rachelcourtland.com - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

A German company is about to attempt the first successful commercial vertical orbital launch from continental Europe. The attempt heralds a new dawn as Europe seeks to end reliance on the US/SpaceX/Musk. Story by me in MIT Tech Review www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/20/1...

submitted 10 hours ago • 1 comment

This is a super, duper exciting result from the DESI experiment suggesting dark energy isnt constant?!: www.scientificamerican.com/article/froz...

submitted 1 day ago • 7 comments

Nobody tell DOGE, but the ARPA-E conference went ahead this year and TR's own @caseycrownhart.bsky.social was there:

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Well.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Hello my talk at @sxsw.com is now online if you want to catch up on what @technologyreview.com thinks are the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025! (Am i …. winking in this still??) youtu.be/srQwyArPnP8?...

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

This is not news to people who've experienced infertility, but also very good.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

ICYMI this series of 'as told tos' from @rhiannonwilliams.bsky.social is super fascinating - looking at al the ways in which people are using chatbots, and forming relationships with them. www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/13/1...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Gorgeous images of Mars and its moon Deimos here from ESA space mission Hera. Hera is travelling to a distant asteroid that NASA smashed a spacecraft into back in 2022, to inform a future asteroid shield system. So these are just a real bonus. www.newscientist.com/article/2472...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

This is a very, VERY big camera. I cannot wait for this observatory to get first light. It'll be amazing.

submitted 8 days ago • 4 comments

Interesting tale here on D-Wave claiming last year that their quantum computers could do things that no classical computer could do. This week that paper passed peer-review. Success, right? No. Two teams of classical computer scientists say they've caught up. www.newscientist.com/article/2471...

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Geoff wins snarky physics thread of the day.

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

MIT's @briancdeese.bsky.social & Grid Strategies' @robgramlichdc.bsky.social lay out a quick, cheap way to expand the US grid, without building new transmission lines. It's the closest thing to "a $20 bill sitting on the sidewalk as policymakers may ever encounter."

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

Republished from @physicsworld.bsky.social. ⚛️ 🧪 physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

submitted 10 days ago • 3 comments

What does the Office of the Chief Scientist do? According to NASA, "The OCS represents all of the scientific endeavors in the agency, ensuring they are aligned with and fulfill the administration’s science objectives." It oversees NASA's science. But no longer, because it is gone.

submitted 10 days ago • 4 comments

This photo was released today by Intuitive Machines, seemingly taken by their Athena IM-2 mission lander. The lander clearly tipped over, but otherwise looks OK. But it can't recharge, so is functionally dead. As far as I know, this is the first photo ever taken from the lunar south polar region.

submitted 13 days ago • 14 comments

Tomorrow could be a great day for space robots. The Athena lander is set to touch down on the Moon carrying the "Grace" Hopper robot, Yaoki 360° rover, and MAPP prospecting rover. Plus a micro-rover, AstroAnt, that will ride around on top of the MAPP rover! 🧪🔭 www.intuitivemachines.com/im-2

submitted 15 days ago • 3 comments

A very nice break from the news.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Rubio terminated 5800 USAID contracts – more than 90% of its foreign aid programs – in defiance of the courts. Here’s a list of just some of the lifesaving awards that were terminated. Nearly all were Congressionally mandated. They’ve saved millions of lives. 🧵

submitted 21 days ago • 436 comments

Phew! February is the month of quantum chips www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/27/1...

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

The first cellular network on the moon, among many other things, is set to launch tomorrow aboard Intuitive Machine's second lunar mission www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/18/1...

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

I'm always eager to read a @karenhao.bsky.social piece, but especially when it's in @technologyreview.com: www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/21/1...

submitted 25 days ago • 2 comments

Electric vehicle batteries can ignite weeks or even months after they're damaged, and the resulting blazes can be something else. Journalist Maya Kapoor writes about how first responders are learning a new playbook to deal with these conflagrations www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/24/1...

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

“They’re setting us up for economic decline.” @karenhao.bsky.social talks to federal scientists about the White House's funding cuts, which could do long-lasting damage to Americans' quality of life www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/21/1...

submitted 27 days ago • 1 comment

“They’re setting us up for economic decline.” @karenhao.bsky.social talks to federal scientists about the White House's funding cuts, which could do long-lasting damage to Americans' quality of life www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/21/1...

submitted 27 days ago • 1 comment

It's me! Briefly putting down my editor's hat to report on Microsoft's mind-bending approach.

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

#WritingOpportunity: MIT Technology Review is seeking pitches for an upcoming print issue. The theme is Power. The pitch deadline is Friday February 14. See thread below for more on what we're looking for and other details on pitching @technologyreview.com. (1/3)

submitted 45 days ago • 5 comments

Commercial supersonic flights might be on their way back. Great news for speedy travel, but maybe not so much for the climate, @caseycrownhart.bsky.social reports www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/05/1...

submitted 43 days ago • 1 comment

#WritingOpportunity: MIT Technology Review is seeking pitches for an upcoming print issue. The theme is Power. The pitch deadline is Friday February 14. See thread below for more on what we're looking for and other details on pitching @technologyreview.com. (1/3)

submitted 45 days ago • 5 comments

Let’s not get carried away. Good answers come at a cost. www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/31/1...

submitted 48 days ago • 0 comments

NIH appears to have canceled/postponed all of its study sections—the independent review panels that approve federal grants for health research. Such grants fund the work/salaries of 300k people at more than 2,500 institutions

submitted 57 days ago • 320 comments

I saw this all over Reddit yesterday.

submitted 57 days ago • 0 comments

My latest: what's the deal with all these ups and down in billion-dollar-plus quantum computing companies? Meanwhile, quantum start-ups continue to raise record amounts of money — more than $2.3 billion in 2024, according to Quantum Computing Report www.nature.com/articles/d41...

submitted 58 days ago • 1 comment

We’re hiring an AI reporter to come work with us at MIT Technology Review. Come join! www.technologyreview.com/job/news-rep...

submitted 58 days ago • 11 comments

A NATO-backed project held its first test simulating how to reroute vital communications from severed undersea cables to satellites. This comes amidst a spate of apparent sabotage targeting undersea cables from the Baltic Sea to Pacific Ocean. www.newscientist.com/article/2464...

submitted 63 days ago • 0 comments

I admit it - I sometimes find myself using ChatGPT or Claude to search for information. Yeah I know it makes stuff up, but it's just so much easier than having to trawl through Google links. And I'm not the only one. @mathonan.com on where it's headed. www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/06/1...

submitted 72 days ago • 3 comments

Yesss! One of my favorite computing topics. Cool to see this starting to be implemented in commercial hardware.

submitted 70 days ago • 0 comments

AI is turning search engines into answer engines, and click rates are dropping. But the news might not be all bad, @mathonan.com reports www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/06/1...

submitted 73 days ago • 1 comment

This summer I took a big swing at a simple question: What exactly are people talking about when they talk about AI? www.technologyreview.com/2024/07/10/1...

submitted 87 days ago • 1 comment

Mark your calendar for these science events coming in 2025 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

submitted 92 days ago • 0 comments

It's that time of year—@antonioregalado.bsky.social rounds up 2024's worst technology failures www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/17/1...

submitted 92 days ago • 1 comment

In A Christmas Carol, Dickens describes Marley's face having a dismal light "like a bad lobster in a dark cellar." Huh? He was likely referring to the glow of bioluminescent bacteria that can grow in/on crustaceans, presumably a more common observation at the time. 📷 tinyurl.com/6cj6knjw

submitted 92 days ago • 4 comments

New from me today in @technologyreview.com: for decades, scientists have dreamed of tracking migratory birds by listening in on their short, species-specific flight calls. Now, a new machine learning tool is unlocking a treasure trove of auditory data for the first time. 🐦🎙️ #naturewriting #scicomm

submitted 92 days ago • 2 comments

Nearly 50 years after the Vietnam War, risks persist from unexploded bombs and hazardous dioxin from the US' deadly military campaigns. But declassified satellite photos from wartime intelligence could help—I report on a fascinating #AGU24 talk for @science.org 🧪⚒️ www.science.org/content/arti...

submitted 94 days ago • 0 comments