Elon Musk takes a bow at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in May 2020 after the launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission, which carried two astronauts to the International Space Station, about 250 miles up, and a world away from Mars. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)
Ever since its founding, SpaceX has fixed upon a single idea: Elon Musk’s vision of colonizing Mars. Everything the company does is geared to that foundational goal.
Two years ago, Musk posted on X that there could be a city on Mars within 20 years, “but for sure in 30.”
“Civilization secured,” he added, implying that even if our troubled lives here on Earth come to some catastrophic end in the coming decades, don’t worry, humans will endure on Mars.
Yet the work of scientists studying Mars suggests that it’s far-fetched, perhaps delusional, to think a human colony could be established there. You don’t need to be a billionaire or a rocket scientist to realize Musk’s timeframe is certainly a fantasy; there won’t be a city on Mars in his lifetime or that of his children or his grandchildren. Think many, many decades at best. But more likely, never.
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Retail investors rushed to buy SpaceX stock after the IPO in June. Though the share price has already fallen back below where it was that day, many see it as a long-term investment. The reality is that the improbability of the Mars project shadows SpaceX’s long-term future.
SpaceX’s Starship, the rocket Musk is counting on to reach Mars, lifts off in a test flight in Texas in 2024. (Steve Jurvetson / CC BY 2.0)
While humans will at some point likely overcome the massively daunting engineering and logistics challenges of getting to Mars and even staying for some time, there’s no technology available to form a permanent settlement there.
Musk may be excused as being playful with his time scale.
“Oh, Elon is famously bad at giving time estimates,” said Erika DeBenedictis, a biological engineer and Mars scientist, founder of Pioneer Labs, which is researching how to grow plants on Mars. “Things always take longer than he says, but they do tend to happen.”
Musk has been quite specific. Last year, he said SpaceX had a 50:50 chance of sending its first uncrewed Starships toward Mars in 2026, with crewed landings to follow “as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely,” he posted on X.
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Then, this February, he said SpaceX would build a city on the moon first and start building a Mars city “in about 5 to 7 years.”
While his targets and timing keep moving, the problems go deeper than that. The question is not when humanity will expand beyond Earth, but whether it ever will.
Establishing a city on Mars depends crucially on a concept called “terraforming,” which means physically transforming the planet’s surface environment into something resembling that of Earth, at least partially hospitable for humans.
To DeBenedictis, the sterile science fiction notion of people confined inside glass domes, looking out upon a forbiddingly bleak landscape and living off protein shakes and dried food, is deeply unappealing. “I wouldn’t want it and I wouldn’t want it for my daughter,” she said. “It just seems terrible.”
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“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she adds. “I want the planet to be green.”
DeBenedictis concedes at the outset of an interview that this is “probably impossible,” though in the tone of someone who lives to chase the impossible.
In contrast, Musk glibly mentions terraforming as if it were within reach. In truth, science has only highly conjectural ideas about how it might be done. The hypothetical options scientists are researching now, if they work at all, will take many decades if not centuries to make Mars habitable. And they may never work.
A titanic ambition
Despite this, investment bankers and those with pre-IPO access were primed to ride the coattails of Musk’s colossal wealth for a big payout on SpaceX’s Wall Street launch day. Musk supercharged the June IPO by absorbing his xAI project into SpaceX. The IPO filing positioned xAI as a $26.5 trillion market opportunity, dwarfing all the other business segments of SpaceX, which the filing pegged at a mere $2 trillion. What’s an IPO without a transcendent AI promise these days?
Wall Street weighed only Musk’s entrepreneurial success and his ability to conjure the future and spin financial dreams. The Economist in May called Musk’s risk-taking and mobilizing of resources “capitalism at its most remarkable.”
For Wall Street, that made the SpaceX IPO a surefire winner. The share price duly rocketed up and made Musk briefly a trillionaire. Though he lost that status when the share price subsequently slid, he’s still by far the richest man in the world with a net worth into the $900 billions.
That fortune is built upon the market perception that Musk can turn dreams into reality. Mass-producing all-electric, virtually self-driving cars was once a pipedream. Rockets landing on their tails graced the covers of 1950s science fiction novels. By force of will, Musk made both a reality. Whatever pipe he’s smoking now, shouldn’t we give his Mars dream some healthy respect?
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That dream is specified precisely on the SpaceX website: “A permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.”
A SpaceX facility in Redmond, Wash., where the company designs and builds its Starlink internet satellites. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
Musk designed the huge Starship rocket to go to Mars. And when Musk first unveiled his plan for the internet satellite venture that became Starlink in Seattle more than a decade ago — the satellites are made in Redmond — he told Bloomberg Businessweek he saw it as “a long-term revenue source for SpaceX to be able to fund a city on Mars.”
Nearer term, SpaceX is to provide the lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis project that should return humans to the moon within a few years and lay the groundwork for a permanent moonbase; Musk sees it as a stepping stone to the true goal.
The problem is, Mars is not even remotely habitable. It’s deathly cold. There’s nothing on the surface but dust and rocks, in places some deeply frozen CO2. Regular dust storms whip the surface. The planet has zero vegetation; not a tree, not a leaf, not a blade of grass. The oxygen-free Martian air is unbreathable.
Venture outside without a space suit and you’ll die within a minute in the poisonous, low-pressure atmosphere. During unpredictable solar flares, cosmic radiation is a separate threat to life.
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Martian gravity, one-third of Earth’s, may deform the human body over time. Astronauts on the zero-gravity International Space Station must work out constantly to retain muscle strength. Even then, if they spend too long in space they must be carried from the space capsule after splashdown.
“I don’t see any prospect for there to be permanent settlements,” said senior NASA astrogeophysicist Chris McKay, who for more than 40 years has studied the possibility of supporting human life beyond Earth, and on Mars specifically. “Why would anybody want to live there?”
Bruce Jakosky, professor emeritus at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has studied Mars his entire career since he worked on the Mars rover Viking mission in the mid-1970s, says he thinks it will happen someday, but adds, “I have no idea when or how.”
“It’s far enough into the future that, once you get beyond, say, 30 years, you can’t tell the difference between that and infinity into the future,” Jakosky said.
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That’s scientific realism. Buzz Lightyear talks about getting to infinity and beyond, but he’s a toy.
What’s really achievable on Mars
Despite the cold facts, Musk has so successfully sold the notion that if he put out a call for volunteers for the first Starship mission to Mars, hundreds of space scientists, enthusiasts, adventurers and Musk fanbros would eagerly sign up.
Indeed, he already has a Mars mission volunteer. On the launch webcast of SpaceX’s latest and largest Starship rocket in late May, a presenter introduced cryptocurrency billionaire and civilian astronaut Chun Wang, revealing that he’s been tapped to lead the first crewed flyby mission to Mars at some unspecified future date — a round trip of about two years, going there and back without landing on the surface.
And yes, it’s inevitable humans will get to Mars one day. Crewed spacecraft may land on Mars within a couple of decades.
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The first astronauts to land will plan to explore the surface and hopefully return in triumph two years later, the next occasion when the Mars solar orbit again aligns with Earth. DeBenedictis dismissively describes this as the “expensive camping trip” phase of exploration, “mostly for the photo opp.”
Decades from now, humans may take a much harder, more substantive step: establishing a scientific base on Mars; we have such bases in Antarctica today. Researchers could rotate in and out every couple of years.
Creating a permanent colony on Mars is something far different. It implies lifetime commitments and subsequent generations growing up and building their lives there. As Elton John sang, “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as hell. And there’s no one there to raise them if you did.”
A child born on Mars — a Martian! — would likely adapt to the low gravity as it developed. We have zero data on the physical consequences. Such a child could grow up so different in muscular and skeletal strength that he or she would be unable to walk on Earth.
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“The first mothers that give birth will be guinea pigs,” said NASA’s McKay.
And yet, Musk has laid out a plan he insists can establish a human colony on Mars within his lifetime. After Optimus humanoid robots designed by Tesla do some advance exploring on the Martian surface, eventually “a few thousand” Starship rockets will head off together from Earth orbit to Mars, loaded with people and more than a million tons of equipment, dried food and supplies.
A SpaceX illustration imagines life at a future Mars colony, with a family watching a Starship from inside a glass dome. (SpaceX Image)
The SpaceX website offers a few images envisioning life in the early days of a Mars colony. A mom and two kids look out from inside a glass dome as a Starship lands nearby. The accompanying text on the website glances over some of the most glaring problems.
The extreme temperature fluctuations, from 70°F to -225°F, with an average of about -85°F? “It is a little cold, but we can warm it up.”
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The atmosphere of mostly unbreathable CO2? That’s good for plants; those don’t need oxygen. “We can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere.”
That one-third gravity compared to Earth? “You would be able to lift heavy things and bound around.”
In a speech a year ago to employees at the Texas rocket site — the video is on the SpaceX website — Musk conceded that Mars is inhospitable but said terraforming will provide the solution.
“You can’t really walk around on the surface of Mars, at least as yet until Mars is terraformed to be like Earth,” Musk told the employees. “You need to walk around with a Mars suit and be initially in kind of like glass domes.”
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“But it would work,” he added. “And eventually we can make Mars into an Earthlike planet.”
Yes. Terraforming. How exactly could that be achieved? And how long would it take?
The science on terraforming
SpaceX did not respond to requests to grant an interview or to offer comment on the feasibility of Musk’s vision. But Mars scientists have studied the question. Edwin Kite, associate professor of planetary science at the University of Chicago, resident at the Berkeley-Calif.-based Astera Institute that funds futuristic science, is a leading researcher on terraforming Mars. In a paper published in April in collaboration with two dozen other Mars scientists, including DeBenedictis, he assessed the feasibility of the potential pathways currently being studied.
His paper begins with a bracing caveat: “It is unknown whether human civilization can thrive off-Earth.”
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But if we want to try living on Mars, the paper says, the first requirement will be to warm the freezing planet or at least regions of the planet. It lays out three possible ways to do so.
A SpaceX illustration imagines a future Mars base, with a central habitat dome, and pressurized greenhouses. (SpaceX Image)
Some local regions on Mars could hypothetically be warmed by spreading a translucent, high-tech blanket that would block harmful UV radiation but otherwise allow sunlight through to warm the Martian soil. The solar warmth trapped beneath the blanket, made from a plastic-like biomaterial, would melt ice under the ground. The heat and water would then potentially support primitive life forms, starting with microbes, bacteria and algae and, in time, plants.
However, even warmed, wet Martian soil is salty and laden with bleach-like chemicals hostile to life. No known micro-organism on Earth can survive in such conditions.
That’s where DeBenedictis’s research comes in. Her team — funded in large part by crypto billionaire and space entrepreneur Jed McCaleb, who founded the Astera Institute — is trying through selective breeding and genome modification to engineer new, hardier biological organisms that could get life started in the Martian soil. She is looking to microbes that could digest the bleach and others that could produce more of the bioplastic, allowing extension of the soil-heating blanket to a larger area.
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The idea: as the soil improves with this microbial organic matter, more complex organisms could take hold. Eventually, she says, “you could actually do things like grow potatoes in the dirt.”
DeBenedictis is super optimistic about biology turning Mars green. It could have a cover of basic plants “in my lifetime,” she says.
Pioneer Labs has been going for just two years. Its early-stage research is developing lab-grown microbes inside enclosed, stirred, heated, radiation-shielded vessels, like high-tech Instant Pots. It’s a long way from growing potatoes.
DeBenedictis notes that although the lack of oxygen means humans still couldn’t breathe outside, plants grown under these bioplastic blankets would produce oxygen through photosynthesis. That might eventually build up a breathable atmosphere on Mars at some point in the far future. Kite said the timeframe for that would be centuries, at least — “much longer than your civilization-relevant time scales.”
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The second warming method outlined in Kite’s paper: large reflecting mirrors in orbit around Mars, beaming down sunlight to warm a contained scientific base and the region immediately around it. The first reflectors would launch from Earth as solar sails, unfurling in space and flying themselves to Mars, propelled by sunlight.
Kite projects that doubling the sunlight reaching an area of less than half a square mile on Mars would require a large constellation of reflectors in sun-synchronous orbit, with a combined surface of nearly 300 square miles.
That’s a huge armada of solar sails heading off to Mars, all of which would have to be managed and maintained from Earth.
The third and most extravagant pathway being studied: warm the entire planet by forcing artificial global warming.
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At one time, it was hoped that local warming on Mars would release frozen CO2 in the ground as a greenhouse gas that would thicken the atmosphere and gradually warm the whole planet, the same process now warming Earth. But a 2018 paper by Jakosky dashed that plan. Analysis of sensor data and imagery from the latest satellites orbiting Mars showed there’s not enough frozen CO2 on the surface to provide significant greenhouse warming.
That paper concluded that “terraforming Mars is not possible using present-day technology.”
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To overcome that setback, scientists developed a new idea: pumping a few million tons of aerosol particles into the atmosphere, artificial dust manufactured on Mars from material in the soil. These clouds of dust, which would very slowly settle and have to be continuously spewed out, would warm Mars by trapping the solar heat.
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But the time scale for this is the longest under consideration. NASA’s McKay, in a 1991 paper, analyzed the timeframe for a greenhouse effect on Mars, based on how much of the solar energy reaching its surface might be realistically trapped. He calculated that it would take 100 years to warm the surface to an Earth-like temperature, and “perhaps 100,000 years” to eventually produce an oxygen-rich atmosphere from plant photosynthesis.
Kite, in an interview, said it would take “decades, at least” just to build the robotically-operated factories on the Martian surface that would manufacture and disperse the aerosols across the planet. His paper projects the cost of the aerosol project at $1 trillion.
DeBenedictis said this enormous investment and the extended time scale of planetwide warming make the more local methods the only practical options.
Yet even if any of these planet-warming methods work, that still leaves the other major problems. While machines can extract oxygen from the CO2 in the atmosphere and pump it into sealed indoor living spaces, the air remains unbreathable outside. The extremely low pressure and potentially deadly cosmic rays remain unaddressed. Inside and out, the low gravity will still, over time, exert its unpredictable physical impact on human bodies.
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In short, even if these wildly speculative, generations-long projects succeed somewhat in warming Mars, the result will fall disappointingly short of Earth-like. Dreams of colonizing Mars could still reach a dead end.
Concluding his summary of the various possible paths toward terraforming Mars, Kite notes that “no approach has been shown to be simultaneously affordable, safe, scalable, and to enable extending life beyond Earth.”
As one might expect from a group of Mars researchers, Kite’s paper urges that terraforming research continue, arguing that “a finding that no approach is viable” would at least curtail the vast expense and bring more realism to plans for large numbers of people to self-sustain anywhere beyond Earth.
SpaceX woos investors
SpaceX’s IPO prospectus relegated such downer conclusions to the “risk factors” section that offers legal cover in any such financial filing. The Mars mission and similar space endeavors, the filing said, “involve significant technical complexity, unproven technologies, or technologies that do not exist or may require significant advancement.”
Outside that CYA boilerplate, the prospectus offered investors a Musk-style sprinkling of high-flown stardust. The SpaceX “mission is to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
In case that was insufficiently inspiring, the prospectus added a dash of fear, stating that humanity needs to spread beyond Earth to survive a potential planetary catastrophe. “We do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs,” it stated.
When Musk addressed employees in Texas as the IPO opened trading on June 12, he gushed enthusiasm for his vision: “There have to be things that make you excited about the future, that make you glad to wake up in the morning because you can’t wait to see what happens next.”
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The risk to future funding
For Musk, maintaining such enthusiasm will be essential. For beyond the scientific and engineering challenges of the Mars enterprise, politics and economics could be showstoppers.
After the inspiration of the first human moon landing in 1969, the public quickly lost interest in subsequent Apollo missions. However scientifically interesting, the moon seemed to offer little but dust and rocks.
SpaceX’s stunning rocket launches and the recent Artemis mission that swung astronauts around the moon have reignited space travel enthusiasm in a new generation.
But interest could collapse again.
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Kite’s paper notes that “If in the future crew were lost and there were no obvious short-term financial benefits to exploration, society might cease to pay the high costs of sending people to space.”
Orbiting space satellites — chiefly communications, navigation, imagery, surveillance, and missile detection — will continue to rake in cash for SpaceX, much of it from the government. And Musk is well-placed to grab lucrative Pentagon contracts to deploy weapons to kill enemy satellites and defenses to protect ours.
But crewed space missions beyond Earth orbit produce no immediate applications. An investment sinkhole, they demand clear-eyed purpose, not delusion.
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In an interview, Jakosky — who like McKay, Kite and DeBenedictis fervently wants humans to be interplanetary one day — said he doesn’t buy Musk’s idea that if, say, climate change makes Earth less habitable, Mars can be a “back-up planet.”
Terraforming Mars is just too far out, he believes.
“It’s an incredible amount of money and resources that would be better spent understanding our own climate here,” Jakosky said. “It’s always going to be easier to terraform the Earth, bring it back to the current conditions, than it is going to be to terraform Mars.”
The realistic future
If the Mars project fades in the years ahead, Musk may try pivoting entirely to AI as the new vision — and investment draw — for SpaceX.
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In the meantime, the next big technical milestone, one needed just to reach the moon, never mind Mars, will be refueling rockets in space. If this and other hard-to-pull-off engineering challenges can be met, what’s realistically ahead for Mars exploration?
It would be much easier to build a city in Antarctica than on Mars but we haven’t done so. (Why? Oh yes, no one wants to live there.) Instead, we have scientific bases there, where researchers rotate in and out after a few months. Tourists visit Antarctica in the summer to see the penguins. At the largest U.S. base, McMurdo Station, there’s even a bar and a chapel.
NASA’s McKay foresees such a base as the future human footprint on Mars — at least for a century. Beyond that, who knows?
The low sun over the ice near McMurdo Station, Antarctica, in September 2020. Scientists see a research outpost like it — not a colony — as the realistic model for any human foothold on Mars. (Neil Crawn / U.S. Antarctic Program / NSF)
He has traveled to Antarctica for nearly 40 years, typically staying no more than two months, specifically to study the effects of the cold, dry environment for his Mars research.
But in the long, dark Antarctic winter, those scientific and military research bases largely empty out. There are no nurseries, no elementary schools, and no full-time residents.
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“I go there for a season and contribute to the research and then come home,” McKay said. “I don’t want to take my family there.”
McKay, who grew up watching Star Trek, still hopes that the “long, long, long-term vision” of humans on other planets will one day materialize.
“The problem with some of the current thinking is that it jumps from zero, right now, from one or two robotic missions to, OK, let’s set up a million people on Mars, with nurseries and kids and everything,” he said. “That’s crazy.”
“Humans moving into space, I think that is inevitable,” McKay said. “But it might be that it takes thousands of years.”
Photo credit: Reddit Mark Russinovich spends his days shaping the future of Microsoft Azure. On nights and weekends he still finds time to make Windows do things it was never meant to do. His latest experiment turns Microsoft Paint into a living monitor for the original DOOM.
DoomPaint plays the actual game, whereas ViZDoom is just a research engine based on the ZDoom code, booting up an authentic shareware copy of DOOM 1 and then proceeding at the classic 35 ticks per second. Don’t even get me started on the engine, which remains buried in the background the entire time. Each frame is transformed into a device-independent bitmap and copied to the clipboard as OLE data. Then it’s flung straight into an open Paint canvas, with no regard for where it came from.
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Paint just receives the next image and pastes it into the canvas, just like any other standard paste operation. Russinovich offered a brilliant answer for this: “Paint renders the game but does not compute it. Paint computes nothing. Paint has never computed anything. That’s the joke.” The pasting action must be consistent and fast enough to create the illusion of playability. Synthetic Ctrl-V keys generally work on most paint builds, but if they fail silently, the code falls back to UI Automation, temporarily displaying the Edit menu. We have to deal with Paint reading the clipboard stuff on its own schedule, so the project simply treats it as a regular OLE object, which owns the bits until it decides to send them over to Paint. This helps to keep all of that “can’t perform that operation” nonsense from bringing the game to a halt in the middle of a demon combat.
DOOM runs in its native 320 x 200 resolution, allowing you to get the full 35 frames per second on any modern system. Moving up to larger resolutions, such as 640 x 400, keeps the frame rate workable, but it relies a little more heavily on Paint’s ability to handle the additional pixels. However, frame rate is never forced; the game simply runs as quickly as Paint or the engine will allow it. Sound effects are routed through an upgraded OpenAL layer, while Bobby Prince’s original tracks are extracted from the WAD and converted from MUS to MIDI before being routed to the Windows sequencer. Both systems are intelligent enough to detect when an audio track goes dead.
Keyboard input is intercepted at a low level, so WASD, arrow keys, the fire button, and so on all make it to the engine without interfering with any of Paint’s own shortcuts. Surprisingly, Ctrl-Z remains undisturbed. Because each time a frame is ‘pasted’, it is practically a document edit, therefore in the event of a crash or whatever, you can just undo your way back to life. Get slain in a corner full with imps, and with a few undos, you’re good as new. File > Save, on the other hand, creates a standard PNG image with no fuss or bustle because Paint only knows that the player has painted it. They kind of have. The full code and all relevant files are available on GitHub under an MIT license for anyone curious about how far a clipboard and Paint can be pushed together. [Source]
Apparently you all love lasers just as much as we do. We put out a challenge to use, build, or otherwise abuse our favorite coherent light sources, and you responded. Some of the projects had been in the works for quite a while and were ridiculously polished, some were whipped together on the fly just for the contest, and we truly enjoyed both.
We only have three $150 DigiKey gift certificates to give out, though, so without further ado, we present to you…
The Winners
Our judges’ favorite project was [Jacob]’s CubeRaman, and it’s not hard to see why. A Raman spectrometer shines laser light at an object and catches the reflection, filtering all of the original laser wavelength out. What remains are photons that have interacted with electrons in the atoms that make up the target itself, and come back at a shifted wavelength. Comparing the spectrum of this Raman reflection with a database of known spectra tells you what it is made of.
This is by no means an easy project, but [Jacob]’s documentation, careful selection of parts to buy used and parts to build, coupled with a clever 3D-printed mounting system make it plausible for the home gamer. We love seeing out-of-reach science gear brought into reach, and we know we’ll be keeping an eye on this project in the future.
Next up, we had [Kyle Mayer]’s Measuring Microns with Lasers, which is a DIY laser rangefinder, but for measuring very small distances — under a centimeter — with precision. Like many laser optical rangefinders, this bounces a laser off the target and collects the light on a line sensor, using the angle at which the light returns to figure out how far the target is.
[Kyle]’s implementation uses three of these measurement heads and produces a reading that is precise down to 0.25 μm nearly 5,000 times per second. This puts it in league with devices that you have to request a quote for, so you probably don’t want to have to afford them.
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And finally, an art project! [AJRussell]’s Glow Engine is a beautiful take on a familiar laser trick: shining a blue laser at glow-in-the-dark materials to leave persistent traces. Scan the laser over the phosphorescent screen, and you have something like a CRT, only in [AJ]’s case, a very very slow CRT.
The beauty here lies in the details. [AJ] chose high quality strontium aluminate for the glowing, and used high resolution encoders and the open-source SimpleFOC motor driver firmware to get the spots in the right place. Snippets of old hard drive platters make fantastic mirrors. All in all, a super implementation that we’re pretty sure looks even better in the real world.
Honorable Mentions
We always come up with a few honorable mention categories to give you all some inspiration. And it also gives us a nice excuse to feature some more sweet projects.
Lightshow
We wanted to see pretty displays of laser light. [Daniel Ross]’s Laser Oscilloscope 360 not only draws out pretty waveforms, but it does so in prime steampunk style. Both [Owen Trueblood]’s Laser Cyanotypes and [GRNCH]’s Scored: Laser Woodblock Prints flip the script, making beautiful images from lasers, but not the way we intended. Kudos.
DIY
We wanted to see what laser-involved projects you were building yourselves, from scratch. While we were shocked that we had no TEA laser entries, [Armin Bindzus]’s Versatile Laser Processing Machine more than made up for it. It’s a pulsed-laser do-everything machine that we’re absolutely jealous to see made real. And if you don’t think there’s some real laser DIY going on here, you’ve never maintained a q-switched diode pumped Nd:YAG laser.
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With Remaining Eye
This was our catch-all category for doing basically anything else with lasers. It turns out that what you all mostly wanted to do was science. [Matt Venn] used a fast-rise-time laser driver to Measure the Speed of Light at Home, and got damn good results considering the 2 m baseline. [Tim] put together a 3D Printed Optical Cavity interferometer on a budget.
But it wasn’t all labcoats and pocket protectors. [WeldingRod1]’s Laser Bandsaw is basically as bad an idea as it sounds like it is. Please, please wear eye protection!
Laser Oscilloscope 360′
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Laser Cyanotypes
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Scored: Laser Woodblock Prints from Generative Art
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Versatile Laser Processing Machine
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Measuring the speed of light at home
3D Printed Optical Cavity
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Laser Bandsaw
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Thanks again to DigiKey for sponsoring the contest. We’re sure that our winners will find whatever they need for their next laser project.
Microsoft and Amazon both saw their stocks surge again Monday, riding a post-earnings tech wave across the stock market that pushed Amazon past $3 trillion in value for the first time.
The gains follow earnings reports last week in which both companies’ cloud platforms exceeded expectations. Microsoft said Azure grew 43%, passing $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time. Amazon said AWS grew 37%, its fastest pace in 18 quarters.
Microsoft and Amazon are now the world’s fourth and fifth most valuable companies, respectively. The three ahead of them (Nvidia, Alphabet and Apple) are all headquartered in the Bay Area, although each has sizeable engineering centers in the Seattle region.
Amazon rose 4.6% in intraday trading to $284.15 as of publication time, after touching an all-time high of $287.20 earlier in the session, giving it a market value of $3.06 trillion.
Microsoft climbed 5.2% to $488.97, worth $3.63 trillion. Its rally began Thursday, when it added nearly $450 billion in market value, the largest one-day gain by any company on record.
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The rallies came despite AI spending plans that have unsettled investors for much of the year. Microsoft went into earnings near a one-year low, after a $357 billion wipeout to start the year.
It’s all still coming at a huge cost. Microsoft spent a record $41 billion on capital projects last quarter and told investors to expect more than $50 billion in the current quarter. Amazon raised its 2026 forecast to about $220 billion from $200 billion, citing rising memory chip prices.
In one sign of the impact of the spending, Microsoft’s free cash flow fell 23% last quarter. Amazon’s free cash flow turned negative for the first time since 2023.
But cloud growth and other signs of demand for AI seem to have appeased investors for now.
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told investors the spending reflects unmet demand: “Even at that amount, we will still not have enough capacity to meet all the demand we have in 2026, and I believe this dynamic will also be true in 2027 too. In fact, the demand we already have for 2028 is striking.”
[David] has a young child who is clever enough to use a computer to play music, but he doesn’t quite want to hand over the mouse just yet. Thus, he set about building an electronic music player that could be operated in an altogether simpler fashion.
The build is based around an Arduino Nano — its job is to read RFID tags via an RC522 reader, with the tags themselves embedded in a series of small dolls belonging to [David]’s daughter. Upon reading the tag, the Arduino Nano chats over serial with a DFPlayer Mini module, which reads a playlist of MP3 files off of an SD card and plays them over a small 4 ohm speaker that [David] had laying around. It’s a simple build, with the components all neatly wrapped up in a handsome wooden case with a volume control and a skip button for if any one song becomes too annoying for a repeat listen.
We’ve featured other builds in this vein before, too. There’s something satisfying about a music player with such a simple interface—no delicate media to fiddle with, just pop the toy on top and get the playlist you were looking for. If you’re creating your own little musical builds at home, we’d love to see them on the tipsline.
Danielle Egan and Athena Leong know how to have fun. Between the two of them, they’ve organized a citywide scavenger hunt in San Francisco and turned a viral prank into an exclusive NYC restaurant for a night. They even created an alternative to a running club for socializing, dubbed a “sit club,” where people just bring their chairs and relax. Now, with their new startup, Outernet, the co-founders want to help others add more fun to their lives, too.
The app’s name is inspired by the concept of using the internet as a tool to get you to go outside, hence “outernet.” It’s one of several apps that helps you save the things you see online — like local events, restaurants or bars to try, or other city landmarks — and turn them into a list of to-dos for exploring the world around you.
Outernet’s pitch is that instead of simply liking a post about something you’d like to see or do on social media, you should share it to its app, where it will track the activity or place you want to visit for you in an organized interface. (Invite codes to try the app for yourself are at the bottom of this post).
What makes Outernet different from others in the space, like Albo, Tabi, or Plotline, is who’s behind it: founders who have devoted much of their time to playfulness and having fun offline. Now, they want to bring that same spirit into their app.
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Image Credits:Outernet
“In my free time, I’m very passionate about getting people to go outside and do things,” explains Egan, whose offline persona is quite different from her former day job working in product BizOps at LinkedIn. “I just love capturing attention in unexpected ways and delivering delightful things.” She says the thesis behind the app is becoming the “motivation engine for IRL” — something that removes the friction between wanting to do something and actually going out to do it.
Outernet taps into an already common consumer behavior. As you scroll TikTok and Instagram, you’re often inspired by a creator’s post, so you’ll save it in the app as a reminder. But then you promptly forget about the idea as you continue to consume more content. Outernet solves this problem by keeping track of the things you want to do or places you want to visit, all in one place.
Image Credits:Outernet
To save a post to the app, you’ll tap the share option from the source app, like TikTok or Instagram, then scroll through the list of places you can share to until you find Outernet. You can also paste in social media URLs or website links directly into the app, or upload a photo of something you see, like a flyer.
To organize everything, Outernet leverages AI to pull relevant information, like the date, time, location, and details about the activity you want to try or the location of a place you’d like to visit. Events are saved to a chronological feed, which you can revisit whenever you’re looking for something to do. Other activities without a date, as well as places you’d like to visit, are organized into separate tabs within the app. You can also save events to your Apple or Google Calendar or view them in Outernet’s map.
Image Credits:Outernet
The app can also send proactive reminders and nudges that encourage you to go do the things you’ve saved.
Then, as you explore places in the real world, you can “stamp” them as such, building what will eventually become a passport documenting your activities.
Image Credits:Outernet
“We’re thinking of different ways of creating maybe some sort of like passport book where you can look at all the things [you’ve done] and maybe share that with friends and get some sort of sense of pride of that,” Egan says of future product plans. They’re also thinking of using traditional gamification techniques to encourage activity, like giving out stamps when you reach different milestones.
The idea for Outernet came out of the co-founders’ experience designing a citywide scavenger hunt in San Francisco, called “Pursuit,” which began three years ago and is now held annually. The monthlong game drew participation from about 1.5% of San Francisco’s population during its most recent run.
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As the founders chatted with participants, they found that people didn’t get involved because they loved scavenger hunts or adventure games; they just wanted an excuse to go outside. This sparked an idea.
“We just realized that people really have an appetite for doing things, like going on adventures. This is the new trend,” notes Leong, whose background is in computer science and child development, before she landed a job in adventure game design.
“There are so many incredible community events, and being community organizers ourselves, we’re very plugged into that scene,” Egan adds. “What’s so hard is there are these boots on the ground — incredible community organizers who are hosting these amazing events, and they just don’t know how to reach people because marketing and grabbing people’s attention is such a different skill set. And that’s something that we are exceptional in. So we see ourselves as the conduit,” she says.
Outernet’s app has been on the market for roughly two months and is already profitable from its premium subscription ($6.99/mo or $39.99/year), which lets you save more items per day. It has around 18,000 users in total, and the team is experimenting rapidly with new ideas.
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The founders are now having casual conversations with investors about their next steps, but finding the right fit is key.
“We want to bring on investors — if we do — [who are] people who are really aligned with us,” says Leong. “We’re whimsical, and we have to find investors that match.”
Outernet is invite-only and available on iOS, with an Android waitlist. TechCrunch readers can use the invite code “coffeewalk” to skip the waitlist.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with AliExpress
Content creation has never been more accessible, but building a capable camera kit is still a costly investment. Whether you’re chasing cinematic travel videos, growing a YouTube channel, or capturing everyday moments with professional polish, the right gear doesn’t come cheap. AliExpress’s August promotion puts some of DJI’s most popular creator gear within easier reach, thanks to discounts across the Osmo lineup. Shoppers can also save even more at checkout with exclusive Digital Trends coupon codes, offering up to an extra $70 off eligible orders depending on the purchase value. If an upgrade has been on your wishlist, this is a good time to make it happen.
This is the DJI deal every content creator should see
If one deal defines this promotion, it’s the DJI Osmo 360. Built for creators who want to capture immersive 360-degree content without carrying a bulky camera setup, DJI’s flagship 360 camera is available for $324.73 during the AliExpress August promotion. Apply the YDT35 coupon at checkout and the price drops to just $289.73.
The Osmo 360 is built around native 8K 360-degree recording, giving you the freedom to reframe your footage long after you’ve finished shooting. Whether you’re documenting a hiking trail, recording action sports, or creating cinematic travel videos, the ability to choose your perspective during editing opens up creative possibilities that traditional cameras simply can’t match. DJI’s stabilization technology also helps keep footage smooth, making it easier to produce polished content even when you’re on the move.
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Atunder $290, the Osmo 360 delivers remarkable value for anyone looking to step into immersive content creation. Native 8K recording, reliable stabilization, and the flexibility to reframe every shot long after filming make it one of the standout buys in this month’s promotion.
Don’t overlook this deal on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3
The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 continues to be one of DJI’s best-value cameras for creators who want stabilized, high-quality video without spending a fortune. Priced at $320.52 during the AliExpress August promotion, the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 becomes an even better value with an additional $35 off using the YDT35 coupon, bringing the final price down to just $285.52.
What continues to make the Pocket 3 stand out is its combination of a large 1-inch sensor and DJI’s proven three-axis mechanical gimbal. Together, they produce smooth, cinematic footage that’s difficult to achieve with a smartphone alone. Add the rotating touchscreen, intelligent tracking features, and compact design, and you have a camera that’s just as comfortable filming travel adventures as it is capturing everyday moments or creating social-first content.
If you’ve been waiting to upgrade from your phone without investing in a full-sized camera, the Pocket 3 delivers an impressive mix of portability, stabilization, and image quality at a very attractive sale price.
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Grab the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 without stretching your budget
If you’d rather invest in the camera first and add accessories later, the standard DJI Osmo Pocket 4 offers a more affordable way into DJI’s latest pocket-sized ecosystem. It’s available for $514.50 during the AliExpress August promotion, and applying the YDT70 coupon at checkout brings the final price down to just $445.
At the heart of the Pocket 4 is DJI’s signature three-axis mechanical gimbal, which keeps handheld footage remarkably smooth whether you’re walking through a busy city, documenting a vacation, or filming on the move. Combined with a large 1-inch sensor, support for up to 6K video, ActiveTrack 7.0, and generous built-in storage, it gives creators the confidence to shoot high-quality content without carrying a larger camera setup.
The Pocket 4 strikes an excellent balance between portability and performance. Compact enough to go everywhere yet capable enough to become your everyday camera for vlogs, travel diaries, family moments, and social-first content, it’s an easy upgrade for anyone ready to move beyond smartphone videos.
If you’re serious about creating, buy the bundle
If you’re serious about creating, there’s very little reason to settle for the standalone camera. Available for $511.94 during the AliExpress August promotion, the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 Creator Combo drops to just $442 with the YDT70 coupon, giving you the Pocket 4 plus essential accessories in one package.
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The Creator Combo pairs the Pocket 4 with practical accessories including the DJI Mic 3, wide-angle lens, battery handle, and tripod, giving you everything you need to start creating right away. Whether you’re filming travel vlogs, recording interviews, producing YouTube videos, or capturing everyday moments, the bundle offers a more complete setup without the hassle of buying accessories separately.
Instead of gradually adding accessories over time, the Creator Combo gives you a ready-to-shoot package from day one. With premium audio, extended battery life, and greater shooting flexibility included in the box, it’s the ideal choice for creators who want to get the most out of the Pocket 4 from the very beginning.
Step up to the Pocket 4P with the Standard Combo
For creators who want the most complete Pocket 4P experience, the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P Standard Combo builds on the Standard Combo with an expanded collection of accessories for more ambitious projects. It’s available for $847.62 during the AliExpress August promotion, and applying the YDT70 coupon at checkout brings the final price down to just $778.
The Creator Combo includes everything you need to tackle more demanding projects from day one. Whether you’re filming documentaries, producing polished YouTube videos, creating client work, or capturing content while travelling, having the right accessories bundled together means you can spend less time shopping for add-ons and more time creating.
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If you’re planning to invest in DJI’s ecosystem for the long term, the Creator Combo is the most complete package in the Pocket 4P lineup. With the camera and essential accessories included in one box, it’s a convenient, future-ready setup for creators who don’t want to compromise.
Make the most of the AliExpress August promotion
Building a content creation kit is rarely a one-time purchase. Cameras, microphones, accessories, and other essentials all add to the final cost, which is why promotions like this can make a meaningful difference. Across DJI’s Osmo lineup, the AliExpress August promotion brings down the prices of everything from entry-level creator cameras to premium production bundles, making it easier to find a setup that fits both your needs and your budget.
The savings don’t end with the listed prices, either. Throughout the promotion, exclusive Digital Trends coupon codes help bring the final checkout price down even further, making everything from standalone cameras to Creator Combos even more compelling purchases. If you’re planning to invest in a Creator Combo or pick up multiple products in a single order, those extra savings can add up quickly.
Whether you’re exploring immersive 360-degree filmmaking with the Osmo 360, taking your first step beyond smartphone photography with the Pocket 3, upgrading to the latest Pocket 4, or investing in a fully equipped Creator Combo, the AliExpress August promotion makes it easier to pick up DJI gear for less.
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This content is paid for by the brands indicated. Digital Trends works closely with advertisers to highlight their products and services to our readers. Although this article is informational and not opinionated, it reflects thorough fact-checking by our team to ensure accuracy. Our dedicated partnerships team, not external advertisers, crafts all branded content in-house. For more information on our approach to branded content, click here.
Apple deals are selling out fast, with limited quantities available of Apple’s 15-inch M5 MacBook Air with 24GB of memory, now $200 off.
B&H’s August MacBook Air sale knocks $200 off a popular 15-inch MacBook Air spec featuring Apple’s current M5 chip and an upgrade to 24GB of unified memory.
The reduced price of $1,499 is available now in Apple’s Midnight finish, with free 2-day shipping on orders shipped within the contiguous U.S.
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According to B&H, which is an Apple Authorized Reseller and has been in business since 1973, limited supply is available at the special price and the offer may sell out.
13-inch MacBook Air deals
13″ M5 (8C GPU, 16GB, 512GB, 70W Power Adapter; Silver, Midnight, or Sky Blue): $1,199 ($120 off)
A chainsaw is one of those essential yard tools that homeowners may not realize they really need until they actually do need one. If you’d prefer not to wait until you’ve got a yard full of fallen branches that need cutting down to see the need for a good chainsaw, they are easy enough to come by in the consumer market, with several major manufacturers putting their logos on quality devices these days.
There are so many options that it may be tough for some to determine which brand is most worthy of their hard earned money. But those who do even a little bit of research in the chainsaw market will learn with a quickness that Stihl is widely regarded as one of the best brands in the powered cutting tool game. If you’re interested in procuring a Stihl chainsaw for yourself, the brand currently features models to suit virtually any need in its online marketplace.
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While you’re perusing those options, you might want to consider checking out some of the other tools and gear featured on the site, because Stihl has stretched its range of offerings well beyond just high-powered chainsaws. In fact, Stihl likely has a handful of powered and non-powered products available that even its most devoted fans had no idea even existed. Here’s a few you might genuinely be surprised to find among Stihl’s offerings.
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Sprayers and misters
Apart from its well-regarded chainsaws, Stihl does indeed manufacture many other products fit for use by backyard DIYers and pro yard crews alike. That list includes mainstays like trimmers, pruners, blowers, and mowers. You may not realize it, but that list also includes a few more specialized tools like sprayers and misters.
If you’re unfamiliar with those devices, they are typically used to disseminate chemicals that help control pests, weeds, and fungi in your green spaces, as well as life-giving water and fertilizers. Sprayers tend to work better for focused coverage, while those with misting features are ideal for covering larger areas. At present, Stihl has 11 sprayers and misters listed among its online offerings, with styles ranging from non-powered handheld models, to backpack style builds that run on gasoline or lithium ion power.
Those sprayers vary dramatically in price, with the cheapest handheld model selling for $26.99 and the gas-powered S450 Backpack build listed for $859.99. Between those two models and the range of makes in between, Stihl seems to offer a sprayer that can meet the needs of most consumers. User ratings are not entirely encouraging for many of the models, however, so you’ll want to be sure to do your research before you purchase one.
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Axes, Mauls, and other woodcutting gear
The Stihl brand has long-been been recognized as one of the preeminent manufacturers of powered chainsaws. As such, the family-owned outfit has, historically, focused the bulk of its production on gas and battery powered cutting tools. Given the company’s general market focus, you might be surprised to learn that Stihl also offers several non-powered woodcutting tools, including both axes and mauls.
For those who may not be in the know, even as those tools bear a striking resemblance to each other, they are designed for decidedly different purposes. To break it down simply, traditional axes are designed with a slim head to cut across wood fibers to more efficiently bring down trees and limbs of various sizes. A maul, on the other hand, is designed with a heavier, wedge-shaped head that makes it ideal for splitting logs. Whichever of those tools you might need, Stihl surprisingly offers multiple models of each online, ranging in price from $37.99 to $119.99. The brand also offers a 19.75-inch hatchet for $66.99 if you need one of those.
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Perhaps more surprisingly, Stihl even features several logging accessories among its woodcutting wares. That includes various log-moving tools like a Cant Hook, a Log Carrier, and a Hookaroon.
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Sweeping machine
For the sake of being fully transparent, we can tell you that, prior to coming across the tool on Stihl’s website, we were not really aware that sweeping machines were even a thing. They are. And as surprised as we were to learn that, we were even more surprised that Stihl actually makes one.
If you’re as uninformed as us on sweeping machines, you might now be wondering what, exactly, one does. Turns out that the name is pretty self explanatory — a sweeping machine is basically designed to be a sort of street sweeper for sidewalks, smaller hardscaped areas, and some home interiors. They look a lot like a lawn mower, except that the front end is equipped with spinning brushes that collect leaves and debris as the sweeper passes over them. The device is, of course, powered, and designed to run on Stihl’s AP 300 S lithium-ion battery.
According to the listing for Stihl’s Sweeping Machine, the sticker price includes neither the necessary battery or a charger. Given that it’s priced at $1039.99, that exclusion may be a deal breaker for some, particularly as the sweeping machine will likely be viewed as a luxury addition to most yard care routines. If you can afford it, however, the sweeping machine may be a luxury worth having.
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Smart tool accessories
We are officially living in the age of the smart device, with the term being applied to everything from the phones in our pocket to the appliances in our kitchen. Given the fact, it’s only natural that the smart device craze has made its way into the power tool arena, with companies like DeWalt utilizing Bluetooth capabilities for its Tool Connect system.
Several of the other major players in the power tool market have followed suit, and Stihl is very much among them. At present, the brand features just two smart devices on its website — the Smart Connector and the Stihl Connected Hub. The former tool is, in essence, a smart tag tracker that can be attached to any Stihl tool. Once in place, the tag — which picks up on motor-generated electromagnetic fields — can transmit data to the Stihl app, allowing you to track a device’s runtime, performance, and, perhaps more importantly, its location.
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Meanwhile, the Hub does exactly what you’d expect a hub to do, which is collect that Smart Connector information on a scale more befitting an entire fleet of tools, then storing it in the Stihl Cloud for easy user access. Stihl’s smart devices are priced at $203.99 and $235.99, respectively.
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Inflators and Compressors
Even as advancements have been made regarding inflatable items, car tires, bike tires, and soccer balls still regularly turn up in need of air. While hand pumps are capable of filling those items with the requisite air they need to function, they are hardly convenient, and in the case of a car tire, may not properly do the job. As such, electric inflators have become all the rage among many of the major tool makers out there.
Yes, Stihl has indeed joined the inflator fray, offering a single battery-powered model among its tools. That inflator is the KOA 20, which is currently selling for $119.99 in tool-only format. If you’re looking to add the inflator to your garage setup, which requires an AS 2 battery and the AL 1 charger to power it, Stihl sells a kit with all three for $199.99.
Those prices are, more or less, on par with what you’ll find among inflators from some of the other major brands, and for what it’s worth, Stihl customers seem to be plenty impressed with the KOA 20 — which is IPX-4 rated for weather resistance and can also deflate items to desired pressures — rating it at five out of five stars on its product page.
In pursuit of improved range, greater reliability, and faster charging, electric vehicles are driving the demand for high-voltage electronics. Other applications driving this demand include wind farms, data centers, and server farms, to name a few. As the interest for high-voltage electronics increases, the risks associated with their sudden failure must be considered.
Much of what causes high-voltage equipment to malfunction can be linked to the conditions of the climate in which it operates. Specifically, condensation on electronic surfaces caused by humidity can lead to corrosion, which can result in stray leak current and dendrite shorting during Electrochemical Migration (ECM).
Predicting, mitigating, and helping proactively design to account for corrosion is the focus of the Centre for Electronic Corrosion (CELCORR) research group at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The group’s researchers are working with industry partners to develop models and simulation apps that will help in building robust electronics designs. Their goal is to develop knowledge that can be used for manufacturing electronics to withstand humid operating conditions.
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Electronic Failure: “It’s Not the Heat; It is the Humidity”
Automotive electrification and renewable energy systems rely on electronics at all stages of the energy chain. When these electronics, such as the example PCB in Figure 1, are exposed to the effects of moisture, they can become potential failure points.
“Anywhere you are producing, converting, transporting, and using energy, you need these high-power electronic systems that get affected by the humidity,” explained Dr. Rajan Ambat, DTU professor and manager of CELCORR. Ambient moisture can seep into the devices and machines that require these electronics and cause unexpected functional issues through corrosion. When these electronics are involved in particularly high-voltage applications (such as wind farms, data centers, electric vehicles, and server farms), failure due to humidity exposure can even lead to fire.
“There might be a situation where somebody installs a solar panel near the seashore or in an area with high humidity, and within a short period of time, a conducive condition forms inside the electronics that results in a failure,” Ambat said. “This is why we need to understand exactly how the conducive condition of condensation is created, when the condition is created, and how the system is failing.”
Figure 1. The electrolyte potential and current density distributions on a PCB surface (with pinholes).CELCORR/DTU
Identifying corrosion as the underlying cause of some electronic failures is still a challenge. “Fifty percent of failures in electronics are currently branded with an unidentified root cause,” Ambat explained. “When engineers open up the system, they do not realize that the failure was due to corrosion, because moisture disappears without leaving any sign of corrosion unless there is ECM dendrite formation.”
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This lack of awareness was a strong motivator for CELCORR, which turned to multiphysics simulation as a supplementary tool to help its partner organizations to better predict humidity-related issues at the design stage.
Modeling Moisture and Measuring Parameter Changes in PCBs
CELCORR believes the best way to identify and avoid electronic failures is to build more effective designs that better prevent corrosion from developing or can withstand a higher humidity load. Its research team applies its expertise in modeling to generate simulation apps that will help partner industries to evaluate safe designs for humidity robustness.
“We are at the intersection of materials science and the electronics industry. We work as a bridge between materials and electronics disciplines, using both kinds of language,” Dr. Anish Rao Lakkaraju, a postdoctoral researcher at CELCORR, explained.
To understand potential design issues, Ambat emphasized the importance of virtually breaking down systems to identify where problems may arise. “We need simulation software to analyze potential uses of designs and whether new designs are good or bad,” Ambat said.
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Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) are using simulation apps to predict corrosion and design electronics proactively to mitigate or withstand its effects.
Using the COMSOL Multiphysics software for investigation, the CELCORR research team together with other research partners (Aalborg University) built an example model with a simple PCB geometry that matched both its test circuit boards as well as the design of a device used by one of its partner companies. The team then added a water film layer on top to act as the relative humidity. From there, the team could introduce variation. “We change the layout, geometry, distance between electrodes, thickness of the water film, and conductivity of the water film depending on the conditions,” Ambat said.
Ambat and his team generate data on the effect of these variations and can identify which has the greatest impact on the device’s performance and whether any alterations can improve the device’s anticorrosion robustness. “We assume there is condensation forming on the electronic surfaces (Figure 2) and compute the electrochemical leak current for different design elements,” Ambat said. “The value of the computed electrochemical current between the parts will give us an indication of whether the PCB will be affected or not.”
Figure 2. A 10-µm water film condensation effect on an example PCB.CELCORR/DTU
Altering the design elements and solving the model equations again and again allows the team to better understand what makes a design effective. “Now, we are at the current form of the model, and we are quite happy with where the physics are at this point,” Lakkaraju said. This modeling, however, was just the first part of CELCORR’s overarching goal of illuminating the destructive potential of corrosion in electronics and the best ways to avoid it.
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Using Simulation Apps to Test Real-World Designs
To open up and ease access to these models, CELCORR used the Application Builder in COMSOL Multiphysics to create simulation applications for the members of the industrial consortium. Built with a simple 3D circuit board geometry with two oppositely biased electrodes and a water layer to replicate corrosion-causing moisture, the apps provide a pared-back, straightforward interface where users can vary model inputs. “We focused on fundamental aspects,” Lakkaraju said. “We boiled down our partners’ overarching concerns to create two apps with very simple geometries and the simplistic stuff that can be varied over multiple parameters.”
The simple simulation apps shown in Figures 3 and 4 are designed to show companies how the distance between the electrodes and the thickness of the moisture layer affect the leak current through the water film depending on different parameters. By analyzing multiple design elements and parameters, users can determine the relative benefits of certain design elements on the humidity robustness. “The apps we have built have really helped because they give the electronics engineers a plug-and-play sort of approach,” Lakkaraju explained.
Figure 3. The UI of CELCORR’s standalone app showing the inputs that users can alter.CELCORR/DTU
“By using this app [Figure 3], companies have unlimited freedom to work with these sorts of variables,” Lakkaraju added. “This would be quite difficult to recreate in real life with physical design and testing, and the companies we work with are quite happy with the level of accuracy the app can provide.”
Figure 4. The UI of one of the simulation apps showing a streamline plot with inputs such as the cathode voltage and blockage length.CELCORR/DTU
Looking Forward: Complex, High-Voltage Modeling
Alongside its collaboration with the industry consortium, CELCORR is also working toward improving the world’s general understanding of corrosion’s impact on electronics. To do this, Ambat and his team are undertaking multiple projects, including actively adding greater complexity to their models. In a tertiary current distribution model they are building, the team is drilling down into each of the basic inputs used in a secondary current distribution model, zooming in to examine the effects of the set of even more detailed inputs each basic input comprises.
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“The next point is to study what each of these detailed inputs does,” Lakkaraju said. In particular, the team is examining mass transport properties and the chemical reactions’ rate constants.
In addition to these ongoing studies, CELCORR is expanding the scope of its research to investigate corrosion in high-power, high-voltage systems. Thanks to a 2024 grant from the Grundfos Foundation, CELCORR was able to establish the Centre for Climate Robust Electronics Design (CRED). The center’s lab facilities and expertise are being developed to address the humidity-robustness requirements of today’s high-voltage and high-power electronic equipment. “Using CELCORR’s uniquely deep understanding of materials and corrosion, we are equipped to find the root cause and provide knowledge for environmentally robust designs,” said Ambat.
For all of its investigation, CELCORR continues to rely on the agility of the COMSOL Multiphysics software. As Lakkaraju explained, “It is really quite nice how a model can be adapted to a variety of combinations of materials, geometries, and parameters and how the software allows you to keep building on from there.”
Valar Atomics confirmed the whisperings that it was raising a giant round led by Sequoia on Monday. The startup’s founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor announced that the company has raised $1 billion in equity, with Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire joining its board, and that it also secured a $200 million line of credit from Erebor and other banks.
While the nuclear startup did not disclose its valuation, Bloomberg reported that it was $6 billion.
Valar is building small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) — essentially miniaturized, factory-built power plants intended to be cheaper and faster to build than traditional reactors. In June, it demonstrated its Ward 250 reactor successfully powering an Nvidia Blackwell system, the company said, and announced a deal with Nvidia to develop a waterless 30MW AI factory.
Valar says its reactors generate the engineering, manufacturing, and operational data needed to improve next-generation reactors, speeding its development cycles.
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“It took two years to complete the NOVA core. It took seven months to take Ward 250 critical. With each reactor built, the tick rate will become smaller until Valar is producing tens, then hundreds, then thousands of reactors per year,” it said, adding that this funding will allow it to reach to its next milestone: manufacturing fleets of its SMRs.
As for Valar’s new round, other investors include Apandion Capital, Atreides Management, Conviction, Dream Ventures, HOF Capital, Point72 Ventures, Riot Ventures, Snowpoint Ventures, and Valor Equity Partners.
Figure 1. The electrolyte potential and current density distributions on a PCB surface (with pinholes).CELCORR/DTU
Figure 2. A 10-µm water film condensation effect on an example PCB.CELCORR/DTU
Figure 3. The UI of CELCORR’s standalone app showing the inputs that users can alter.CELCORR/DTU
Figure 4. The UI of one of the simulation apps showing a streamline plot with inputs such as the cathode voltage and blockage length.CELCORR/DTU
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