Sunday Special: Midjourney stuns the industry with ultrasonic scanner

Welcome back, Superhuman. Midjourney, the AI startup known for its image generation tools, just made one of the most unexpected pivots in tech. The company has unveiled plans to open a medical spa next year, with a full-body scanner that seems to be decades ahead of its time.

☀️ Also, today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year for folks in the Northern Hemisphere. Starting tomorrow, days get just a little shorter every day up until December. So here’s your cue to make the most of today. Step outside. Enjoy the sun.

1. Your office building could soon detect airborne viruses before you get sick: Scientists, backed by $150M in federal funding, are building sensors that can identify floating pathogens in near real time, then automatically clean the air before infection spreads. The program aims to give buildings the same automatic response to airborne disease that sprinkler systems give to fire. Researchers are now racing to get prototype systems into schools, hospitals, and day care centers by 2028.

2. Midjourney stuns the industry with a full-body ultrasonic scanner: The company just made its strangest pivot yet, signaling a move towards a medical hardware company. Midjourney's Scanner submerges you in water and uses half a million grain-of-sand-sized ultrasonic sensors to produce a detailed 3D body map in under 60 seconds, down from 60-90 minutes for a standard MRI. The first Midjourney Spa opens in San Francisco next year. Here’s a video to show you how the viral technology works.

3. The Earth might actually survive the sun's death: For decades, the prevailing view was that Earth would be swallowed by the Sun when it expands into a red giant in about five billion years. A new study using updated stellar models suggests otherwise: if the sun sheds enough mass as it ages, its gravitational grip could weaken enough for Earth's orbit to drift outward and escape. Mars may also survive, though Mercury and Venus likely won't. If true, it would seem that the Earth's fate remains genuinely uncertain.

4. Surgeons perform the world's first HIV-to-HIV lung transplant: In a landmark surgery at NYU Langone Health, doctors performed the world's first lung transplant from an HIV-positive donor to an HIV-positive recipient and added a liver transplant the same day. The patient, 56-year-old Bertrand Nelson, is now breathing entirely on his own and lifting weights. The breakthrough unlocks a new pool of donor organs for the 1.2M Americans living with HIV, who previously faced a longer wait for compatible organs.

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1. reMarkable Paper Pure: A black and white paper tablet for writing and reading. It has higher contrast, faster performance, less eye strain, and up to 3 weeks of battery life.

2. Fort Wearable: A wearable built specifically for strength training. It automatically detects exercises, reps, sets, and rest, and scores each session based on muscular effort and velocity.

3. Dyson HushJet Mini Cool: A portable bladeless fan for cooling on the go. It uses a star-shaped nozzle to reduce turbulence and push focused airflow up to 55 mph.

4. Dreame X50 Ultra: Dreame just dropped the X50 Ultra, a robot vacuum that seamlessly navigates your home and can even climb up the stairs—all with a simple voice command.

SOCIAL SIGNALS

✈️ Free Flight: Google has opened up one of its best-kept secrets — a flight simulator that lets you pilot an aircraft anywhere on Earth using Google Earth's 3D maps. The result is a surprisingly addictive way to explore the planet. Take it for a spin here.

⚽ Moon and Back: The World Cup ball just received one of the strangest pre-tournament warmups imaginable, as part of a campaign linking athletic performance with scientific innovation. See the unusual detour here.

🔬 Perspective Check: This viral image captures two engineering marvels side by side: a pollen grain evolved by nature over millions of years, and a CPU engineered by humans. One completely overwhelms the other in size.

🚗 Wartime Hack: Necessity really is the mother of invention. During the German occupation of France, fuel was scarce, so drivers had to get a little creative. This Peugeot 202 was modified to run on gas generated from burning wood.

👮 Sky Cop: The future of traffic policing is here. A new generation of drones in China can recognize when a biker isn't wearing a helmet, issuing a warning on the spot.

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Tooth Guard: Periodontitis destroys the bone and tissue holding teeth in place, and current treatments can control it, but not reverse the damage. Now, a research team claims to have developed a gel made from jackfruit latex, pomegranate peel, and a common statin drug that showed early signs of doing both: fighting infection and stimulating new bone growth simultaneously. The jackfruit latex keeps the treatment precisely where it's needed, reducing the need for systemic antibiotics.

No Fire, No Foul: Scientists have built an AI platform that detects dangerous electrical arcing on power lines — the kind that causes wildfires but is often too subtle to trigger conventional circuit breakers. Trained on over 5,700 waveform signatures and validated with five years of Southern California Edison data, the system increased fault signal visibility from 6% to 72%, automatically alerting utilities before small grid disturbances become catastrophic fires.

Dream On: For most patients, general anesthesia feels like a blank, where you close your eyes and wake up when the surgery is complete. Now, Stanford researchers have found a way to fill that gap with pleasant dreams. A simple five-step protocol, including 10 minutes of quiet during recovery, pushed dream recall to 93% in fully adherent patients. Over 86% described their dreams as positive. It won't speed physical recovery, but it could meaningfully change how patients experience surgery.

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Until next time,

Zain, Faiq, and the Superhuman AI team

*Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC.