MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The Kids issue features… What does growing up in an age of chatbots and agents mean for kids’ future? From the role AI plays in their day-to-day lives to how they cope with the existential dread that comes with climate change, young people are asserting their smarts to define their relationship with technology and the world around them. Plus!…
LLMs need vastly more data than children to learn language. Understanding why could help us create more efficient models—and reveal more about developing minds.
SpaceX and other companies want to put millions of satellites into space. Could orbit run out of room?
What really happened on Easter Island?
For decades, an influential theory blamed the Rapanui for their own downfall—a story made famous by Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. New evidence tells a different tale
How NASA turned a spy satellite into its new dark energy telescope
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon launch to unravel the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter
Why your brain turns life into stories
Neuroscience is revealing how our brains are wired for narrative
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The Engineering issue features ‘Go big or go home’. That may be true—sometimes. But, just as often, solving engineering challenges means thinking small. From the tiny transistors powering the AI boom to the machines digging the world’s longest tunnels, human ingenuity is tackling problems at every scale. Plus: A fresh spin on air conditioning, stratospheric cell service, and more.
As the data-center boom puts pressure on the grid, some companies say the answer isn’t just more power plants but software that dials down centers’ energy-guzzling ways when demand spikes.
Wuhan’s biohazard disposal system suffered a cascade of failures in the months leading up to Covid: new revelations that official investigators have overlooked
You Probably Own This 7-Eleven (and That’s Why It Looks So Sad)
The qualities that make built places charming are best stewarded by people who live there. But America’s soul-crushing suburban districts are now owned by people far away — people who don’t even know they’re owners at all.
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The Nature issue features Technology remade the world. Now what? As we work to understand how much our own ingenuity has created an increasingly unnatural world, we’re also confronting tough choices about what to preserve—and how. Plus: Killer microbes from the mirror universe and fresh fiction from Jeff VanderMeer.
The red wolf has long been a contentious species. The debate over its preservation got even messier last year, when Colossal said it had cloned the animal.
The idea that modern humans inherited DNA from Neanderthal ancestors is one of the 21st century’s most celebrated discoveries in evolution. It may not be that simple.
This feature dives into the ethics and technology behind “resurrection biology.” It tracks the progress of teams working on the Woolly Mammoth and the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger). Rather than just “cloning,” the article explains how researchers are using CRISPR to edit the genomes of living relatives to recreate extinct traits, questioning whether these hybrids truly represent the lost species or are simply “proxies” for a vanished world.
2. Ancient DNA and the Human Speed-Up
Drawing from a groundbreaking study, this piece explores how human evolution didn’t slow down after the dawn of agriculture—it accelerated. By analyzing 2,000-year-old genetic samples, researchers found that the transition to farming and dense city living forced our immune systems and metabolisms to evolve faster in a few millennia than they had in the previous 50,000 years.
3. The “Headless Wonder”: The Death of Comet MAPS
A standout in the space section, this article chronicles the dramatic disintegration of Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS). Discovered only in early 2026, the comet skimmed the sun on April 4th and lost its nucleus entirely. Astronomers explain the “headless wonder” phenomenon—where a comet’s tail continues to drift through space without its head—and what its fragile structure reveals about the early solar system.
4. Starquakes: The Archaeology of Red Giants
Using data from “stellar archaeology,” this article describes how vibrations inside stars—known as starquakes—are allowing scientists to see hidden magnetic fields. By linking the magnetism of modern white dwarfs to their earlier lives as red giants, researchers have created a “fossil record” of a star’s evolution, offering a preview of what might happen to our own Sun in several billion years.
5. Artemis II: The Far Side and Beyond
Following the safe return of the Artemis II crew, this long-form report provides the first detailed look at the data gathered during their moon flyby. It highlights the crew’s record-breaking distance from Earth and their observations of the “Grand Canyon of the Moon”—the South Pole-Aitken basin. The article shifts focus to the upcoming Artemis III mission, discussing the challenges of establishing a long-term lunar base.
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