Plus: A $3 million prize for scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider, why we’re one step closer to a holodeck and more.
In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at a biodegradable plastic made from trees, a $3 million prize for scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider , why we’re one step closer to a holodeck and more.
But help is on the way. A team of engineers and scientists across Japan have developed a new plastic alternative derived from paper. It’s clear, it’s moldable and could be used to make items like cups, straws and packaging. Better still–it’s biodegradable. The scientists who produced it tested it in different environments and found that even in the deep ocean–where biodegradable materials can last for a while–it was gone after about a year. Their findings wereIf production of the material can be scaled, it could turn out to be an ideal replacement for single use plastics like coffee lids, water bottles and drinking straws. . And unlike many kinds of plastics, it can be recycled.Andreas Hoecker, Patricia McBride, Marco van Leeuwen, and Vincenzo Vagnoni accept the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics on behalf of CERNthe $3 million Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics last week. The award is being divided among the four major research groups working on the Large Hadron Collider. It’s financed by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, founded by Yuri and Julia Milner, as well as from Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and Priscilla Chan; Google cofounder Sergey Brin and 23andMe cofounder Anne Wojcicki. Since the Large Hadron Collider was completed in 2008, it’s made a number of discoveries, most notably that of the Higgs boson, the particle that gives other fundamental particles their mass. CERN continues to use the LHC to this day by taking advantage of its high energies to investigate things like quark-gluon plasma, which was present in the first microseconds after the Big Bang. Physicist Vincenzo Vagnoni accepted the award on behalf of the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment, which is trying to determine why matter exists at all and wasn’t eliminated by anti-matter at the beginning of the universe by studying a particle called the beauty quark. The experiment produces roughly four terabytes of data a day, he told me, which has made advances in computation and machine learning essential to its progress. Vagnoni said that CERN being recognized for the Breakthrough Prize “was totally unexpected” and that he was particularly happy it was awarded to all scientists on the project, not just a few leaders. “Our collaborations are made by thousands of people all over the world,” he said. "We work with people with very different languages and cultures–the U.S., Russia, China, everywhere–but when we work together, we talk the same language and we perfectly understand each other. All of the problems we have in other competitive areas disappear.”Imagine walking up to a three-dimensional image and fully interacting with it–just as though you were on the holodeck on. Okay, we’re not quite there yet, but researchers at the Public University of Navarra in Spain have brought us: they’ve created holograms that can be “grabbed”—that is, manipulated with a user's fingers without the need for external controllers or VR glasses. Their research paperin the open archive HAL, and you can check out a pretty cool video presentation of how the technology worksMost of the gains in space-related stocks that surged after President Trump’s election win were erased in the first quarter of 2025,from venture firm Space Capital. Smaller space startups are also struggling, and face further risk of shrinking or delayed payments on government contracts. The overall environment has the potential to “slow markedly, consolidating market power among well-funded incumbents like SpaceX.” The news isn’t all bad–the report notes that over $4.3 billion was invested into space companies in the first quarter and that alternative launch providers to SpaceX, like Blue Origin, could make the industry more competitive.President Trump said earlier this week that he plans to enact broad tariffs on foreign-made pharmaceuticals. I talked to CEOs, analysts and investors about. This could be helpful in a variety of applications, such as finding people in the aftermath of a natural disaster., which are useful for a wide variety of applications but are also health hazards. A new paper published this weeknew research that found adding antiviral compounds to gum can reduce the numbers of viruses in the mouth to the point where it’s hard for diseases to spread.which found that large language models suggested better care for wealthy patients and more basic–and sometimes even unnecessary–care for Black or LGBT patients, despite the fact that the experimenters presented the exact same clinical information every time.It’s fairly obvious that when you’re working on something that requires you to pay attention and think critically–you should. But when you’re doing something that requires you to learn more passively, through repetition, or habit–let your mind loose! That’s the finding of apublished this week, which studied participants while they completed a set of quick reaction tasks in which they had to hit an arrow key in the corresponding direction of what appeared on screen while their brain waves were monitored. But the arrows didn’t appear on screen completely at random–there was a pattern buried within them, and the researchers found that those who let their minds wander were better at picking up on it than those who were more focused., featuring three “gay gentlemen of a certain age” choosing to live together in Palm Springs. There’s nothing particularly innovative here–but that’s okay because its execution of the classic sitcom format is near perfect. It’s no surprise that Nathan Lane and Nathan Lee Graham are fantastic but having never seen Matt Bomer in a comedy before I was pleasantly surprised at how funny he is. Give it a shot.
Spacex Biotech Artificial Intelligence Plastic Recylcing Physics Large Hadron Collider Space Industry Holograms
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Scientists break down cheap plastic using the air — and turn it into something far more valuableBen Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist.
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