topic selection perfectly aligns with my interests. And every article is nicely written with the right amount of depth. Please keep up the good work. It is really appreciated!