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Some of climate change's sharpest realities are being felt on small island nations, where extreme weather is claiming homes and triggering displacement. Those able to stay are spearheading inventive adaptation techniques in a bid to secure their future

The tech world is buzzing with the claims of a startup battery company out of Finland called Donut Lab. They claim to have created the world’s first production solid state battery. At first blush the claims are exciting but seem in line with the promises that we have been hearing about solid state batteries for years. So it may seem that a company has finally cracked the technical issues with the technology and gotten a product across the finish line. But let’s take a closer look.

First let’s review their claims. The CEO is claiming that their battery has a specific energy of 400 watt hours per kilogram. This is great, considering the current lithium ion batteries in production are in the 175-250 range. The Amprius silicon anode Li-ion battery has 370 Wh/kg, so 400 sounds plausibly incremental, but make no mistake, this would still be a huge breakthrough. Meanwhile the CEO also claims 100,000 charge-discharge cycles, and operation temperature from -30 to 100C. In addition he claims his battery is cheaper than standard Li-ion, does not use any geopolitically sensitive raw materials, and is already in production (for motorcycles). Further it can be fully recharged in 5 minutes, and is incredibly stable with no risk of catching fire.

As I have pointed out previously, battery technology is tricky because a useful EV battery needs a suite of features all at the same time, while reality often requires trade-offs. So you can get your high capacity, but with increased expense, for example (like the Amprius battery). So claiming to have every critical feature of an EV battery improve all at once is beyond a huge deal. That in itself starts to get into the implausibility range, but it’s not impossible. My reaction appears to be similar to most people in the tech world – show me the money. At the CES where Donut rolled out its battery claims, in short, they did not do that.

A battery company with these claims, if they wanted to be taken serious, would have presented their actual battery at CES demonstrating at least some of these features, like the energy density and cycle life. But all they had was an empty case – no actual battery. That we either a disastrous marketing decision, or they don’t have an actual battery. I’m beginning the smell the “fake it til you make it” syndrome that tanked Theranos.

As we go deeper the story gets more dodgy. The company, Donut Lab, is a small Finish company (registered in Estonia). Their employee roster boasts a single technical expert, the rest are in marketing and management. So now we are supposed to believe that this small company with a single engineer has outperformed the world’s battery tech giants with hundreds or even thousands of experts and who are pouring billions of dollars into R&D to be the first to market with a solid state battery. Um, no. I love a good Cinderella story, and it would be great if a viable solid state battery hit the market a few years (or maybe more) ahead of schedule, but this is just too much to believe.

Then there is the history of the CEO, Marko Lehtimäki. Last year this guy claimed to have created the first true artificial intelligence, Asinoid. He wrote: “Asinoids are today the world’s only AI with their own life, thoughts, continuous evolution and synthetic neuroplasticity with the ability to adopt to any kind of physical or digital ”body”, from humanoid robots to SaaS apps, drone swarms and CCTV cameras. Their intelligence is modeled carefully after the only true known intelligence — the human brain.”

This was just vaporware. Reading his posts I get the vibe that this guy wants to become the next Elon Musk, grabbing experts to create one moonshot breakthrough after another. He may be truly delusional, or really think that his companies are on the verge of these breakthroughs, so it’s just good marketing to get ahead of the curve. Or he may just be a scammer. Either way, he has no credibility.

We are therefore seeing a pattern that is extremely familiar and clear to experienced skeptics – an astounding claim with nothing real to back it up made by someone with a history of dubious claims. I would be shocked (although also happy) if this turns out to be legit.

Meanwhile, where does solid state battery tech actually sit? The technology is promising, and is expected to produce batteries with higher energy density, faster charging, and longer lifespans. But these will likely come at the expense of higher cost. The large companies working on this tech are also facing challenges to mass production and have not solved all the technical issues. Solid state batteries have been promised for a long time, and the technology is taking a lot longer than optimists expected. Realistically, this is a medium to long term technology. At best we will see them at the end of this decade but more likely in the early to mid 2030s. It may even take longer.

Meanwhile, Li-ion technology continues to advance. Over the next few years we will see silicon anode batteries in EVs at the high end. We are also starting to see sodium ion batteries at the low end, at about half the price of Li-ion batteries and still with acceptable energy density, although at the low end of current Li-ion batteries. This is proven technology, with continued incremental improvement in manufacturing and design. I suspect that these batteries will take us into the mid-2030s, until the industry shifts over to something like solid state batteries.

The post Is Donut Lab’s Solid State Battery Legit? first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

New Space is a term now commonly used around the rocketry and satellite industries to indicate a new, speed focused model of development that takes its cue from the Silicon Valley mindset of “move fast and (hopefully don’t) break things.” Given that several of the founders of rocketry and satellite companies have a Silicon Valley background, that probably shouldn’t be a surprise, but the mindset has resulted in an exponential growth in the number of satellites in orbit, and also an exponential decrease in the cost of getting them to orbit. A new paper, recently published in pre-print form in arXiv from researchers at Schmidt Space and a variety of research institutes, lays out plans for the Lazuli Space Observatory, which hopes to apply that same mindset to flagship-level space observatory missions.

A study of the hearts of Greenland sharks has found that the long-lived deep-sea predator has massive accumulations of ageing markers, such as severe scarring, but this doesn't appear to affect their health or longevity

Well, folks, this is it, the last batch of wildlife photos I have. As for more, there is nada, zip, zilch, and bupkes in the queue.  It is very sad, isn’t it.

But today we have photos of otters from reader Christopher Moss. Christopher’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. The first batch was sent on December 29:

Just after the sun went down this evening I spotted a pair of otters on the other side of the pond. I assume they are Lontra canadensis, the North American river otter. They are about 80m away, and the photos were taken through a window. But when you’re desperate for readers’ wildlife photos, maybe they will do. The otters played in a small area of open water for a while and then I lost sight of them in the gloom. This is the third or fourth time I have seen otters in our pond (which is in northwest Nova Scotia, near the border with New Brunswick).

Eventually one otter came back up, and was then joined by a second:

One of the otters came back for a trout:

We’re arguing over whether there are three or four pups. I do have a still of five otters at once:

Here’s a video showing all five at once:

A few minutes later my son called out that they were all standing up looking at something, and – guess what? – this fellow was a few feet from them:

A generative AI system can now analyze blood cells with greater accuracy and confidence than human experts, detecting subtle signs of diseases like leukemia. It not only spots rare abnormalities but also recognizes its own uncertainty, making it a powerful support tool for clinicians.

Mars Express has captured stunning images of wind sculpted terrain near the planet’s equator, revealing how Martian winds act as a sandblaster across geological timescales. The spacecraft’s high resolution camera spotted amazing ridges called yardangs, features carved by sand carrying winds that extend tens of kilometres across the surface. These dramatic erosional features share the landscape with impact craters and ancient lava flows, creating a fusion of three different geological forces that together tell the story of Mars’s violent and dynamic past.

Astronomers have revealed a surprising diversity in the evolutionary paths of the universe’s most massive galaxies. Using multi-wavelength observations combining Keck Observatory spectroscopy with far infrared and radio data, researchers found that less than two billion years after the Big Bang, some ultramassive galaxies had already shut down star formation and shed their dust, while others continued building stars behind thick dusty veils.

Scientists have pulled back the curtain on one of the most extreme solar regions seen in decades, tracking it almost nonstop for three months as it unleashed powerful space weather. By combining views from two spacecraft—one near Earth and one orbiting the Sun—researchers followed a massive active region as it grew, twisted, and ultimately triggered the strongest geomagnetic storms since 2003.

At extreme pressures and temperatures, water becomes superionic — a solid that behaves partly like a liquid and conducts electricity. This unusual form is believed to shape the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune and may be the most common type of water in the solar system. New high-precision experiments show its atomic structure is far messier than expected, combining multiple crystal patterns instead of one clean arrangement. The finding reshapes models of icy planets both near and far.

At extreme pressures and temperatures, water becomes superionic — a solid that behaves partly like a liquid and conducts electricity. This unusual form is believed to shape the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune and may be the most common type of water in the solar system. New high-precision experiments show its atomic structure is far messier than expected, combining multiple crystal patterns instead of one clean arrangement. The finding reshapes models of icy planets both near and far.

Astronomers have discovered a crucial missing link in understanding how the Galaxy’s most common planets form. By studying four young, extraordinarily puffy planets orbiting a 20 million year old star, researchers have captured a rare snapshot of worlds actively transforming into super Earths and sub Neptunes. This discovery reveals that the universe’s most successful planets start as bloated giants before shrinking dramatically over billions of years, fundamentally changing our understanding of how planetary systems evolve.

If ghosts don't exist, then how do we account for all the ghost experiences that people have every day?

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Like I said at the beginning, I’m not really keen on the idea of the mathematical universe. My own personal biggest objection stems from the whole point of occam’s razor: make things as simple as possible.

Astronomers using W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island have uncovered the largest and most extended stream of super-heated gas ever observed flowing from a nearby galaxy, providing the clearest evidence yet that a supermassive black hole can dramatically reshape its host galaxy far beyond its core.

The oceans' check engine light is on and is starting to flash violently. For the eighth year in a row, the world’s oceans absorbed a record-breaking amount of heat in 2025. That means more powerful storms for us, and changing ocean chemistry that could spell the end for some living things.

Supernovae play a crucial role in the formation and evolution of new stars. But where they occur is nearly as important as when. A new study looks at where supernovae will occur in the Andromeda Galaxy, which will help astronomers understand the role of supernovae in more detail.

Before the Romans captured Pompeii, the famous town was run by the Samnite people – and a dip in their public baths might have been an unpleasant experience

Gas and dust flowing from stars can, under the right conditions, clash with a star's surroundings and create a shock wave. Now, astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) have imaged a beautiful shock wave around a dead star—a discovery that has left them puzzled. According to all known mechanisms, the small, dead star RXJ0528+2838 should not have such a structure around it. This discovery, as enigmatic as it's stunning, challenges our understanding of how dead stars interact with their surroundings.

Combining two kinds of quantum computing devices could be just the trick for taking better images of faint, faraway exoplanets