Curated from MIT Technology Review — Here’s what matters right now:
This is today’s edition of The Download , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The case against humans in space Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are bitter rivals in the commercial space race, but they agree on one thing: Settling space is an existential imperative. Space is the place. The final frontier. It is our human destiny to transcend our home world and expand our civilization to extraterrestrial vistas. This belief has been mainstream for decades, but its rise has been positively meteoric in this new gilded age of astropreneurs. But as visions of giant orbital stations and Martian cities dance in our heads, a case against human space colonization has found its footing in a number of recent books, from doubts about the practical feasibility of off-Earth communities, to realism about the harsh environment of space and the enormous tax it would exact on the human body. Read the full story . —Becky Ferreira This story is from our new print edition, which is all about the future of security. Subscribe here to catch future copies when they land. This American nuclear company could help India’s thorium dream For just the second time in nearly two decades, the United States has granted an export license to an American company planning to sell nuclear technology to India, MIT Technology Review has learned. The decision to greenlight Clean Core Thorium Energy’s license is a major step toward closer cooperation between the two countries on atomic energy and marks a milestone in the development of thorium as an alternative to uranium for fueling nuclear reactors. Read more about why it’s such a big deal . —Alexander C. Kaufman RFK Jr’s plan to improve America’s diet is missing the point A lot of Americans don’t eat well. And they’re paying for it with their health. A diet high in sugar, sodium, and saturated fat can increase the risk of problems like diabetes, heart disease, and kidney disease, to name a few. And those are among the leading causes of death in the US. This is hardly news. But this week Robert F Kennedy Jr., who heads the US Department of Health and Human Services, floated a new solution to the problem: teaching medical students more about the role of nutrition in health could help turn things around. It certainly sounds like a good idea. If more Americans ate a healthier diet, we could expect to see a decrease in those diseases. But this framing of America’s health crisis is overly simplistic, especially given that plenty of the administration’s other actions have directly undermined health in multiple ways—including by canceling a vital nutrition education program. And at any rate, there are other, more effective ways to tackle the chronic-disease crisis. Read the full story . —Jessica Hamzelou This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this
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Original reporting: MIT Technology Review