Energy

Energy technology in plain English: batteries, fusion, geothermal and grid storage, with the evidence, economics and engineering risks behind each story.

Energy

A Membrane That Is 75% Crystal Passes CO2 at Very High Speed

Oct 14, 2026

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7 min read

A Membrane That Is 75% Crystal Passes CO2 at Very High Speed

A Tianjin, EPFL and USC team reports a very fast CO2 membrane. Film thickness and real flue-gas data are missing, so it is a lab result, not a plant.

inertial confinement fusion

Fusion Needs 315 Million Perfect Fuel Capsules a Year

Sep 10, 2026

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8 min read

Fusion Needs 315 Million Perfect Fuel Capsules a Year

A new Lawrence Livermore study finds that laser-fusion targets can tolerate defects, until performance suddenly falls off a cliff. That boundary may matter more to commercial fusion than the next laboratory yield record.

Geothermal

No Pit, No Ponds: The Lithium Nobody Has to Dig For

Sep 2, 2026

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5 min read

No Pit, No Ponds: The Lithium Nobody Has to Dig For

Lithium is normally won by evaporating brine in ponds for a year or digging an open pit, which is why almost every project spends longer in planning than in construction. Beneath California's Salton Sea sits brine that is hot enough to run a power station and loaded with dissolved lithium, and it has been pumped up and pushed back down for decades. Two companies are now building plants to take the metal out on the way past. Here is how it works, and what has not been proven.

Space

Aug 23, 2026

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2 min read

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day

Six days, six long-reads from the frontier, plus a featured story on orbital surveillance going mass-market. A quantum sensor that can touch a patient, gene editing reaching a cell it never could, and two bodies flown around the Moon.

frontier technology

The Battery Built to Break Lithium's Grip on the Grid

Aug 22, 2026

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5 min read

The Battery Built to Break Lithium's Grip on the Grid

Grid batteries run on lithium, which is expensive, flammable, and refined mostly in China. A cheaper, safer chemistry made from sodium, essentially salt, is now shipping to the grid, and Peak Energy just put the first US grid-scale system to the test. Here is why it could break lithium's hold, and what still has to prove out.

Space

Aug 16, 2026

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2 min read

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day

Next week on The Signal: a quantum internet, living-bacteria implants, drones that navigate by ear, AI-run cyberattacks, disposable satellites, and a salt battery, plus a featured read on where vertical-AI money is flowing.

Space

Aug 9, 2026

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3 min read

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day

Alien megastructures, a quantum computer that runs on light, a battery that rusts on purpose, and a living robot. Your first look at next week.

AI for science

Jul 30, 2026

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6 min read

AI Is Searching for Physics' Holy Grail

Plus the fusion gold rush: how smart money reframed fusion from a climate bet into an AI-infrastructure bet. One edition, two energy frontiers.

Space

The Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day

Jul 19, 2026

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2 min read

The Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day

Six deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday. Here is your first taste of each.

Space

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day

Jul 12, 2026

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2 min read

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day

Mind-reading AI, a chip that writes DNA, one free download that drives 20 robots, and the signal holding up civilisation. Six deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday.

Star Catcher

+10

Forget Rooftop Panels: The Race to Beam Power Down From Orbit

Jul 6, 2026

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4 min read

Forget Rooftop Panels: The Race to Beam Power Down From Orbit

A washing-machine-sized satellite is chasing a fifty-year-old dream: catch sunlight in space and land it on Earth as an invisible beam. It is tiny, the first results are only trickling in, but a door just opened.

Space

Jul 5, 2026

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2 min read

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day

Six spoilers- for next week's deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday.

Space

AI Can Now Spot Cancer Years Before You'd Feel It

Jul 3, 2026

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6 min read

AI Can Now Spot Cancer Years Before You'd Feel It

Plus: China's eerily lifelike humanoid, why bosses say data (not models) is the moat against LLMs, Russia's $60B bid to become SpaceX, home batteries turned power plants, and the Pentagon's encryption countdown.

AI for science

+18

Can AI Actually Do Science? A Brutal New Test Keeps Score

Jul 2, 2026

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8 min read

Can AI Actually Do Science? A Brutal New Test Keeps Score

Plus: robots learning to feel, a contested claim to have built life from scratch, China's fusion-magnet milestone, a tiny engine aimed at Mars, and quantum error-fixing as a free download.

Space

+22

The Future of Video Editing? Tell Google's AI What to Change — and It Does It

Jul 1, 2026

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8 min read

The Future of Video Editing? Tell Google's AI What to Change — and It Does It

Plus: a humanoid robot pulls a multi-day shift, a monthly shot that silences a gene, a battery made of CO2, NASA's private cargo run to the Moon, and a quantum computer that fits in a server rack.

SMR

+23

A Robot Tow-Truck Launches Today to Save a Falling NASA Telescope

Jun 30, 2026

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8 min read

A Robot Tow-Truck Launches Today to Save a Falling NASA Telescope

Plus: NVIDIA hands AI agents a real science lab, robots learn from video games, a world-first cell therapy cracks a solid tumour, a walk-away-safe reactor finds a grid partner, and an AI designs quantum codes humans couldn't.

direct air capture

+21

The Machines Sucking CO2 From the Sky Just Got Real — and Cheaper

Jun 29, 2026

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7 min read

The Machines Sucking CO2 From the Sky Just Got Real — and Cheaper

Plus: Washington gates the most powerful AI, a humanoid takes a real shift at BMW, an AI-designed antibody clears its first human safety test, the next Starship lights up, and quantum hits a real milestone.

Space

+18

The Signal — America's quantum moonshot, and the quiet race to lock your data first

Jun 26, 2026

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10 min read

The Signal — America's quantum moonshot, and the quiet race to lock your data first

A US executive order pours the government into quantum computing — and braces for the day it breaks today's encryption. Plus five more signals from the frontier.

gene-editing medicine

+33

The Signal — The $20,000 home robot has arrived, with a human quietly on call

Jun 25, 2026

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12 min read

The Signal — The $20,000 home robot has arrived, with a human quietly on call

A walking humanoid you can buy for your living room is shipping this year — but the laundry-folding demo hides a remote helper. Plus six more signals from the frontier.

Space

+26

The Signal — A battery of iron and air could be clean energy's missing piece

Jun 24, 2026

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10 min read

The Signal — A battery of iron and air could be clean energy's missing piece

Cheap storage that lasts days, not hours, is the part that finally lets a grid run on sun and wind — plus five more signals from the frontier.

R-noid

+19

The Signal — AI is now hunting bugs in the code the whole internet runs on

Jun 23, 2026

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10 min read

The Signal — AI is now hunting bugs in the code the whole internet runs on

For two years the fear was AI helping hackers. Now it's patching the open-source code almost everything online depends on — plus six more signals from the frontier.

Space

+14

The Signal — A robot is flying across the Pacific to rescue a NASA telescope

Jun 22, 2026

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9 min read

The Signal — A robot is flying across the Pacific to rescue a NASA telescope

Launch is becoming routine. The new frontier in space is keeping, moving and rescuing what's already up there — plus six more signals.