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2025-12-30 23:00:00

The post These Were Our Favorite Tech Stories From Around the Web in 2025 appeared first on SingularityHub.

2025-12-29 23:00:00

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected].

“How will the Universe end? – Iez M., age 9, Rochester, New York

Whether the universe will “end” at all is not certain, but all evidence suggests it will continue being humanity’s cosmic home for a very, very long time.

The universe—all of space and time, and all matter and energy—began about 14 billion years ago in a rapid expansion called the Big Bang, but since then it has been in a state of continuous change. First, it was full of a diffuse gas of the particles that now make up atoms: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Then, that gas collapsed into stars and galaxies.

Our understanding of the future of the universe is informed by the objects and processes we observe today. As an astrophysicist, I observe objects like distant galaxies, which lets me study how stars and galaxies change over time. By doing so, I develop theories that predict how the universe will change in the future.

Predicting the Future by Studying the Past?

Predicting the future of the universe by extending what we see today is extrapolation. It’s risky, because something unexpected could happen.

Interpolation—connecting the dots within a dataset—is much safer. Imagine you have a picture of yourself when you were 5 years old, and then another when you were 7 years old. Someone could probably guess what you looked like when you were 6. That’s interpolation.

Maybe they could extrapolate from the two pictures to what you’d look like when you are 8 or 9 years old, but no one can accurately predict too far into the future. Maybe in a few years you get glasses or suddenly get really tall.

Scientists can predict what the universe will probably look like a few billion years into the future by extrapolating how stars and galaxies change over time, but eventually things could get weird. The universe and the stuff within might once again change, like it has in the past.

How Will Stars Change in the Future?

Good news: The sun, our medium-sized yellow star, is going to continue shining for billions of years. It’s about halfway through its 10 billion-year lifetime. The lifetime of a star depends on its size. Big, hot, blue stars live shorter lives, while tiny, cool, red stars live for much longer.

Today, some galaxies are still producing new stars, but others have depleted their star-forming gas. When a galaxy stops forming stars, the blue stars quickly go “supernova” and disappear, exploding after only a few million years. Then, billions of years later, the yellow stars like the sun eject their outer layers into a nebula, leaving only the red stars puttering along. Eventually, all galaxies throughout the universe will stop producing new stars, and the starlight filling the universe will gradually redden and dim.

In trillions of years—hundreds of times longer than the universe’s current age—these red stars will also fade away into darkness. But until then, there will be lots of stars providing light and warmth.

How Will Galaxies Change in the Future?

Think of building a sand castle on the beach. Each bucket of sand makes the castle bigger and bigger. Galaxies grow over time in a similar way by eating up smaller galaxies. These galactic mergers will continue into the future.

In galaxy clusters, hundreds of galaxies fall inward toward their shared center, often resulting in messy collisions. In these mergers, spiral galaxies, which are orderly disks, combine in chaotic ways into disordered blob-shaped clouds of stars. Think of how easy it is to turn a well-constructed sand castle into a big mess by kicking it over.

For this reason, the universe over time will have fewer spiral galaxies and more elliptical galaxies because the spiral galaxies combine into elliptical galaxies.

The Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy might combine in this way in a few billion years. Don’t worry: The stars in each galaxy would whiz past each other totally unharmed, and future stargazers would get a fantastic view of the two galaxies merging.

How Will the Universe Itself Change in the Future?

The Big Bang kick-started an expansion that probably will continue in the future. The gravity of all the stuff in the universe—stars, galaxies, gas, dark matter—pulls inward and slows down the expansion, and some theories suggest that the universe’s expansion will coast along or slow to a halt.

However, some evidence suggests that some unknown force is starting to exert a repulsive force, causing expansion to speed up. Scientists call this outward force dark energy, but very little is known about it. Like raisins in a baking cookie, galaxies will zoom away from each other faster and faster. If this continues into the future, other galaxies might be too far apart to observe from the Milky Way.

To summarize the best current prediction of the future: Star formation will shut down, so galaxies will be full of old, red, dim stars gradually cooling into darkness. Each group or cluster of galaxies will merge into a single, massive, elliptical galaxy. The accelerated expansion of the universe will make it impossible to observe other galaxies beyond the local group.

This scenario eventually winds down into a dark eternity, lasting trillions of years. New data might come to light that changes this story, and the next stage in the universe’s history might be something totally different and unexpectedly beautiful. Depending on how you look at it, the universe might not have an “end,” after all. Even if what exists is very different from how the universe is now, it’s hard to envision a distant future where the universe is entirely gone.

How does this scenario make you feel? It sometimes makes me feel wistful, which is a type of sadness, but then I remember we live at a very exciting time in the story of the universe: right at the start, in an era full of exciting stars and galaxies to observe! The cosmos can support human society and curiosity for billions of years into the future, so there’s lots of time to keep exploring and searching for answers.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post How Will the Universe End? The Dark Eternity That Awaits Us Trillions of Years From Now appeared first on SingularityHub.

2025-12-27 23:00:00

Readers went all-in on biotech this year. Gene editing brought the broad treatment of genetic disease into view; cancer-fighting T cells took on tumors; and scientists found a way to 3D print tissues inside the body. Beyond biotech, AI chips and progress in quantum computing made waves; humanoid robots began to look almost affordable; and Kawasaki dreamed up a robot you ride like a horse. Here’s to another year of breakthroughs—thanks for reading!

The post These Were SingularityHub’s Top 10 Stories in 2025 appeared first on SingularityHub.

2025-12-26 23:00:00

Commercial space stations are rapidly moving from concept to reality. As NASA prepares for the International Space Station’s retirement around 2030, a burgeoning private orbital industry could step into its shoes.

The ISS was humanity’s only permanent outpost in space for nearly a quarter of a century, until China’s Tiangong station was permanently crewed in 2022. But the ISS is nearing the end of its planned lifespan and NASA’s been clear that it doesn’t intend to replace the space station.

Instead, the agency wants to shift from landlord to tenant, purchasing space station services from private players rather than running a facility of its own. It’s betting the private space industry can help drive down costs and accelerate innovation.

This transition would mark a fundamental shift in the economics of low Earth orbit. And the first major milestone could come as soon as May 2026, when California-based startup Vast plans to launch its Haven-1 space station.

“If we stick to our plan, we will be the first standalone commercial LEO platform ever in space with Haven-1, and that’s an amazing inflection point for human spaceflight,” Drew Feustel, Vast’s lead astronaut and a former NASA crew member, recently told Space.com.

The company has already booked its launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9, and at around 31,000 pounds, Haven-1 will be the largest payload the rocket has ever carried. But as far as space stations go, it’s fairly modest.

Roughly the size of a shipping container, the single-module station will host crews of four for up to 10 days. But the company has tried its best to make the facility more comfortable than the utilitarian ISS, with “earth tones,” soft surfaces, inflatable sleep systems, and a revamped menu for astronauts.

Though the company hopes the design will tempt some customers, the station is really a proof of concept for Haven-2, a larger modular station that Vast hopes could succeed the ISS. Haven-2 will feature a second docking port to connect with cargo supply craft or new modules.

Development of Vast’s second station relies on funding from NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations program, however, the company says. Eager to spur a new orbital economy that can support its missions, the agency started the program in 2021 to fund and assist a host of startups building space stations.

The agency has paid out about $415 million in the program’s first phase to help companies flesh out their designs. But next year, NASA plans to select one or more companies for Phase 2 contracts worth between $1 billion and $1.5 billion and set to run from 2026 to 2031.

Axiom Space, one of the companies vying for this funding, plans to piggyback on the ISS to build its space station. The company will first launch a power and heating module and connect it to the ISS. The module will be able to operate independently starting in 2028. They’ll then gradually add habitat and research modules alongside airlocks to create a full-fledged private space station.

Meanwhile, Voyager Space and Airbus are designing a space station called Starlab, which recently moved into “full-scale development” ahead of an expected 2028 launch. The station can host four astronauts, features an external robotic arm, and is designed to launch in one go aboard SpaceX’s forthcoming Starship rocket.

In addition, Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, is working with Sierra Space and Boeing to build Orbital Reef, which they describe as a “mixed-use business park 250 miles above Earth.” The project recently put its designs to the test by asking people to carry out various day-to-day tasks, like cargo transfer, trash transfer, and stowage in life-size mockups of the habitat modules.

All these projects hope to have NASA as an anchor tenant. But they are also heavily reliant on the idea that there are a broad range of potential customers also willing to pay for orbital office space. With the cost of space launches continuing to fall, there’s hope that there will be ample demand from space tourists, researchers, and manufacturers eager to take advantage of the unique microgravity environments these stations can provide.

The economics are far from certain though, and competition will be fierce. Even if NASA is able to spur a private orbital economy, there may not be enough business to support multiple private space stations.

But with the sun setting on the ISS, a gap in the market is undoubtedly opening up. If things go to plan, we may soon find that humans have a lot more orbital destinations on the menu.

The post The Era of Private Space Stations Launches in 2026 appeared first on SingularityHub.

2025-12-25 23:00:00

When brain organoids were introduced roughly a decade ago, they were a scientific curiosity. The pea-sized blobs of brain tissue grown from stem cells mimicked parts of the human brain, giving researchers a 3D model to study, instead of the usual flat layer of neurons in a dish.

Scientists immediately realized they were special. Mini brains developed nearly the whole range of human brain cells, including neurons that sparked with electrical activity, making them an excellent way to observe and study the human brain—without the brain itself.

As the technology advanced and brain organoids matured, researchers coaxed them to grow structural layers with blood vessels roughly mimicking the cortex, the part of the brain that handles reasoning, working memory, and other high-level cognitive tasks. Parallel efforts derived organoids for other parts of the brain.

Mini brains can be made from a person’s skin cells and faithfully carry the genetic mutations that could cause neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism. The lab-grown blobs also provide a nearly infinite source of transplantable neural tissue, which in theory could help heal the brain after a stroke or other traumatic events. In early studies, organoids transplanted into rodent brains formed neural connections with resident brain cells.

More recently, assembloids have combined mini brains with other tissues, like muscles or blood vessels. These Frankenstein-ish assemblies capture how the brain controls bodily functions—and when those connections go awry.

As brain organoids have grown increasingly complex, ethical concerns about their use have grown too. After all, they’re made of neural tissue, which in our heads forms the basis of memory, emotions, sensations, and consciousness.

To be clear, there’s no evidence brain organoids can think or feel. They are absolutely not brains in a jar. But scientists can’t ignore the possibility they could eventually develop some sort of “sensation,” such as pain and, if they do, what that might mean for their development.

Aging Organoids

Harvard’s Paula Arlotta is among those who are concerned. An expert in the field, her team has developed ways to keep brain organoids alive for an astonishing seven years. Each nugget, smaller than a pea, is jam-packed with up to two million neurons and other human brain cells.  

Studying these mini brains for years has delivered an unprecedented look into human brain development. Our brains take nearly two decades to mature, an exceptionally long period of time compared to other animals. As the team’s organoids aged, they slowly changed their wiring and gene expression, reports Arlotta and colleagues in a recent preprint.

In older organoids, progenitor cells—these are young cells that can form different types of brain cells—quickly decided what type of brain cell they would become. But in younger organoids, the same cells took time to make their decision. As the blobs grew over an astonishing five years, their neurons matured in shape, function, and connections, similar to those of a kindergartner.

These long-lasting organoids could reveal secrets of the developing brain. Some efforts are tracing the origins of different cell types and how they populate the brain. Others are generating organoids from people with autism or deadly inherited brain disorders to test treatments.

Excitement is at an all-time high. But while championing the research, Arlotta and other experts recently penned an article arguing for a global regulation committee to steer the nascent field.

Meeting of Minds

While scientists always keep ethics in the mind, they’re also motivated by scientific discovery and the search for new treatments. Plenty of promising research has also raised ethical concerns regarding sourcing or consent. Take the notorious CRISPR baby scandal in 2018. A Chinese scientist unlawfully and permanently altered a gene in embryos, and the children subsequently born with those DNA edits didn’t have a say in the matter.

Brain organoids present a different challenge. As they become more sophisticated and capture the brain’s cellular and structural makeup, could they begin to feel pain? Used in biocomputers, could they show signs of intelligence? Is it ethical to implant human mini brains into animals, where experiments show they integrate with host brains and blur the lines between man and beast? What about implanting lab-grown brain tissue into humans?

This November, experts (including Arlotta), ethicists, and patient advocates gathered at a conference co-organized by Stanford law professor Henry Greely, who specializes in bioethics. The meeting wasn’t designed to generate comprehensive guidelines regarding brain organoids. But ethics was a throughline during the entire conference as researchers presented recent successes in the field and pitched where it could go next.

In particular, Stanford’s Sergiu Pasca, a co-organizer of the meeting, attracted attention. Earlier this year, his team linked four organoids into a neural “pain pathway.” The model combined sensory neurons, spinal and cortex organoids, and parts of the brain that process pain.

The scientists dabbed the chemical behind chili’s tongue-scorching heat onto the sensory side of the assembloid. It produced waves of synchronized neural activity, suggesting the artificial tissue had detected the stimuli and transferred information.

That’s not to say it felt pain. Detecting pain is only part of the story. It takes a second neural pathway, which the assembloids lacked, to trigger the unpleasant feeling. But the experiment and others underscore the need for regulation. One idea pitched at the conference is to create a new global organization similar to the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

The commission would track advances in the field and provide oversight that balances scientific merit with patient needs. During the meeting, patients and family members expressed hope that mini brains could lead to new therapies, especially for those with rare genetic disorders or severe autism.

Pasca may soon deliver on that promise. His team is working to understand Timothy syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that leads to autism, epilepsy, and often fatal heart attacks. Last year they developed a gene-altering molecule that showed promise in brain organoids mimicking the disease. The treatment also worked in a rodent model, and the team is planning to submit a proposal for a clinical trial next year.

Drawing the line for brain organoid research will require global cooperation. “A continuing international process is needed to monitor and advise this rapidly progressing field,” wrote Arlotta, Pasca, and others. While there aren’t any universal agreements yet, dialogue on ethics, including discussion and engagement with the public, should guide the nascent field.

The post Five-Year-Old Mini Brains Can Now Mimic a Kindergartener’s Neural Wiring. It’s Time to Talk Ethics. appeared first on SingularityHub.

2025-12-23 23:00:00

With just a single injection, a new treatment transforms immune cells in cancer patients into efficient tumor-killing machines. Now equipped with homing beacons, the cells rapidly track down and destroy their cancerous foes.

The shot is based on CAR T cell therapy, a breakthrough that uses genetic engineering to supercharge cancer-fighting T cells. Since its first FDA approval in 2017, CAR T has vanquished some deadly cancer cases with a one-and-done treatment.

But the technology is costly—for both body and wallet. CAR T cells are usually made outside the body in a lab. Patients undergo chemotherapy and other harsh treatments to make room for the enhanced immune cells, taxing an already ailing body with side effects. Making CAR T cells also takes precious time, and unfortunately, the clock often runs out.

At this year’s American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition, an Australian team presented a different approach: Transforming normal T cells into super soldiers inside the body. Four people treated for stubborn multiple myeloma—a blood cancer that destroys bones and kidneys—went into remission for up to five months.

Led by Phoebe Joy Ho at the University of Sydney in collaboration with Kelonia Therapeutics, the trial, although small and still preliminary, marks a step towards the next revolution in CAR T therapy. Reported in The American Journal of Managed Care, an audience member from the conference said the findings “take your breath away.”

Silver Bullet

CAR T therapy has transformed cancer care. Six formulations are approved in the United States for a variety of blood cancers. Hundreds of clinical trials that expand the life-saving technology to solid cancers—including breast and brain tumors—are underway.

Beyond cancer, the therapy is also being used to treat life-long autoimmune diseases, such as lupus and multiple sclerosis, where the body’s immune system destroys its own organs. A small trial found a single infusion of CAR T cells reduced symptoms in patients with lupus. Other efforts are using these custom living drugs to tamp down infections, restore heart health after an attack, and remove the “zombie cells” that accumulate during aging.

The procedure usually goes like this: A patient’s own T cells are extracted from their blood. Using gene editing tools, like CRISPR, the cells are supplied with extra protein “hooks.” These hooks let them better grab onto their targets—cancer cells or otherwise.

After a short course of chemotherapy or radiation to deplete existing immune cells and make room for new ones, the engineered CAR T cells are infused back into the body. Once there, the genetically engineered cells repopulate the immune system and hunt down their prey. The process, while undeniably efficient for some cancers, is costly and takes months—time that some patients don’t have.

“Off-the-shelf” CAR T is one solution. Instead of editing a patient’s own cells, scientists could transform a healthy population of donor T cells. But attempts have faced immune rejection. Even with more genetic tinkering, the cells struggle to survive and expand in the body.

One Shot Wonder

An alternative method directly converts a person’s T cells inside their own body.

In 2022, a team designed a shot to reprogram T cells using RNA. This avoids tinkering with a patient’s DNA. In mice with heart scarring, the injection revived the organ.

Other successes soon followed. Another shot converted T cells into CAR T cells within hours in mice and monkeys. The therapy targeted a type of blood cancer deriving from an overgrowth of B cells (another immune cell type). The shot boosted the immune system’s ability to destroy cancers in mice and slashed B cell numbers in monkeys. The effects lasted at least a month.

Both these treatments used fatty nanoparticles to deliver their payloads. They were also heavily modified to get around the so-called liver “sink.” Treatments often end up in the organ after injection. Careful design of surface proteins helped the therapies home in on T cells.

Gene-editors can also hitch a ride on a benevolent virus, stripped of disease-causing genes but highly efficient at tunneling into cells. Kelonia’s new technology used a virus to target T cells and avoid other cell types. One tweak, for example, added a small, engineered protein fragment that precisely targets T cells. Once inside, the payload synthesizes a gene that kills cancers.

The trick paid off. In a small trial, researchers gave the shot to four patients with previously uncontrollable multiple myeloma. The patients showed no signs of cancer in their bone marrow after a month. For one, the effect lasted at least five months. The side effects were also relatively minor, although some experienced mild cytokine release syndrome—an immune reaction that causes fever, chills, and other symptoms, which were easily managed.

The results come on the heels of a separate trial with similarly positive results. In July, four patients with multiple myeloma received an infusion of a virus carrying genes targeting T cells. Crafted by EsoBiotec in Belgium and Shenzhen Pregene Biopharma in China, the shot vanquished abnormal cells in the bone marrow of two patients after three months. The patients had previously undergone multiple cancer-related therapies to no avail.

The treatment did come with side effects. Blood pressure plunged, and two patients required supplemental oxygen. One showed confusion and temporary “brain fog.” These mental troubles aren’t common with traditional CAR T therapy, motivating researchers to find out why.

Despite risks, results from both trials highlight the promise of one-and-done CAR T therapy for deadly blood cancers. But it’s still early days. Scientists need to carefully follow patients over years to understand how long upgraded T cells remain in the body and their effect on cancers.

And not all viral carriers are made the same. Lentiviruses, used in both studies, can tunnel into the human genome, causing DNA typos that potentially trigger secondary cancers. The durability of the therapy, its longevity, and immune side effects also need to be studied.

Kelonia is adding more patients to their trial, amid an increasingly competitive landscape. AstraZeneca has acquired EsoBiotec to bring its technology to market. AbbVie, a drug company in Illinois, is testing the delivery of gene-editing tools to T cells via fatty nanoparticles in clinical trials. And Kelonia is planning a second clinical trial with an initial 20 patients and 20 more in an expansion phase, none of whom responded to at least three previous treatments.

“I think it gives us a glimpse into the future,” Ho told Science. “In vivo CAR T for multiple myeloma is here and hopefully it will stay.”

The post Single Injection Transforms the Immune System Into a Cancer-Killing Machine appeared first on SingularityHub.