Technology

AI pioneer Andrew Ng has released a simple online tool that allows anyone to tinker with the dials of a solar geoengineering model, exploring what might happen if nations attempt to counteract climate change by spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere. The concept of solar geoengineering was born from the realization that the planet has…

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. This week, we’re acknowledging a special birthday. It’s 100 years since EEG (electroencephalography) was first used to measure electrical activity in a person’s brain. The finding was revolutionary.…

In 2016, I attended a large meeting of journalists in Washington, DC. The keynote speaker was Jennifer Doudna, who just a few years before had co-invented CRISPR, a revolutionary method of changing genes that was sweeping across biology labs because it was so easy to use. With its discovery, Doudna explained, humanity had achieved the…

In 2019, an agency within the U.S. Department of Defense released a call for research projects to help the military deal with the copious amount of plastic waste generated when troops are sent to work in remote locations or disaster zones. The agency wanted a system that could convert food wrappers and water bottles, among…

Leaving aside meteorites that strike Earth’s surface and spacecraft that get flung out of its orbit, the quantity of materials available on this planet isn’t really changing all that much. That simple fact of our finite resources becomes clearer and more daunting as the pace of technological change advances and our society requires an ever…