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Rocket maker Firefly Aerospace files to go public under ticker FLY

Rocket maker Firefly Aerospace filed for an initial public offering on Friday, with plans to trade under the ticker symbol “FLY” on the Nasdaq.

Firefly’s planned offering comes during a resurgence period for IPOs after the market collapsed in 2022 as rising interest rates and skyrocketing inflation deterred investors from betting on riskier assets.

Some companies, including Klarna and ticket reseller StubHub, delayed public offerings earlier this year as President Donald Trump’s tariff plans rattled global markets. But venture capitalists are becoming more optimistic after a strong June for deal activity that included a surge in crypto company Circle and a major Meta Platforms deal with Scale AI. Figma also filed its prospectus earlier this month.

Tapping into the million-year energy source below our feet

There’s an abandoned coal power plant in upstate New York that most people regard as a useless relic. But MIT’s Paul Woskov sees things differently.

Woskov, a research engineer in MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, notes the plant’s power turbine is still intact and the transmission lines still run to the grid. Using an approach he’s been working on for the last 14 years, he’s hoping it will be back online, completely carbon-free, within the decade.

In fact, Quaise Energy, the company commercializing Woskov’s work, believes if it can retrofit one power plant, the same process will work on virtually every coal and gas power plant in the world.

Quaise is hoping to accomplish those lofty goals by tapping into the energy source below our feet. The company plans to vaporize enough rock to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at a scale that could satisfy human energy consumption for millions of years. They haven’t yet solved all the related engineering challenges, but Quaise’s founders have set an ambitious timeline to begin harvesting energy from a pilot well by 2026. (Circa June 28 2022/Posted first in Lifeboat jn, 2022 by Gemechu Taye & Genevieve Klein)

MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the world’s deepest holes in order to repurpose coal and gas plants.

Rare blue proteins from cold-adapted microbes could serve as prototypes for molecular on-off switches

Imagine the magnificent glaciers of Greenland, the eternal snow of the Tibetan high mountains, and the permanently ice-cold groundwater in Finland. As cold and beautiful as these are, for the structural biologist Kirill Kovalev, they are more importantly home to unusual molecules that could control brain cells’ activity.

Kovalev, EIPOD Postdoctoral Fellow at EMBL Hamburg’s Schneider Group and EMBL-EBI’s Bateman Group, is a physicist passionate about solving biological problems. He is particularly hooked by rhodopsins, a group of colorful proteins that enable aquatic microorganisms to harness sunlight for energy.

“In my work, I search for unusual rhodopsins and try to understand what they do,” said Kovalev. “Such molecules could have undiscovered functions that we could benefit from.”

Shape memory polymers with nanotips help solve micro-LED chip transfer problem

A research team at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), has developed a novel dry adhesive technology that allows everything from microscale electronic components to common household materials to be easily attached and detached.

The study was recently published in the journal Nature Communications, and the team was led by Professor Seok Kim in collaboration with Professor Kihun Kim (POSTECH), Professor Namjoong Kim (Gachon University), Professor Haneol Lee (Chonbuk National University), and Dr. Chang-Hee Son (University of Connecticut, U.S.).

Micro-LEDs, a next-generation display technology, offer significant advantages such as higher brightness, longer lifespan, and the ability to enable flexible and transparent displays. However, transferring micro-LED chips—thinner than a strand of hair—onto target substrates with high precision and minimal residue has been a persistent challenge. Conventional methods relying on liquid adhesives or specialized films often result in overly complex processes, poor alignment accuracy, and residual contamination.

Researchers uncover cause of uranium groundwater contamination

A new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology and led by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health identifies the hidden geological mechanisms behind widespread uranium contamination in Eastern Karnataka, India, where 78% of tested groundwater exceeds safe drinking limits for uranium, and some groundwater uranium contamination reaches levels 75 times the U.S. EPA limit. Uranium exposure can affect the kidneys, bones, and the liver, yet contamination often goes undetected.

Floating Robotics: Advanced Greenhouse Automation Solutions

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Discover Floating Robotics’ cutting-edge robotic systems designed to automate greenhouse tasks like harvesting and de-leafing, enhancing efficiency and sustainability in modern agriculture.

New study uncovers surprising physics of ‘marine snow’

The deep ocean can often look like a real-life snow globe. As organic particles from plant and animal matter on the surface sink downward, they combine with dust and other material to create “marine snow,” a beautiful display of ocean weather that plays a crucial role in cycling carbon and other nutrients through the world’s oceans.

Now, researchers from Brown University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found surprising new insights into how particles sink in stratified fluids like oceans, where the density of the fluid changes with depth. In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they show that the speed at which particles sink is determined not only by resistive drag forces from the fluid, but by the rate at which they can absorb salt relative to their volume.

“It basically means that can sink faster than bigger ones,” said Robert Hunt, a postdoctoral researcher in Brown’s School of Engineering who led the work. “That’s exactly the opposite of what you’d expect in a fluid that has uniform density.”

Texas company makes $60B semiconductor investment in Texas, Utah

The $60 billion investment involves building or expanding seven chip-making facilities that Texas Instruments has in Sherman, Texas; Richardson, Texas; and Lehi, Utah. Notably, the North Texas city of Sherman will get two new facilities as part of Texas Instruments’ vision to manufacture hundreds of millions of chips daily.

The move comes a few years after the Biden Administration supported companies such as Texas Instruments with funding through the Chips and Science Act. Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said the Commerce Department is renegotiating some of its contracts.

And as President Donald Trump has been pushing for more U.S.-based manufacturing, Lutnick celebrated the Wednesday announcement from Texas Instruments.

Successful synthesis of neutral N₆ opens door for future energy storage

Nitrogen finally joins the elite tier of elements like carbon that can form neutral allotropes—different structural forms of a single chemical element. Researchers from Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany, have synthesized neutral hexanitrogen (N6)—the first neutral allotrope of nitrogen since the discovery of naturally occurring dinitrogen (N2) in the 18th century that is cryogenically stable and can be prepared at room temperature.

This new study, published in Nature, synthesized hexanitrogen (N6) via gas-phase reaction, with the main ingredients being chlorine (Cl2) or bromine (Br2) and an extremely reactive and explosive solid silver azide (AgN3), under reduced pressure.

The researchers spread AgN3 on the , and a gaseous halogen (Cl2 or Br2) was passed through the solid under reduced pressure at room temperature. The reaction triggered by the process produced N6 alongside byproducts chloronitrene (ClN) and hydrazoic acid (HN3).

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