Magazine

The Impossible issue

November/December 2026

Is it fun to dream about living on the moon or uploading our brains? For sure. But questing after the impossible is about way more than pipe dreams. This issue explores what we can do when we have the audacity to push for our most daring goals, from synthesizing blood to building AI with real guardrails. Plus: A bionic eye, the AI companies training models with dead startups’ data, and more.

Read the issue

Letter from the editor

We can do impossible things

Peter Crowther Associates

Features

Categorized in Special feature
Are we there yet?
Some transformative technologies have been “coming soon” for years. We ran progress reports on six big ideas to see how close they are to reality.
Categorized in Space
What it would take to build a city on the moon
Mars may be a hellhole, but the moon isn't far behind.
Categorized in Biotechnology and health
The US military’s race to make fake blood
DARPA is funding a redoubled effort to develop a shelf-stable substitute for what field medics and trauma doctors need most: more blood.
Categorized in Climate change and energy
These startups hope “blended” food will cut our appetite for red meat
Beef is a climate burden. Can “blended meat” finally succeed in getting us to cut back?
Categorized in Biotechnology and health
Six wild ideas for perpetuating your mind
The quest for cognitive immortality continues.
Categorized in Artificial intelligence
We’re putting too much faith in AI’s ability to say no
Today’s LLMs are engineered to disobey dangerous requests. But AI refusal is far from foolproof—and could become an instrument of repression.

Also in this issue
- AI labs are buying data from dead startups to train their models
  Most startups fail. A new industry is giving their data an afterlife in AI.
  
  Categorized in Artificial intelligence
- Energy Dome and its carbon dioxide batteries
  Energy Dome is using the gas to deliver cheap long-duration energy storage for the grid.
  
  Categorized in Climate change and energy
- Job titles of the future: Delivery drone air traffic controller
  Trevor Wischnewsky is making sure that the sky stays organized as we enter the age of food delivery by drone.
  
  Categorized in Culture
- A visit to Samsung’s massive new semiconductor hub
  At the world’s biggest chipmaking complex, Samsung is building the fabs it needs for the AI memory boom.
  
  Categorized in Dispatch
- This implant can restore sight for patients with macular degeneration
  The PRIMA system lets people with advanced AMD read and do crosswords. Here’s how it works.
  
  Categorized in Biotechnology and health
- The ecologist revealing the invisible networks that revive rainforests
  Massive tree-planting programs lead to unhealthy monocrop plantations. Daisy Dent aims to help forests rebuild themselves.
  
  Categorized in Profile
- How far can we push computing?
  Nowadays big advances are made by scaling up—think more chips packed into ever-bigger data centers. But as we near the ceiling of what we can build, there’s still plenty of room below, at the fundamental physical limits of computing.
  
  Categorized in Computing
- Love is infrastructure
  A story about self-aware cities, direct democracy, and a steamy romance.
  
  Categorized in Fiction
- The AI Hype Index: AI loves cheating
  MIT Technology Review’s highly subjective take on the latest buzz about AI
  
  Categorized in Artificial intelligence

Updated

Magazine

The Impossible issue

Letter from the editor

Features

Are we there yet?

What it would take to build a city on the moon

The US military’s race to make fake blood

These startups hope “blended” food will cut our appetite for red meat

Six wild ideas for perpetuating your mind

We’re putting too much faith in AI’s ability to say no

AI labs are buying data from dead startups to train their models

Energy Dome and its carbon dioxide batteries

Job titles of the future: Delivery drone air traffic controller

A visit to Samsung’s massive new semiconductor hub

This implant can restore sight for patients with macular degeneration

The ecologist revealing the invisible networks that revive rainforests

How far can we push computing?

Love is infrastructure

The AI Hype Index: AI loves cheating

Past issues

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