Sunday Special: Scientists turn lead into gold

An age-old dream of medieval alchemy has finally come true: physicists just turned lead into gold — but not enough for them to make a fortune. And: A Soviet spacecraft returns home after being stuck in orbit for more than 50 years.

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

Up, Up and Away: The Urban Air Mobility (UAM) space is literally taking off. Slovakian company Klein Vision is preparing to test its AirCar 2 this summer, with plans to bring it to market next year. The reported pricing model is pretty steep, with vehicles expected to range from $800,000 to $1M. The first generation of the car was officially certified for airworthiness in 2021 after completing 70 hours of flight testing and an inter-city trip between Slovak airports. You can watch the footage from the tests here.

Midas Touch: Physicists have accidentally realized an age-old dream of medieval alchemy by turning lead into gold. While smashing lead atoms together at near-light speed to mimic the Big Bang, they noticed that the collisions were producing gold when atoms lost exactly three protons during near-misses. This isn’t really something you can start as your next side hustle though — each experiment only produces about 29 trillionths of a gram of gold that fragments in a fraction of a second.

Wonder Wood: Maryland-based startup Inventwood just hacked ordinary wood to outmuscle steel. The company is about to mass-produce "Superwood," a treated timber material with 50% more tensile strength than steel but a strength-to-weight ratio that's 10x better. InventWood's process compresses the natural cellulose fibers in wood to create a material that's fire, rot, and pest resistant. The company just picked up $15M to build its first commercial plant, with the material slated to hit markets this summer.

Venus Vagrant: After much anticipation, the Soviet spacecraft Kosmos-482, originally bound for Venus in 1972, finally returned to Earth after 53 years stranded in orbit. Built to withstand Venus's crushing atmosphere, experts believe the craft's ultra-durable lander may have remained intact during re-entry. The vessel splashed down in the Indian Ocean, serving as a physical reminder of the Soviet Venus program’s remarkable achievements and an era of intense space wars between the two superpowers.

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NEW TECH

Our favorite new tech gadgets this week

1. Whoop MG: The company just released their most advanced, medical-grade fitness tracker to date. It packs an FDA-cleared ECG for on-demand heart screenings, offers daily blood pressure insights, and even measures physiological aging.

2. Work Louder Nomad[e]: A modular keyboard for remote workers. It features an IPS display with a Pomodoro timer, a playful companion, and a “no code” configurator that allows intuitive mapping of shortcuts for improved efficiency.

3. GROWL Boxing Coach: An AI-powered boxing & fitness coach for your home. It comes with a full-size interactive trainer that offers real-time AI feedback, tracks punch count, power, accuracy and form, and comes with an app with personalized programs.

4. Fujifilm Instax Mini Link 3: A compact, wireless photo printer that connects to your smartphone and prints instant film photos. It’s rechargeable, takes about two minutes to start up, and uses $15 twin replacement packs good for about 20 prints.

SOCIAL SIGNALS

What’s trending in tech on socials this week

📱 Gadget Gulag: A ‘phone-free’ school in Scotland seems to have found a unique way to keep students from getting distracted by their phones. Redditors claim the system is far from unbeatable, though.

⏱️ Retro Revelations: Artists from 1899 drew pictures trying to predict what the year 2000 would look like. Check them out here to see how right or wrong they were.

🪵Timber Twist: Someone steamed a piece of wood to see how much it can bend without snapping. The result is fascinating.

🌊 Liquid Limbo: A video showing the triple point of water — a state in which water melts, boils, and freezes at the same time — just went viral on Reddit. "That water is going through an identity crisis," one commenter joked.

💥 Meal Matrix: Ever wonder what a 3D dining experience looks like? Here’s a video that’s currently blowing up on Reddit to give you an idea.

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ONLY GOOD NEWS

A healthy dose of optimism to kickstart your week

Gene Trouble: 9-month-old KJ Muldoon was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition, affecting just 1 in 1.3M babies. Faced with a grim prognosis (half of babies with the condition die within a week), doctors developed a customized gene-editing treatment that could spot and fix a single DNA letter among 3 billion in the human genome. Three infusions later, the infant is now reportedly meeting developmental milestones — potentially offering a blueprint to treat similar rare genetic conditions.

Virtual Voice: A new augmented reality (AR) system called HoloBoard is helping nonspeaking autistic people communicate independently by typing in midair. Built by researchers from the University of Virginia and University of Calgary, the AR keyboard hovers in front of users wearing Microsoft's HoloLens 2 headset, allowing them to type letters one by one without assistance. For the estimated one-third of autistic people who cannot communicate effectively, this technology offers a path to greater autonomy.

Pain Warrior: Scientists have created a drug that can tackle the debilitating pre-headache symptoms that appear before a migraine. In phase III trials, the medication helped alleviate early "prodrome" symptoms — fatigue, light sensitivity, neck pain, etc — that begin hours or days before the headache begins. The breakthrough marks the first time a medication directly targets the early warning system of migraines, potentially freeing patients from symptoms that can be as disabling as the headache itself.

Screening Shift: The FDA has green-lit America's first at-home cervical cancer screening device, potentially transforming women's preventive care. Similar self-collection methods have already boosted screening rates in countries like Australia. With an estimated 13,360 new cervical cancer cases and 4,320 deaths expected in 2025, experts believe this innovation could significantly ramp up screenings among women who avoid traditional pap smears due to discomfort, stigma, or logistical barriers.

SUNDAY SCIENCE TRIVIA

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Zain and the Superhuman AI team