🦾 ETH Zurich researchers trained a robotic hand to use its five fingers as legs for untethered locomotion, with onboard power, sensing, and computation.

Reinforcement-learning policies enable the system to crawl, steer, recover from falls, and adapt its locomotion across 14 indoor and outdoor surfaces, including carpet, tile, asphalt, grass, and gravel.

The hand can also perform keyboard presses while supporting its own weight and use overhead visual feedback to push objects toward target locations.

@futurism 🧬

🔬 Scientists just built a cell that can evolve

Researchers have assembled a cell-like system from nonliving chemicals that can grow, copy DNA, divide, and even compete with genetically different “siblings.”

The University of Minnesota’s SpudCell uses roughly 150–200 known molecules. Instead of the normal cellular machinery for division, researchers attached protein tags to the membrane to make the system split.

A genetic change that boosted a growth-related protein made those cells reproduce faster. Over generations, they began outcompeting the unmodified cells, a basic mechanism of natural selection.

But SpudCell isn’t considered alive. It needs constant external feeding and components such as ribosomes, and it can’t independently survive or reproduce outside the lab setup.

The breakthrough may therefore be less about creating artificial life and more about showing how far chemistry can be pushed toward life-like behavior.

Growth. Replication. Division. Competition.

At what point does engineered chemistry become something we would call “alive”?

@futurism 🧬

⚛️ Scientists found a state beyond 0 and 1

Classical computers store information as bits: 0 or 1.

Quantum computers work differently. Their basic units, qubits, can exist in a superposition of 0 and 1 until they are measured.

That doesn’t mean a qubit is literally “both” in the everyday sense. It means its quantum state contains amplitudes for multiple possible measurement outcomes.

This strange property is one reason quantum computers could tackle certain problems in ways fundamentally different from classical machines.

The universe may not run on simple black-and-white logic after all.

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🐱Physicists just created a “cat” that exists in two states at once

Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have created a “Schrödinger’s cat” made entirely of light and pushed its two quantum states farther apart than in previous experiments.

No actual cat was involved. A cat state is a quantum system existing in a superposition of two very different possibilities, similar to Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment of a cat being both alive and dead.

The researchers used highly excited Rydberg atoms inside an optical cavity to control photons and create two distinct phases of light. Crucially, the two states remained quantum-mechanically coherent rather than behaving like an ordinary mixture.

The resulting optical cat reached α² = 2.4, compared with a previous record of about 1.4 for this type of state.

Larger quantum superpositions could help physicists investigate where quantum behavior gives way to the classical world we experience and may eventually have applications in quantum information.

One caveat: the result is currently a preprint and has not yet been peer-reviewed.

@futurism 🧬

⚡️ Scientists found a way to make electricity from the cold of space

What if darkness wasn’t the end of solar power?

Researchers at Stanford explored a clever idea: generating electricity at night by using the temperature difference between Earth and the cold darkness of space.

A special surface radiates infrared heat from Earth toward the sky. That temperature difference can drive a thermoelectric generator, producing electricity without sunlight.

Their calculations suggest an optimized system could generate around 2.2 watts per square meter at night, far less than a solar panel produces in daylight, but potentially useful for off-grid sensors, lighting and other low-power devices.

It works almost opposite to solar power. Instead of capturing energy from sunlight, it harvests a tiny amount of energy from Earth’s heat escaping into space.

@futurism 🧬

🚀 Quantum computing just left Earth

An international team has put a photonic quantum processor on a nanosatellite and operated it in low Earth orbit for eight months.

The hardware is tiny: a photon-pair source, a glass chip with six programmable paths, and six detectors.

The launch damaged three detectors almost immediately, while radiation continued degrading the others. The team adapted from the ground, rerouting photons toward the surviving detectors and increasing voltage to recover signal.

And it still passed its key test.

Two identical photons interfered on the chip with 90.8% visibility, far above the 50% limit expected from classical light.

Satellites collect enormous amounts of data but often have to discard much of it before transmission. Quantum processors could eventually analyze some of that data directly in orbit.

The same photonic technology could also help connect satellites in future quantum networks.

For now, it hasn’t processed real satellite data, and two photons are a very long way from a useful quantum computer.

But quantum hardware is officially operating in space.

@futurism 🧬

✨The first luxury hotel in orbit?

Imagine waking up to Earth floating outside your window, then heading to a restaurant, bar or gym, all while orbiting the planet.

That’s the idea behind Voyager Station, a proposed space hotel designed as a giant rotating wheel. The rotation would generate artificial gravity, while the station would include restaurants, entertainment spaces and other amenities.

The planned capacity is around 280 guests and 112 crew members.

The project has been targeting the late 2020s, but the timeline has shifted over the years and it is not yet an operating space hotel.

If it actually gets built, “going on vacation” could eventually mean leaving Earth entirely.

@futurism 🧬

⚠️Scientists are working on a new cooling method called magnetocaloric refrigeration.

It uses special materials like gadolinium that heat up when placed in a magnetic field and cool down when the field is removed.

By cycling these materials with changing magnetic fields, they can create cooling without compressors or harmful refrigerant gases. This could make refrigerators quieter, more energy-efficient, and more environmentally friendly than today’s systems.

@futurism 🧬

Humanoid robots building other humanoid robots could soon become a real part of industrial automation.

Kepler Robotics K2 Bumblebee is built for factory work, standing 1.75 meters tall with 52 degrees of freedom and a 30 kg dual-arm payload.

The robot has already been tested in real manufacturing environments, including VEICHI Electric’s factory.

@futurism 🧬

2026 already feels historically strange (this is Figure robot)

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🧲 A tiny twist in a crystal could create a whole new kind of magnetism

For more than a century, magnetism was mainly understood through two familiar types: ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism.

Now scientists have directly observed and controlled a third: altermagnetism.

In an altermagnet, tiny magnetic moments point in opposite directions, like an antiferromagnet. But the crystal structure is subtly rotated, creating a unique magnetic “twist” that gives the material properties unlike either conventional type.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham, working at Sweden’s MAX IV facility, have now imaged and manipulated this state at the nanoscale.

Altermagnets produce no net external magnetic field, which could allow magnetic memory components to be packed much closer together without interfering with each other.

They also exhibit magnetic resonance at much higher frequencies, potentially enabling future memory and microelectronics that operate up to 1,000× faster.

The technology is still firmly in the research stage, but scientists may have just opened a new chapter in how we understand and use magnetism.

@futurism 🧬

🔔Scientists accidentally discovered a liquid that remembers its shape

A routine fluid experiment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst produced something that looked almost impossible: a liquid that could be violently shaken, yet repeatedly reorganized itself back into the same elegant, urn-like shape.

Graduate student Anthony Raykh was experimenting with oil, water and strongly magnetized nickel particles when the mixture behaved very differently from a normal emulsion. Instead of staying mixed, it rapidly separated and formed a highly structured shape.

The strange behavior comes from the magnetic nickel particles. Rather than lowering the oil–water interfacial tension as particles normally do, they increase it, causing the system to reorganize in an unusual way.

Even after repeated agitation, the mixture could recover its characteristic shape, almost as if the liquid had a memory.

The result, reported in Nature Physics, challenges assumptions about how multiphase fluids minimize their energy and could give researchers a new way to design “smart” materials that reorganize themselves or respond predictably to magnetic fields.

@futurism 🧬

⚠️Cancer cells may have a sugar shield and scientists found a way to weaken it

Some leukemia cells may be protecting themselves from the immune system with something surprisingly simple: a thick layer of sugar-coated proteins.

Researchers found that proteins such as CD43 can become heavily decorated with sugars on the surface of leukemia cells, forming a dense molecular layer that can make it harder for immune cells to get close and attack.

But when scientists reduced this sugary barrier in laboratory experiments, the cancer cells became more vulnerable to macrophages, T cells and natural killer cells.

That raises an intriguing possibility: instead of directly attacking the cancer cell, future therapies could first strip away part of its protective coating, giving the immune system better access.

These sugar structures aren’t exclusive to cancer. Healthy cells use similar molecules too, meaning researchers would need to find a way to target the cancer-associated shield without harming normal tissue.

@futurism 🧬

🗣️Michio Kaku says time travel may be an engineering problem, not a physics problem

Time travel sounds like science fiction, but physicist Michio Kaku has argued that the laws of physics don’t necessarily rule it out.

Einstein’s general relativity allows mathematical solutions involving wormholes and closed timelike curves, structures that, at least on paper, could connect different points in spacetime.

Turning those equations into an actual machine would require physics and engineering far beyond anything humans can currently achieve. Proposed wormholes may require exotic forms of negative energy, while some concepts involve energy scales comparable to astronomical objects.

And even if those hurdles were solved, there’s another problem: causality. A machine capable of traveling into the past immediately raises questions about paradoxes and whether the universe has mechanisms that prevent them.

So Kaku’s “engineering problem” line is provocative, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for evidence that a working time machine is close.

@futurism 🧬

🚀All 14 Starship Launches

Flight 1: Apr 20 2023
Flight 2: Nov 18 2023
Flight 3: Mar 14 2024
Flight 4: Jun 6 2024
Flight 5: Oct 13 2024
Flight 6: Nov 19 2024
Flight 7: Jan 16 2025
Flight 8: Mar 6 2025
Flight 9: May 27 2025
Flight 10: Aug 26 2025
Flight 11: Oct 13 2025
Flight 12: May 22 2026
Flight 13: Jul 24 2026
Flight 14: Sep 28 2026

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⚠️Scientists may have found a way to make cancer cells destroy themselves

Instead of attacking cancer cells from the outside, researchers have developed a protein fusion designed to activate the cells’ own internal “death switch.”

In early studies, the approach showed strong effects against certain cancers while leaving many healthy cells relatively unharmed.

The idea is still at an early research stage, so it’s far from being a proven cancer treatment. But the concept is fascinating: rather than destroying cancer from the outside, researchers are trying to make cancer cells trigger their own shutdown.

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A greenhouse in the Netherlands is using AI-powered robots to identify and pick ripe tomatoes.

Developed by Four Growers, the system uses a FANUC robot arm for precise, damage-free harvesting. It reduces labor needs while helping workers focus on plant care.

@futurism 🧬

⚡ A pacemaker without the I
Implant?

What if you could regulate a heartbeat without putting wires inside the body?

Scientists at MIT are developing a tiny wearable patch that uses ultrasound waves to stimulate heart tissue from outside the body.

In early lab and animal experiments, the system delivered targeted stimulation and helped restore normal heart rhythms, without implanted electrodes.

The idea could eventually offer a less invasive alternative for some forms of cardiac pacing, potentially avoiding surgery and permanent hardware.

But there’s a long way to go. The technology is still experimental and is not a replacement for conventional pacemakers yet.

If it survives further testing, though, the future of pacemakers might look very different.

@futurism 🧬