🦠 A chewing gum that traps viruses

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania developed a plant-based chewing gum that trapped more than 95% of certain viruses in saliva during lab tests.

The gum contains FRIL, a protein derived from lablab beans that binds to viruses and prevents them from remaining infectious.

Just 40 mg of the gum reduced viral loads by over 95% for influenza A (H1N1 and H3N2) and herpes viruses (HSV-1 and HSV-2).

You chew it, release the antiviral protein, and potentially reduce the amount of virus available to spread through saliva.

Human trials are still needed, but if the results hold up, antiviral chewing gum could become a simple tool for reducing viral transmission.

@futurism 🧬

⚠️Cancer cells may not always need to be killed

Researchers at South Korea’s KAIST have demonstrated a striking alternative to destroying cancer cells: reprogramming them back toward a normal state.

The team identified three key regulators, MYB, HDAC2 and FOXA2, that appear to control the cancerous state of colon cells. By suppressing all three together, researchers induced cancer cells to differentiate into normal-like intestinal cells instead of killing them.

The approach was tested in colon cancer cell lines and mouse models, where the reprogrammed cells showed sharply reduced proliferation and tumors were dramatically smaller.

The researchers used a computational model of the gene-regulatory network, built from thousands of intestinal cells, to identify the molecular “switches” controlling the cells’ state.

This is preclinical research, not a human cancer treatment. But the idea could represent a major shift in cancer biology, from destroying cancer cells to changing their identity.

Instead of asking, “How do we kill the cancer?” researchers are beginning to ask a different question:

Can we teach it to become normal again?

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🚀 Google thinks Starship may need 1,800 launches to make space data centers viable

Google’s vision of AI data centers in orbit sounds futuristic, but the company’s own research highlights one massive bottleneck: getting enough hardware into space cheaply.

Google estimates that Starship would need to launch around 1,800 times over the next decade, roughly 180 launches per year to put about 370,000 tonnes of payload into orbit and push launch costs toward $200/kg by 2035.

Starship has only recently reached orbit, and it has never come close to flying 180 times in a year.

Google’s Project Suncatcher is already testing the concept. Its first orbital prototype carries Google TPUs and will run AI workloads in space, while future satellites are expected to communicate through laser links and eventually form large orbital computing clusters.

Google’s research suggests the chips themselves may not be the biggest problem, launch economics are.

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Ⓜ️ Meta’s AI Muse may be tracking your friends too

Meta’s new AI agent Muse is reportedly building detailed profiles not only of its users, but also of the people around them.

According to an investigation cited by Futurism, Muse maintains a “page for every person in the user’s life,” collecting and updating information about friends, family and other contacts, reportedly as often as once an hour. Researchers who examined Muse’s internal prompts say the system appears designed to understand users’ relationships with real people.

That raises a bigger privacy question: when one person gives an AI access to their digital life, how much information does it get about everyone else?

The concerns come alongside reports of a major security vulnerability in Muse’s underlying database that Meta engineers reportedly rushed to fix before launch.

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They will get revenge on him in the future: on a French TV show, a man had a boxing match with humanoid robots.

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⚠️The solar system may fall apart much sooner than expected

The Solar System’s eventual destruction may not be caused simply by the Sun expanding into a red giant.

A new study led by Caltech astrophysicist Konstantin Batygin suggests that as the Sun dies and sheds mass, its planets could be pushed into unstable orbits. Instead of smoothly drifting farther away, the planets may experience chaotic gravitational interactions and eventually scatter across space.

The simulations suggest the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune could become dynamically unstable roughly 1 billion years after the Sun becomes a white dwarf. Previous estimates placed the final breakup of the outer Solar System tens of billions of years later.

Earth, however, won’t be around to see it. The Sun is expected to enter its red-giant phase in roughly 5 billion years, with Mercury, Venus and likely Earth being destroyed or engulfed long before the outer planets face their final fate.

The unsettling part is that the Sun’s death may be far more chaotic than previously assumed, its final mass loss could effectively destabilize the planetary system it created.

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🤖Figure 02 robots ended their careers in a furnace full of molten steel. Literally

Figure AI sent its second-generation humanoid robots to a steel mill in Finland, where they were melted down in a 75-ton electric arc furnace.

Engineers specifically trained the robots to autonomously jump into molten metal, using stunt performers’ movements and simulation-based training.

The idea for this unusual end to the robots’ careers came from Schwarzenegger himself, who also took part in filming the video.

Previously, Figure 02 robots had worked for more than 1,250 hours at a BMW plant, loaded over 90,000 parts, and contributed to the production of more than 30,000 vehicles.

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Robots have become so accurate that they can carry out surgery on an egg without breaking it.

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⚡️Meet Hopto, an energy-saving drone that BOUNCE instead of FLY.

Hopping robots can cross ice, wet soil, rubble and uneven terrain using spring-loaded legs that recycle energy.

MIT’s insect-scale hopper is smaller than a thumb, while Hong Kong’s 35-gram Hopcopter can jump up to 1.63 meters.

The idea is simple. Use the ground to save power instead of flying over every obstacle.

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🔥 These ceiling robots are moving medical supplies through a hospital in China while keeping the corridors free for beds, patients and staff.

This is Warrenwell’s Telesys rail logistics system. The transport cars run on tracks mounted above the hallway and carry IV bags medicines blood products lab samples sterile supplies and small surgical packs between departments.

At the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University the installation has around:

• 1,800 meters of track
• 41 stations
• 65 transport cars
• Around 200 km traveled per day
• Roughly 2,700 IV bags and 3,200 medicine boxes moved daily

The system identifies the destination station and uses track switches to route each carrier through the hospital.

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🥊 Combat robot beats up blogger and breaks his wrist.

The guy stepped into a “Real Steel”-style fight, but took several powerful blows from the machine, and even the protective vest couldn’t save him from injury.

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💊The FDA cleared the first human age-reversal trial:

A Harvard professor proved you can reverse aging by 75% in 6 weeks in mice cured blindness, reversed Alzheimer's, MS, ALS, kidney and liver disease then confirmed it works in monkeys

Now humans are next. Life Biosciences raised $80M to make it happen. His words "The eye is just the beginning. We believe we can treat every tissue. A whole body reset".

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Scientists Heard Earth’s Magnetic Field Collapse 41,000 Years Ago, And It Sounds Straight Out Of A Horror Movie.

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NASA has released onboard video of Artemis II's reentry through Earth's atmosphere.

Top speed: about 25,000 mph

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