The Download: a reality check for geoengineering and the science of interoception

The Download: a reality check for geoengineering and the science of interoception">

This is today’s edition of The Download , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Solar geoengineering, the controversial idea that we could deliberately intervene in the climate system to counteract global warming, is moving beyond computer simulations and into the practical engineering challenges required to make it real.

Researchers are now working on aircraft, materials, and other systems for solar geoengineering. But as they delve into these details, they’re finding that even early deployment would require significant new infrastructure, time, and investment.

Find out what happens when solar geoengineering encounters the realities of trying to cool the planet .

Scientists have a word for how we sense ourselves from the inside: interoception. Today, thanks to a 2021 Nobel Prize and new tools that can map internal signaling across the body, research into interoception is taking off.

As researchers decode how signals move between body and brain, a clearer picture is starting to take shape— with implications for how we treat conditions from obesity to anxiety .

This is our latest story to be turned into an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we publish each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts . Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 SpaceX is now valued higher than Amazon Its market value hit $2.659 trillion yesterday. ( Axios ) + A post-IPO stock surge also briefly pushed it above Microsoft’s. ( Quartz ) + It’s now the world’s fifth most valuable company. ( Guardian ) + SpaceX is acquiring AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion. ( CNBC )

2 G7 leaders want access to top US AI models They’re pushing to escape restrictions on the likes of Fable 5. ( Reuters $) + The Mythos shutdown has sparked a global scramble for sovereign AI. ( Fortune ) + The world is looking to ditch US AI models. ( MIT Technology Review )

3 Trump’s AI export strategy has run into Trump’s export controls His administration risks undermining its own AI plans. ( Axios ) + It now effectively has a licensing regime for frontier AI. ( Fortune ) + Here’s how a top Chinese AI model overcame US sanctions. ( MIT Technology Review )