Sunday Special: Paraplegic engineer shatters space accessibility

Welcome back, Superhuman. Scientists are closing out the year by making history. German engineer Michaela Benthaus just became the first paraplegic person to experience suborbital spaceflight, potentially opening up a new chapter in space travel. Meanwhile, one person claims that they, quite literally, captured "lightning in a bottle", in a video that has attracted over a million views.

SCIENCE SUNDAY

The most interesting scientific discoveries and breakthroughs this week 

1. Scientists build device to harvest electricity from Earth's spin: A Princeton-led team has built a tabletop device that generates voltage directly from Earth's rotation through its magnetic field. While the power output is orders of magnitude too small for practical electronics, the breakthrough suggests Earth's spin could someday provide constant, fuel-free energy if the effect scales up. The team is now calling for independent labs to reproduce the results.

2. Paraplegic engineer shatters space accessibility in world-first: German engineer Michaela Benthaus just made history as the first paraplegic to experience spaceflight, launching on Blue Origin's New Shepard capsule. Benthaus floated weightless for over three minutes at 65+ miles altitude. Her flight marks a major turning point as space agencies gear up differently-abled astronauts for orbital missions, and potentially open up space travel to a broader market. Watch the groundbreaking moment here.

3. Korean researchers build brain-like chip from shells and beans: Scientists have created a fully biodegradable artificial synapse using chitosan from crab shells, plant fibers, and bean extracts. The device operates at just 0.85 femtojoules per signal, making it more efficient than the human brain while retaining memory for nearly 100 minutes (the longest ever for biodegradable synapses). The breakthrough potentially paves the way for AI hardware that learns, adapts, and dissolves without toxic waste.

4. Scientists pinpoint the ideal spot to land on Mars: University of Mississippi researchers have identified a region in Amazonis Planitia on Mars where water ice sits less than 1 meter beneath the surface — shallow enough to harvest for drinking water, oxygen, and rocket fuel. The mid-latitude site strikes the perfect balance: enough sunlight for solar power, but cold enough to preserve ice that could support extended human missions.

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NEW TECH

Our favorite new tech gadgets this week

1. Casio Ring Watch CRW001-1: A ring watch with a mini digital display that shows the time, date, and dual time zones. It also features a seamless, water-resistant design and a pulsing light feature that gives subtle notification alerts.

2. Yarbo Lawnmower: The world’s first modular yard robot, designed to handle year-round yard maintenance with interchangeable modules for mowing, snow blowing, and leaf blowing.

3. LeafyPod Starter Package: An AI-powered planter with sensors that track soil moisture, light, temperature, etc. It links to an app that offers care info on 100+ different houseplants.

4. Elvie Rise: An all-in-one smart bouncer that can transform into a lie-flat bassinet and is integrated with an app to track your baby’s sleep and control the bassinet’s bounce.

SOCIAL SIGNALS

What’s trending in tech on socials this week

⚡️ Light Locked: Catching "lightning in a bottle" is typically a phrase used as a metaphor for something impossible to reproduce. However, YouTube creator Electron Impressions seems to have given the proverb a literal spin and garnered over 1.5M views in the process.

🍾 Bottle Blast: A teacher and his students built a 2-stage rocket from plastic bottles and used water pressure to help it take off. Watch the impressive footage here.

⬛️ Black (Un)box: Ever wonder what the inside of a flight recorder (black box) looks like? A picture showing the device opened up is going viral on Reddit.

🎞️ Old Switcheroo: A snippet from Superman (1948) shows how animation was used to film some of the scenes years before CGI was invented. The transition is anything but smooth.

ONLY GOOD NEWS

A healthy dose of optimism to kickstart your week

Foot Feature: A Chinese microsurgery team just completed the world's first full ear reattachment after preserving the organ on a patient's foot for about five months. When the patient’s ear was accidentally severed in an accident, surgeons couldn't reattach it immediately due to severe vascular damage across her scalp and neck. The solution: graft the ear onto her foot, where matching artery sizes and thin tissue enabled blood flow during a 10-hour procedure in which the team successfully reattached the ear.

Plant Pharmacy: Scientists claim to have identified the two key enzymes plants use to build mitraphylline, a compound with anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory properties. The team pinpointed one enzyme that arranges the molecule's 3D structure and another that twists it into its final form. The breakthrough can potentially help us with the sustainable, scalable production of mitraphylline and related compounds without harvesting rare plants.

Game Getaway: In a new study, scientists claim to have found that playing Super Mario games can reduce burnout by boosting happiness in young adults. In interviews with 41 university students, participants described the games as "a vacation for the mind" that transports them back to childhood carefreeness. A follow-up survey of 336 students seemed to confirm the effect. However, scientists warn that the games do not address the underlying causes of burnout, and that excessive escapism is not a viable solution.

SUNDAY SCIENCE TRIVIA

Cheating Death

Don’t Cheat: You can read more on the strange phenomenon here.

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