CHINA BUILDS A BRAIN-COMPUTER INTERFACE INDUSTRY

Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) as commercial devices that replace our smartphones is the premise of my science fiction thriller novel Augment Nation. I set the novel 20 years from now, and it looks as if that development is on track. Wired magazine reports that China is now building a major industry around BCIs, not only to help people with brain and spinal cord injuries, but also as a commercial product. According to Wired: “China’s policy document, meanwhile, is promoting the mass production of non-implantable devices in various forms—forehead-mounted, head-mounted, ear-mounted, ear buds, and helmets, glasses, and headphones.”

Sure, there’s a huge potential for great things, but also great risk of abuse. Augment Nation explores both.

THE BIGGEST CAMERA EVER BUILT

Vera C. Rubin Observatory

If you thrilled to the amazing images from the Hubble Space Telescope and have been blown away by the intergalactic views from the newer James Webb Space Telescope, brace yourself. The new Vera C. Rubin Observatory on a mountaintop in Chile will open up vistas never seen before, thanks to the largest camera ever built: 3200 megapixels worth of image captured in 30-second exposures about a thousand times every night. The plan is to photograph the entire sky of the Southern Hemisphere every few days to create a ten-year long high-definition digital record. So much information only extremely sophisticated software will be able to analyse it.

It's hard to even imagine the number of never-before-seen features the Rubin will be able to find, but you can read more here. Prepare to be amazed.

You've Got That Glow ...

I’m not going to try to read your aura, but researchers at University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada have shown that living creatures do give off light. Mind you, it’s very weak—too dim for humans to see—but it does end when the creature dies.

The cause involves chemistry: specifically, animals’ use of oxygen to produce energy. A byproduct of those reactions is reactive oxygen-containing molecules. Too much of them causes stress in living cells, which respond in a way that can release photons.

That’s a very abbreviated description, but you can read more details here: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/technology/humans-give-off-a-light-that-is-extinguished-in-death-study-reveals/ar-AA1FMZa9

So you are a source of light in the world!

SPHEREX WILL CREATE THE BEST EVER COSMIC MAP

While the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes offer more and more detailed views of distant objects, NASA’s recently launched Spherex telescope will produce “the most colorful, inclusive map ever made of the cosmos.” That’s right, it will map the entire sky over several years to learn, among other things, how galaxies form and how the universe expanded so quickly in its earliest instants.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/12/nasas-spherex-telescope-launch

Photograph: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/Reuters

CHINA GOES TO THE DARK SIDE

The dark side of the Moon, that is! (Though really it’s only the far side from Earth—it isn’t always dark.)

China’s Chang’e-6 space probe has landed on the far side of the Moon in a mission to collect soil samples and bring them back to Earth. That would be the first time samples have been retrieved from the far side, where surface conditions are considered to be substantially different from the side we can see. Since China plans to send a human crew to the Moon by 2030, and eventually build a permanent base there, every success of their space program is being closely watched. Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/02/chinas-change-6-probe-lands-on-far-side-of-the-moon?CMP=GTUK_email