Hey readers, it's the 40th 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.

But first — San Francisco readers! You know what time it is! Pirate Wires is having another GET TOGETHER at a bar next Thursday around 6PM. We will reveal the specifics soon, please mark your calendars for now. Thank you.

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Space

Some bacteria could survive on Mars. An interdisciplinary team just published a study in Astrobiology identifying four species of bacteria that can survive on Mars. The squad created Mars-like conditions and found that all four survived, at least temporarily. Three of them lasted three weeks, but one (P. aeruginosa) multiplied and thrived. The experiment is a step in the direction of a permanent human presence on Mars, as bacteria could serve a pivotal role in quite a few unlocks we need before we set up shop up there. For example, we could potentially use bacteria to 'scrub' the perchlorates — compounds that are toxic to humans — out of the Martian soil, where they're ubiquitous; we'll almost certainly need bacteria to help us process, decompose, and thus recycle organic waste; we could maybe use bacteria, even, to convert carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen or methane, contributing to the production of breathable air or as a step towards creating a more Earth-like atmosphere (terraforming). Pretty cool. (Phys.org)

Autonomous space robotics. Take a look (above) at the robots Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) is developing to repair orbital and off-Earth habitats. As we go out there more — and for longer, with bigger ships and more equipment — repair becomes a pressing issue. Autonomous robotics will play a critical role in making space stations more 'self-sustaining,' allowing humans crews to focus on other stuff. (Interesting Engineering)

More:

• NASA's Juno Spacecraft, which "just made the closest flybys of Jupiter’s moon Io that any spacecraft has carried out in more than 20 years" — it came within 900 miles of the surface, or 1,500 kilometers — took a crystal clear pic of the moon that shows one half illuminated by "Jupitershine," or the sun's reflection from Jupiter. More info about what's in the pic here.

• The ESA’s EnVision mission to Venus was officially adopted by its Science Programme Committee, which means "the study phase is complete and ESA commits to implementing the mission." Aiming for a 2031 launch, the probe will study Venus' geology and atmosphere. (SciTechDaily)

• Read this quick, fun piece about leveraging black holes for energy — or bombs — then watch this Kurzgesagt video on the same topic.

• Perseverance snapped the above pic of Ingenuity, NASA's small robotic helicopter that's been on Mars since 2020, which "can no longer fly after sustaining damage to its rotors following what NASA describes as an “anomalous landing” on decent during its 72nd flight on January 18, 2024." (PetaPixel)

• Ingenuity had snapped this frankly insane pic of the mission's backshell, which had been jettisoned before Ingenuity and Perseverance landed, and smashed onto the Martian surface at a safe distance from the landing site. (@LMSpace)

• NASA has asked the US space industry for private Mars mission proposals on how to complete four private missions to Mars, yet another signal that space will increasingly be the domain of the private sector. (ars technica)

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Energy, Engineering, AI

SCROLLS. In a feat previously considered impossible by many historians and archeologists, teams have successfully used artificial intelligence to “virtually unroll” the Herculaneum Papyri, an ancient Roman library of scrolls that were baked and buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. While the progress is incredible and has allowed 15 columns from the end of one scroll to be read, this represents only about 5% of a single scroll — out of about 1800 that have been found so far. There may be thousands, or tens of thousands more to find, which would hugely expand our understanding of the Roman Empire at the time, and its history.

Researchers think the text made legible by AI was written by Epicurean philosopher Plilodemus, who comments, in the scroll, on life’s pleasures, and criticizes the stoics (lol). As the scroll-reading project — named the Vesuvius Challenge — moves forward, I'm sure far more will be revealed.

Read a great account of how they did it from Ashlee Vance at Bloomberg. (@whitepill_pw)

• Also Elon will help moving forward, ty Elon very cool

Fusion confirmed. The development of fusion reactors has gained an impressive amount of steam over the last couple of years. This week, five independent teams reported that they have reviewed and verified the claims made by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) regarding its ability to surpass the breakeven point of a fusion reaction–that is, more energy was created by the reaction than was consumed.

This confirms, at least in theory, that nuclear fusion should be usable as a power source. There is, of course, a lot of work still to be done. The scale and output need to be much larger to justify the technology’s use in commercial settings. Then we have to figure out a way to shrink it all down so it’s small enough to power my flying car for trips across the country. (phys.org)

British fusion also confirmed. And more fusion news out of Britain: an experiment carried out at JET (the Joint European Torus) using deuterium-tritium fuel set a new fusion record for most energy produced. “In JET’s final deuterium-tritium experiments…high fusion power was consistently produced for 5 seconds, resulting in a ground-breaking record of 69 megajoules using a mere 0.2 milligrams of fuel.” Very roughly, this is half the energy an average US household uses in a day. Anyways, check out the somewhat frightening video they took while it was happening. (CCFE)

Disarming nukes. Deep in the realm of seriously cool but possibly impractical devices, X user @ToughSF surfaced a paper from 2003 in which three researchers developed a way to unilaterally disable all nuclear bombs on earth with a 1000TeV neutrino beam that would shoot through the earth and cause every nuclear warheads to “fizzle.”

(For comparison, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is currently the largest particle accelerator on the planet, has a maximum beam energy (so far) of a mere 13TeV. To create the theoretical neutrino beam, the “cannon” would need a circumference greater than 620 miles (1,000 km) and use more energy than the whole of Great Britain. Even the paper’s authors acknowledge the technical requirements are “totally ridiculous.”)

Check out the discussion here.

New collider. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN consists of a 16 mile (27 km) ring buried underground near Geneva, Switzerland. It’s most famous success is probably finding the Higgs boson particle, which is responsible for giving mass to other fundamental particles (weird). The LHC will be nearing the end of its life around 2040, but CERN is already detailing its plans for another collider, to be buried underneath both France and Switzerland, called the Future Circular Collider (FCC). It should start smashing particles together around 2050, and be fully ramped up to its target energy of 100 trillion electronvolts (compared to the LHC record of 13.6 trillion) by around 2070. Forming a 80.7km tunnel 5.5m in diameter, this is quite the epic science project. (Phys.org)

More:

• Check out a time-lapse video of an icebreaker freeing ships stuck in ice, posted by the always interesting @machinepix account.

• We covered Napier, maker of hydrofoil boats that 'glide' above the water, and who is currently running a pilot water taxi boat program in SF, in a previous issue of the White Pill. This week, someone posted a cool video of one of them on the water, watch it.

• Someone created a bunch of famous paintings with Midjourney. Mona Lisa above; check out the rest in this thread.

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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.

• Electric airliner — Heart Aerospace, a company developing the ES-30, a 30-passenger, 4-motor regional jet that’s expected to be certified in 2028, raises a $107 million Series B from United Airlines Ventures, Air Canada, and Sagitta Ventures

• GMO for plants, but hardcore — Inari, a company using AI and “multiplex gene editing” to create crops that require 40% less water and nitrogen, while offering a 20% increase in yield, raises a $103 million Series F from Non-Government Schools Superannuation Fund, Flagship Pioneering, and Rivas Capital

• Food delivery robots — Starship, a startup that uses small, six-wheeled robots to deliver food and packages (they’ve completed over 5 million deliveries to date), raises $85.37 million of venture funding from undisclosed investors

• Wearable monitors for milk cows — Stellapps, a company developing an entire operating system for milk farmers, including the mooON™ wearable (it can be used to improve preventative health, enhance milk yield, and earn lower insurance for the herd), raises $20 million as part of a Series C from Qualcomm Ventures, IDH and Celesta Capital

• Non-proliferant nuclear energy — Transmutex, a Swiss company developing nuclear reactors that operate via a non-self-sustaining Thorium reaction (it’s called subcriticality, and carries no runaway risk), raises an $11.5 million Series A2 led by Steel Atlas and Union Square Ventures

• Anti-mildew robot for crops — Thorvald, a company that uses robots that fight mildew on fruit by blasting the plants with UV light overnight, raises $11.3 million from from Nysno Climate Investments, Rabo Food and Agri Innovation Fund and Melesio Capital

• 3D Printer for construction — Black Buffalo, a company that manufactures 3D printers that can print houses as high as three stories, while saving on labor and time, raises a $3.5 million of Series A

• Electric pontoon boats — Pyxis, a Singapore-based company developing electric boats to be used as ferries or for recreation, raises a $3.34 million Seed led by Motion Ventures and Shift4Good

• Warehouse robots — Robust.AI, a company developing industrial-grade robots that complement warehouse workers by transporting goods autonomously, raises $3 million of venture funding

• Text-to-action AI — Twin, a startup building AI tools that allow the user to describe an action — such as an HR administration task — which the AI will then complete for the user, raises a $3 million Seed from Factorial, Farmers, and Mozza

• Space tourism with balloons — Space Perspective, a company developing a high-altitude balloon and pressurized capsule to offer near-space tourism (the balloon will land at sea, where it will be met by a boat), raises an undisclosed amount of Angel funding

• Sustainable in-space economy — Interlune, a secretive startup led by former Blue Origin executives that has been operating in stealth mode since 2020, secured $15.5M in funding from undisclosed investors to further develop technology for harvesting resources from space. (TechCrunch)

• Thea Energy, a private fusion company working on stellarators, has successfully raised their $20M Series A round. “Thea is planning to build a pilot-scale reactor later this decade and a larger scale, 350-megawatt demonstration plant in the 2030s. By the time its commercial offering is hooked up to the grid, it’s hoping to produce power at $50 per megawatt-hour.” (@Fusion_Industry) (TechCrunch)

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Medicine

Custom brain tissue on demand. This week researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reported that they’ve been able to successfully develop the world’s first 3D-printed brain tissue that grows and functions like typical brain tissue. Their achievement should help scientists studying a wide range of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s. The lab claims to be able to create “pretty much any type of neuron at any time.” What makes the discovery particularly exciting is that the new printing technique should be available to many labs. It doesn’t require special printing methods or any tools or materials not found in most labs. (Science Daily)

Another CRISPR win. Gene editing continues to prove its usefulness across a wide range of domains. This week, a paper released in the New England Journal of Medicine detailed a trial in which researchers successfully treated more than ten patients with hereditary angioedema, a genetic condition that can cause painful, and possibly fatal, swelling attacks.

In the trial, the researchers used the CRISPR/Cas9 therapy to target and edit one specific gene. Although long-term study is still needed, a single infusion appears to have permanently cured the patients' symptoms. If approved, the therapy will be the second that uses CRISPR, alongside CASGEVY, which treats sickle cell disease. However, this treatment is unique in that it takes place inside the body, unlike CASGEVY, in which the cells are taken out of the patient, edited, then reintroduced. (Science Daily)

New Alzheimer’s treatment aims to directly restore memory. A new approach to treating Alzheimer’s Disease ignores accumulations of toxic plaques generally thought to be responsible, and instead using a protein called KIBRA (so called because it’s found in the kidneys and brain) to repair damaged neuronal synapses, reversing memory loss. KIBRA is vital for synapses to function in forming and recalling memories, and those with Alzheimer’s have a deficiency of it in their brains. In mice at least, scientists found that KIBRA “can reverse the memory impairment associated with this type of dementia [Alzheimer’s]. They found that KIBRA rescues mechanisms that promote the resilience of synapses” despite ignoring the damage caused by toxic protein buildups which may be the trigger for Alzheimer’s and some other dementias. (SciTechDaily)

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Fun stuff

1,000 years ago, there was a "House of Wisdom" in Baghdad, a "a treasury of ancient texts and a place of study, of medicine, mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy, of music and poetry and literature," where "librarians, binders, copyists, translators" flocked from faraway lands, according to favorite follow @culturaltutor. Read the full thread here.

More:

• Here's a pic of an entire rainbow (entire rainbows are circles).

• Here's a pic of a gecko trapped in amber who died 54 million years ago.

• Here's a video of a device that shows how the movement of plate tectonics works (the video isn't boring).

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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.