Mechanical reasoning test.

SpaceX static-fired all 33 engines on its new Starship V3 Super Heavy booster simultaneously. Most powerful rocket booster ever built. Zero room for error, and it passed.

Berlin engineers just built the most efficient tandem solar cell yet, stacking CIGS under perovskite. Two materials, two halves of the sunlight spectrum, one panel. Efficiency records are falling every few months now.

By 2040, global lithium supply won’t cover even half of demand. Every EV, phone, and grid battery is racing for the same shrinking pool of metal. Recycling just became mandatory, not optional.

Space fact: On average it takes the light only 1.3 seconds to travel from the Moon to Earth.

What is the ideal relationship? PV = nRT

Life tip: don't forget to wash your mousepad once in a while…

NASA’s X-59 just broke Mach 1.4 (925 mph) at 55,000 ft, the exact speed/altitude it was designed for. No windshield. No sonic boom. Just cameras feeding an AR display to the pilot. First quiet supersonic jet since Concorde retired.

Diamond is the hardest natural material, meaning it resists scratching. But hardness ≠ strength. The strongest natural material by toughness (energy absorbed before fracture) is nacre, mother-of-pearl. It's 3,000x tougher than the calcium carbonate it's made from, because of how the layers interlock. Molluscs engineered a composite material 500 million years ago. We're still copying it.

Most engineering projects fail because of questions nobody asked at the start. Here are the 8 that matter most, before a single line is drawn: 1. WHAT DOES SUCCESS ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE? Not the spec. The outcome. "A bridge that carries X vehicles per day" is a spec. "Economic connectivity between two communities" is the outcome. Design for the outcome. 2. WHO HAS THE AUTHORITY TO CHANGE THIS? Identify every stakeholder who can alter requirements mid-project. Get them aligned before you start. Surprises from power centres you didn't map will kill your schedule. 3. WHAT IS THE ONE THING THAT WOULD MAKE THIS FAIL? Name your single biggest risk. Now test it first, not last. 4. WHAT ARE WE ASSUMING THAT WE HAVEN'T VERIFIED? List your top 10 assumptions. Rank by consequence if wrong. Address the dangerous ones before committing to the design. 5. WHAT DOES THIS LOOK LIKE WHEN IT BREAKS? Define failure modes before you design. You'll make different choices. 6. HOW WILL THIS BE MAINTAINED? Design for the person maintaining it in 10 years, not the person building it now. They won't have your knowledge. They'll have a manual. 7. WHAT WILL WE DO IF THE BUDGET DROPS 30%? Forces you to identify which 70% of scope is essential. Decisions made under pressure produce worse outcomes than decisions made in advance. 8. IS THIS THE RIGHT PROBLEM? The hardest question. Solve the right problem badly and you've wasted nothing. Solve the wrong problem brilliantly and you've wasted everything. Ask these once. You'll save months.

Customer: Do you have any two-watt, 4-volt bulbs? Sales Rep: For what? Customer: No, two. Sales Rep: Two what? Customer: Yes. Sales Rep: No.

Firefighting tab

For decades, converting CO₂ into methanol (a useable fuel) required a catalyst that did two things simultaneously: 1. Activate the CO₂ 2. Hydrogenate it into methanol The problem: these two steps interfere with each other at the same active site. Optimising for one degraded the other. This is called a selectivity-activity trade-off, and it's been the wall stopping CO₂-to-fuel from scaling. On June 14, 2026, researchers announced a new catalyst design that separates the two steps onto different active sites within the same material. Result: methanol production tripled compared to the best previous catalysts. Why this matters: Methanol is a direct fuel for shipping engines, fuel cells, and chemical production. The shipping industry (responsible for 3% of global CO₂ emissions) is actively looking for drop-in fuels that work in existing engines. CO₂ captured from industrial stacks this catalyst renewable hydrogen = carbon-neutral methanol. In theory, it closes the carbon loop entirely. The engineering gap between laboratory performance and industrial scale remains. But triple efficiency is the kind of jump that makes scaling economics viable. The best energy solution isn't always a new source. Sometimes it's a better reaction.

It took 20 years to do it. EPFL engineers just put a femtosecond laser — the kind that takes up a full lab bench — onto a chip. A femtosecond laser fires pulses lasting 0.000000000000001 seconds. Used in eye surgery, materials science, and cancer detection. Now it fits in a device smaller than a fingernail. Medicine, manufacturing, and imaging just got radically smaller.

Nice

Space fact: There is no sound in space because molecules are too far apart to transmit sound.

What’s the one Android feature you wish your iPhone phone had?

The first laser was made in California in 1960.

Tool of the day

Density explains why cold water feels colder than air at the same temperature. Because water is denser than air, your body loses heat 25 times more quickly while in water than it would in air at the same temperature.