Hey readers, it's the 41st issue of the White Pill, your favorite newsletter covering developments at the frontier of space, science, engineering, AI, and more. Let's get right to it.

(To SF readers who came out to the meetup on Thursday: thank you for coming, and it was great to hang out.)

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This newsletter is brought to you by Harmonic.

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Space

Back to the moon. The lunar lander Odysseus, built by private company Intuitive Machines, launched from a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Valentine's Day. The mission — a NASA commissioned private 'delivery service' — will take cameras designed to "collect imagery of how the lunar surface changes from interactions with the spacecraft’s engine plume"; the "Lunar-Node 1," which will demonstrate navigational tech "with the aim of ultimately creating 'a lunar network of lighthouses' (they want future astronauts to be able to know where they are, and how to get to where they want to go up there); a "retroreflector" for determining the distances of orbital craft from the moon's surface, and more.

If all goes well, Odysseus will touch down near the lunar south pole next week. If it succeeds, it will be the first private company to ever land on the Moon, and the first American landing in over half a century. Ultimately, Odysseus is a preparatory measure for NASA's Artemis program, which will send astronauts to the moon — "ahead of humans, we want to get up as much science, technology, and exploration as possible." Feels like a pretty big deal! (NASA)

• Watch a great explainer of the logic behind this mission, and partnering with the private sector, on NASA Moon's Twitter account.

New space telescope. Ultraviolet (UV) 'light' (electromagnetic radiation) has shorter wavelengths than visible light; wavelength size is inversely proportional to how much energy light has. Practically, light having more or less energy means that its photons — the smallest discrete amount or particles of the electromagnetic field — are vibrating and higher or lower frequencies. So, roughly, UV light carries with it more energy because its photons are vibrating faster. This allows ultraviolet to, for example, break chemical bonds in your skin cells and give you a sunburn.

When a star with at least eight to 10 times the mass of the Sun exhausts its nuclear fuel, its core can no longer support the outer layers against gravity, leading to a sudden collapse and precipitating a supernova — basically a huge explosion. The temperatures here get fairly insane; at several million degrees, a significant amount of UV radiation is produced, especially in the early stages of the supernova, when the explosion's energy is at its peak.

On Tuesday, NASA announced that its space telescope UVEX (UltraViolet Explorer) will launch in the 2030s to, in part, study UV radiation from supernova explosions in detail, which can provide some pretty interesting information about the explosion and the environment around the supernova. UVEX will also "capture the explosions that follow bursts of gravitational waves caused by merging neutron stars." Really cool. (NASA)

Liquid water on Mimas. Researchers have discovered a liquid water ocean hiding beneath the cratered surface of Mimas, one of Saturn’s smallest moons (mean diameter of 246 miles, or 396 kilometers) (also, this is the smallest known celestial object that is roughly round from its own gravity). If you're trying to picture what an ocean hiding beneath the surface of a moon looks like, don't imagine a cavernous hole or open space inside the moon where water sloshes around. It's probably more accurate to envision a vast, subsurface ocean that spans the entire moon, sandwiched between its solid core and the icy outer shell. This configuration is similar to what scientists have found on other icy moons in the Solar System, such as Europa. Based on a detailed analysis of Mimas’s tidal interactions with Saturn, the researchers figured out that the ocean is relatively young, at least by astronomical standards, at somewhere between five to 15 million years old.

The discovery makes Mimas a target for scientists searching for life beyond Earth. Also, the fact that Mimas was hiding an ocean potentially capable of supporting life suggests there are likely more unexpected places for life to develop. (SciTech Daily)

More:

• Above is a video of some astronauts on the ISS tossing a football around in its low-gravity environment, on the occasion of the Superbowl. Also: did you know the structure of the ISS basically takes up an entire football field?

• And check out this spectacular video of Mars’ moon Phobos partly eclipsing the Sun, as viewed by NASA’s Perseverance rover from the planet's surface. Originally composed of 57 individual pictures, it was cleaned up and stitched together by NASA image processor Jason Major. More info on the extremely tiny Phobos:

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Engineering, AI

One of the primary reasons the White Pill exists is, and I mean this literally, to be an antidote to the feeling you get when nearly all the news you consume makes you some manner of upset, alarmed, and tribal. I have never not considered this rationale, this raison d'être, while compiling, writing, and editing every issue of the Pill; it is basically always top of mind. I don't want any controversy. There is no controversy. The White Pill is a vehicle for clearly and unambiguously enjoyable things that your fellow humans are doing, building, achieving, etc.

However, reader, today I must — with some reticence — rebel against this standard, however carefully we've hewed to it in the past. I come to you with the following claim:

Lab grown meat seems good. If it is literally the same as meat from an actual chicken (nutritionally, taste-wise), it seems to me completely obvious that the chicken should not be killed and that I should eat the stuff grown in a lab. I also will know that I'm not ingesting the hormones, antibiotics, and other medications administered to the chickens during the course of their miserable lives. (Full disclosure I eat all types of meat all the time.)

I mention this on the occasion of head of TED Chris Anderson's recent post on X to share his firsthand experience of eating chicken “grown from a droplet of muscle cells." He described it this way: "DELICIOUS. Succulent, moist, the right texture. Chicken as it should be."

The company that created the chicken is called UPSIDE Foods, started in 2015 as Memphis Meats and reaching unicorn status in 2022. It's the first cultivated meat company in the U.S. to receive FDA approval, and it's recently announced the construction of its first commercial factory for cultivated meat. The new factory will focus first on cultivated chicken and potentially be able to grow up to 30 million pounds of meat. Let's go. (@TEDChris)

Bioluminescent petunias approved for sale. After years of research, Light Bio finally received USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) approval for their first bioluminescent plant, dubbed the firefly petunia. It’s now available for sale in the US, with a crop of 50,000 plants expected to be ready to ship in April. The flowers look just like normal petunias during the day, but glow a continuous soft green at night.

To create a bright enough light the team borrowed genes from several bioluminescent mushrooms and used directed evolution to increase the brightness. The end product works in a variety of plants. Next steps include increasing “the luminescence by as much as 10-fold, add different colors to the lineup, and expand their work into different plant varieties.” There’s a pretty epic video on their website. It’s not quite Pandora, but it’s heading in that direction in a hurry. I want one. (Singularity Hub)

New food created. South Korean scientists created a new hybrid type of food, growing animal cells — beef in this case — inside grains of rice. The idea is to offer a more balanced diet within a single food, something that could be helpful in a variety of areas from space travel to meal kits for soldiers, to something unique for everyday consumers. The lead author of the study commented that we can "Imagine obtaining all the nutrients we need from cell-cultured protein rice… Rice already has a high nutrient level, but adding cells from livestock can further boost it." (Interesting Engineering)

More:

• OpenAI released Sora, a text-to-video model that will allow users to create videos of up to 60 seconds with a simple text prompt. Their announcement includes Sora's video for the text prompt "Beautiful, snowy Tokyo city is bustling. The camera moves through the bustling city street, following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls. Gorgeous sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes."

• Also check out this seriously cool thread of a user tweaking a 'base video' with Sora.

• Newly designed padding is able to absorb up to 25% more force that the current best products available. It can be easily 3D printed, and could be incorporated into everything from helmets to vehicles, increasing safety. Sweet. (Interesting Engineering)

• Varroa mites are a deadly honeybee pest, reducing honey production and often causing colony collapse. The solution might be lasers. New Zealand researchers are setting up tiny lasers at the entrance to beehives that are able to zap the mites as they enter on the bees. It’s a work in progress, but they hope to have it up and running within five years. (Newshub)

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The White Pill Investment Index tracks investments in companies developing interesting, exciting, forward-thinking products. Deals are sourced using a combination of Pitchbook and reach outs to each company.

• Ion Exchange lithium extraction — Lilac, a company that uses ceramic beads to chemically extract lithium from brine (they say this technique needs one-tenth the acreage of evaporation ponds, and is six times more efficient), raises a $145 million Series C

• Cell coverage from space — Lynk, a company developing nanosatellites to provide cell connectivity that can be used by phones (no phone hardware upgrades needed), reaches an agreement to go public via a reverse merger

• AI doctor sidekick — Ambience, a company developing AutoScribe, a tool that listens to patient-doctor conversations to help complete paperwork, raises a $70 million Series B

• AI digital twins for medical studies — Unlearn, a startup that is creating digital twins for use in control groups of clinical studies (this can be used to accelerate trials and certifications), raises a $50 million Series C

• Annual full-body cancer screening — Ezra, a startup that offers annual MRI’s to screen for cancer in up to 13 organs, raises a $21 million Series A

• Sensors in package labels — Sensos, a company that offers package labels with embedded sensors to report on package conditions such as location, temperature, drops, and tampering (this can be used for expensive or sensitive parcels), raises a $20 million Series A

• Underwater robots — Nauticus, a company that offers underwater robots (they’re used by customers in defense, mining, exploration, and energy), raises $19.3 million of debt financing

• 16-day weather forecasts — Jua, a startup developing an AI “Large Physics Model” that can forecast weather accurately up to 16 days into the future (their main customers are energy traders), raises a $16 million seed

• Microrobots for treating disease — Bionaut, a company developing injectable “bionaut” capsules that can be steered via externa magnets to certain locations in the body to treat or monitor disease, raises a $12.86 million Series B

• Drones for cargo — Elroy Air, a company developing eVTOL drones to be used for “middle mile” cargo transport (their Chaparral aircraft is designed to carry 300 lbs of cargo), raises a $8.56 million Series A

• Electric airliner — Cosmic Aerospace, a company developing the Skylark, a 600-mile-range, 24-passenger aircraft that’s powered by all-electric turbofan engines, raises an undisclosed amount of venture funding

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Medicine

3D printed cartilage. Last week we reported about a development in 3D printing that would allow researchers to create specifically-designed clusters of neurons on command. This week, we're here to tell you about a method for printing cartilage, from researchers at Vienna University of Technology.

In this method, scientists used a laser-based printing system to create tiny cage-like structures that look a little like a football and only have a diameter of a third of a millimeter. These structures can be printed into any shape, then are filled with stem cells, which develop into cartilage. As the cartilage grows, the printed structure deteriorates, leaving behind the cartilage in the desired shape. (Really f***ing cool.)

In theory, the technique isn’t just limited to cartilage, either. It could even be used someday to create larger tissues, such as bone tissue. (Science Daily)

Neural prosthetics. A team out of Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University of Southern California have demonstrated the first successful use of a neural prosthetic device to recall specific memories. It uses a new model that decodes which clusters of neurons store different pieces of specific information, then uses that information to apply neurostimulation to the hippocampus when the brain tries to store that information.

The device was tested on 14 adults with epilepsy, and the study found that when used on individuals with impaired memory function, 40% showed significant increases in memory performance. The researchers’ ultimate goal is to restore memory function lost due to Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, or brain injury, allowing more people to live independently. (Frontiers)

More:

• Ultrasound took a step forward recently with the invention by MIT engineers of a postage-stamp sized ultrasound sticker that can be placed on the skin and is “designed to monitor internal organs for signs of disease like liver or kidney failure. It could also monitor the progression of things like solid tumors.” This sort of longer-term monitoring could greatly improve patient health and treatment outcomes. (Interesting Engineering)

• Wolves and semi-feral dogs around Chernobyl have developed extra resistance against cancer, according to new research (??). Understanding the genetic changes behind this could lead to improved cancer survival for humans. (IFL Science)

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Fun stuff

Here's a stunning video from a commercial flight of the erupting Icelandic volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula. Will never get tired of watching footage of this thing go off. (@Rainmaker1973)

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Touch grass this weekend, everyone.

— Brandon Gorrell

This issue of the White Pill was written with an enormous amount of help from Owen Lewis and Ryan Kirk.