MIT - The Download

Can’t bear to say goodbye to your pet? Biotech’s got you covered.

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

—Jessica Hamzelou, I don’t remember much about Peppy, my first and only pet cat. What I do vividly remember, though, is the day she went missing. I was 10 years old, and I searched everywhere for her, scouting nearby fields and woods until sunset. I made posters. We never found her. I was devastated., Almost 30 years later, pet owners have an expanding set of options to potentially prolong their years with their furry companions. The possibilities include drugs, cloning, and even cryonics. But is that a good thing?, Read the full story on the promises and pitfalls of pet life extension., This story is from The Checkup, our weekly biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

Roundtables: a conversation with the creator of AI-designed viruses

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn’t yet an example of AI-generated life, but that could be next., On Friday, join MIT Technology Review senior AI reporter James O’Donnell for a subscriber-only conversation with King about his work, being named one of our Innovators Under 35, and new ways of seeing biology., Register now to attend live today at 6:30 p.m. BST / 1:30 p.m. EDT / 10:30 a.m. PDT., Want to join the conversation? Subscribe to MIT Technology Review for exclusive access to all our Roundtables.

10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Form Energy and its iron batteries

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Form Energy is one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch 2026, available exclusively to subscribers., As wind and solar power grow, utilities need cheaper ways to store electricity for longer periods. Form Energy aims to meet that need with batteries that can store energy for 100 hours., The company has developed a new type of battery using iron, a far more abundant and cheaper metal than those used in many existing batteries. It uses a process that Form calls “reversible rusting,” in which iron turns to rust as the battery discharges and back to iron when it charges., See how Form Energy hopes to make renewable power more reliable., —Jonathan W. Rosen

Inside the experimental world of animal infrastructure

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the mid-2000s, toads were meeting a gruesome end near Ede, a leafy old town in the Netherlands. Residents responded by building wildlife tunnels beneath the road to help them reach their breeding ponds safely., The crossings became popular. But a few years later, researchers found the local toad population had crashed from more than 10,000 to fewer than 1,000., The case reflects a wider global push to build wildlife crossings and other forms of “animal infrastructure.” But do they actually help animal populations recover? Read the full story to find out., —Matthew Ponsford

We can still have nice things

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.), + Check out this podcast about the incredible, mysterious powers of fungi. + A four-year-old boy's simple habit of waving to his neighbors is transforming his community. + From treehouses to geodesic domes, these homes show what happens when people build outside the rules. + Remember when the internet was made by people? The Museum of the Human Web is a playful archive of that era.

How much more can nuclear power plants give?

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In this age of rising electricity demand, people are trying to squeeze every last bit of power out of every power plant. Over the past few weeks, there’s been big news about the nuclear industry trying to do just that. Constellation, the largest nuclear operator in the US, announced plans to add nearly a gigawatt of new capacity across 11 existing nuclear reactors at six plants. On October 5, the Department of Energy awarded Vistra a $4.2 billion loan to upgrade three plants. Pushing existing reactors to produce more could quickly provide more clean power for data centers. But just how much additional power can we count on? Read the full story to find out., —Casey Crownhart, This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate tech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: BasiGo and its fleet of electric buses

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

BasiGo is one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch 2026, available exclusively to subscribers. BasiGo aims to replace the tens of thousands of diesel-powered buses on sub-Saharan African roads with electric ones that generate far fewer emissions. Its pay-as-you-drive business model helps make EVs more attainable for private bus operators, while the company provides leasing, maintenance, insurance and charging infrastructure. The company has more than 150 electric buses on the road in Kenya and Rwanda, with a reservation list of 1,200 customers. Now it’s targeting another major source of pollution on the roads: trucks. Here’s how BasiGo is working to electrify public transport in Africa., —Geoffrey Kamadi, Subscribers can now access the full 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch, spanning everything from smart turbines to semi-solid-state batteries.

OpenAI is throwing everything into building a fully automated researcher

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

—Will Douglas Heaven, OpenAI has a new grand challenge: building an AI researcher—a fully automated agent-based system capable of tackling large, complex problems by itself. The San Francisco firm said the new goal will be its “north star” for the next few years. The company plans to build “an autonomous AI research intern” that can take on a small number of specific research problems. The intern will be the precursor to the fully automated multi-agent system, which is slated to debut in 2028. In an exclusive interview, OpenAI’s chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, talked me through the plans. Find out what I discovered.

We can still have nice things

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.), + Judge a book by its first pages, not its cover, at Uncovered. + Reading Maps plots the real-world journeys taken by characters in books and films. + Aerospace engineer Tom Stanton has built a supersonic trebuchet in his backyard. + Take an etymological tour of Europe with this video tracing the names of every country on the continent.