Sunday Special: Scientists map the eighth continent

For years, it was considered the geological equivalent of Bigfoot — rumored, debated, and dismissed. Now, scientists say they’ve finally mapped Zealandia, Earth’s long-lost eighth continent, hidden in plain sight for centuries. Meanwhile, a scrappy New York-based startup has invented a device that lets you create pump-ready gasoline from thin air.

P.S. The Sunday Special is designed to help you discover the most important scientific and technological breakthroughs outside of AI. Our regular AI and Tech updates will resume as usual on Monday.

SCIENCE SUNDAY

The most interesting scientific discoveries and breakthroughs this week

Gas Generator: Imagine a future where we’re able to pull car fuel out of thin air. New York-based startup Aircela promises just that with a new refrigerator-sized device that converts air into gasoline. The system runs on renewable electricity and uses direct air capture technology to crank out fuel free from sulfur, ethanol, and heavy metals. With backing from heavy hitters like Maersk Growth, the technology is expected to roll out to commercial sectors later this year. Watch it in action here.

Sunken Secrets: Scientists have confirmed the location of Zealandia (originally discovered in 2017) as the long-lost eighth continent. With much of its 2-million-square-mile mass submerged beneath the South Pacific, researchers used rock dating and magnetic anomaly mapping to trace how the elusive landmass split from the supercontinent Gondwana over 85M years ago. The hidden continent offers a unique geological time capsule for understanding how Earth's surface has evolved over time.

Sky Scrubber: MIT researchers claim to have developed a groundbreaking sodium-air fuel cell that could power future electric aircrafts while sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky. Unlike conventional batteries, it uses sodium metal and air to produce energy while naturally transforming atmospheric carbon dioxide into sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). Planes powered by this technology would potentially clean the skies as they zip through the air, deacidifying the oceans when the byproducts eventually reach seawater.

Cosmic Catch: While searching for a hypothetical Planet Nine, scientists say they’ve found a likely dwarf planet candidate in our solar system — a 430-mile-wide world that takes over 24,000 years to orbit the sun. With an orbital path ranging from about 4.2B to 151B miles from the Sun, the object's stability raises doubts about the existence of Planet Nine, as computer simulations suggest a ninth planet would most likely have destabilized the object’s orbit.

PRESENTED BY GUIDDE

Create shareable How-To guides with AI (no editing required)

Guidde is a no-cost tool that creates step-by-step video guides in minutes, using a PDF or screen recording.

It’s ideal for HR onboarding, sales product updates, remote teams, and more:

• Add custom branding with just a click

• Auto-captions and narration in almost any language

• Shares easily and can be updated over time

• No graphic design/editing skills required

Need proof? IKEA, Nasdaq, and tons of others use Guidde to share complex ideas easily.

Create a guide today in less than 5 minutes.

NEW TECH

Our favorite new tech gadgets this week

1. Twelve South AirFly SE: A compact Bluetooth transmitter that lets you connect your wireless headphones to any 3.5mm audio jack. Perfect for in-flight entertainment, gym equipment, or gaming devices.

2. Nike x Hyperice Hyperboot: A high-tech recovery shoe that blends dynamic air compression and heat therapy to help you recover as you run.

3. Brisk It Origin 580: This smart BBQ grill uses gen AI and Wi-Fi connectivity to automate cooking and create personalized recipes, and is integrated with an app that lets you adjust settings remotely.

4. AEKE K1: An AI-powered home gym, packed with 140+ classes, 280+ movements, and real-time form correction to help you work out in the comfort of your home.

SOCIAL SIGNALS

What’s trending in tech on socials this week

🚢 Titan Tragedy: The announcement of a Netflix documentary has reignited interest in the ill-fated Titan submersible, which tragically imploded on its way to the wreckage of the Titanic in 2023. Now, haunting audio of the first sounds of the implosion and video footage of the vessel’s debris on the ocean floor have resurfaced and gone viral on Reddit.

🚀 Rocket Wreck: SpaceX's Starship made it to space during Tuesday's Flight 9 test, but a mid-journey propellant leak sent the spacecraft spinning out of control during re-entry — pushing Musk’s ambitious vision of making humanity multi-planetary further into the future.

🚘️ Reality Bug: Talk about bad ground clearance. A modified Honda Civic — dubbed the "Banana Peel" — has gone viral on X thanks to the way it partially clips through the ground like a glitch in a video game. Watch the unique design in action here.

🗿 Prehistoric Print: Spanish archaeologists have found what they’re calling the world's oldest human fingerprint — a 43,000-year-old Neanderthal print preserved in red ochre and found in central Spain's San Lázaro rock shelter.

👶 Double Delivery: In a rare medical procedure in 2016, a baby girl was prematurely removed from her mother's womb to treat a life-threatening spinal tumor — and then placed back to be born again for a second time.

ONLY GOOD NEWS

A healthy dose of optimism to kickstart your week

Mind Meter: Researchers at UT Austin have developed a $200 electronic forehead tattoo that objectively measures how hard your brain is working in real-time. The ultrathin, flexible sensor monitors brainwaves and eye movements to detect and flag mental workload, offering an accurate alternative to subjective surveys like NASA's Task Load Index. This crafty piece of technology is incredibly light on the wallet and could potentially change how organizations monitor the mental workload of their employees.

Vessel Victory: Scientists claim to have built a chip that replicates the complex architecture of human blood vessels — including branches, aneurysms, and constrictions — on a microscopic scale. Unlike traditional straight-line vessel models, the device incorporates living human endothelial cells to study how blood actually flows through our bodies — without any animal testing. It’s a potentially revolutionary piece of technology that can enable both drug discovery and our understanding of vascular diseases.

Youth Potion: Scientists from University College London have found that combining two existing cancer drugs — rapamycin and trametinib — extends mice's lifespans by about 30%. The cocktail targets different points in the same cellular pathway that regulates growth and aging, creating synergistic effects beyond what either drug achieves alone. While the researchers don't expect humans to gain decades from this approach, the therapy could help people "stay healthy and disease-free for longer late in life."

Dr. Dino: The future of cancer treatment may be hiding about 70M years in the past. Scientists have found preserved red blood cell-like structures in a 70-million-year-old dinosaur fossil, potentially revolutionizing our understanding of cancer's origins. While the DNA has degraded beyond recovery, studying cancer across evolutionary timescales could reveal how environmental factors have shaped the disease over centuries, potentially informing new treatment approaches for humans.

SUNDAY SCIENCE TRIVIA

Your opinion matters!

You’re the reason our team spends hundreds of hours every week researching and writing this email. Please let us know what you thought of today’s email to help us create better emails for you.

Until next time,

Zain and the Superhuman AI team