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The Download: cutting AC emissions, and nature’s drug designer

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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.

These new solid-state ACs promise a cool future. Scientists aren’t so sure.

After three years of record-­breaking heat and another scorcher underway, air-conditioning isn’t going anywhere. That’s good for our health, but bad for the planet: it already accounts for 7% of global electricity use and 3% of greenhouse-gas emissions. 

Feeling the heat, scientists and startups are hoping to amp up solid-­state cooling. These systems move heat through conductive materials, which could cool spaces and surfaces with fewer messy side effects. The catch is whether it can match the efficiency of traditional AC.

Find out how the unconventional coolers aim to dial down AC emissions.

—Sara Kiley Watson


This story is from the next edition of our magazine, which is all about engineering. Subscribe now to get a copy when it lands! 

Job titles of the future: nature’s drug designer

In 2018, after nearly two decades working in Big Pharma, chemist Tim Cernak was ready to put his skills to a new use. 

As a lifelong nature lover, he had become concerned that animals are often treated with human pharmaceuticals that can be harmful or even lethal. He decided to address this with a new approach: “conservation chemistry.” 

Using AI tools and robots, he’s now rapidly designing and testing drugs for animals. Here’s what it takes to treat nature’s patients.

—Anna Gibbs

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Anthropic has shut down access to its top models after a US directive
The US barred foreigners from using Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on Friday. (NYT $)
+ Anthropic disabled access globally as it can’t filter users in real time.(BBC)
+ Talks with Amazon’s CEO apparently prompted the ban. (WSJ $)
+ Cybersecurity experts have called for the ban to end. (Axios)
+ But the White House’s war against Anthropic has previously backfired. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The UK is banning social media for under-16s
Details are scant, but the measure is due to take effect in early 2027. (The Guardian)
+ The ban covers Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X. (BBC)
+ Many countries are curbing children’s social media access. (Reuters $)

3 New space data suggests black holes formed before galaxies
It could resolve cosmology’s chicken-and-egg dilemma. (New Scientist $)
+ Odd tricks have formed a massive black hole. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Skepticism around AI layoffs is increasing
There are growing doubts that AI is really the culprit. (TechCrunch)
+ We need a reality check on AI jobs hysteria. (MIT Technology Review)

5 A coalition of states has opened an investigation into OpenAI
Over matters including user data, child safety and advertising. (NYT $)

6 Tesla has been accused of misleading regulators over “full self-driving”
By exaggerating its safety statistics. (Reuters $)

7 NASA’s “quiet supersonic” plane has hit critical new milestones
The X-59 reached 924 mph and 55,000 feet. (Scientific American) 
+ Which are essential for flying over populated areas. (Engadget)
+ It’s designed to take the boom out of supersonic travel. (BBC)

8 Deepfakes are getting harder to spot—and weirder—in the midterms
Thanks to improvements in free AI tools. (WSJ $)

9 AI is revealing the secret lives of animals
By tracing their movements, landmarks, and social practices. (Nature) 

10 Where did Earth get its oceans? Maybe it made them itself.
Scientists now suspect that Earth’s waters are homegrown. (Quanta) 

Quote of the day

“This action has taken the best models away from defenders, created market uncertainty, and risked America’s AI leadership without any real risk to justify it.” 

—Cybersecurity leaders urge the Trump administration to reverse restrictions on Anthropic’s most advanced AI models in an open letter.

One More Thing

CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK


How scientists want to make you young again

A little over 15 years ago, scientists at Kyoto University made a remarkable discovery. When they added just four proteins to a skin cell and waited about two weeks, some of the cells underwent an unexpected and astounding transformation: they became young again.

Now, after more than a decade of developing this cellular reprogramming, biotech companies and research labs have tantalising hints that the process could be the gateway to an unprecedented new technology for human age reversal. 

Read the full story on their efforts to “reprogram” aging bodies back to youth.
 

—Antonio Regalado

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Evolutionary biologists may have figured out why the T-Rex had such tiny arms.
+ This beautifully sustainable bento box design is engineered to eliminate single-use takeout waste.
+ Search across 5.8 million museum artworks spanning from 3000 BC to today at The Last Museum.
+ Here’s a sharp cosmic snapshot of Thor’s Helmet, an interstellar gas bubble sitting 15,000 light-years away.

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These new solid-state ACs promise a cool future. Scientists aren’t so sure.

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After three years of record-­breaking heat, this one is set to be yet another scorcher. Air-conditioning? Not going anywhere. The International Energy Agency projects that the number of AC units will triple by 2050.

That’s good for health—one Lancet study estimated that AC prevented nearly 200,000 premature deaths in 2019 alone—but bad for the planet. Artificial chill already accounts for 7% of global electricity use and 3% of greenhouse-gas emissions, and if improperly disposed of, the units can leak refrigerants with more global-­warming potential than carbon dioxide.

Feeling the heat, a number of scientists and startups are hoping to amp up solid-­state cooling, which is currently used at a small scale for things like mini fridges, EV batteries, and some high-end gaming computers. Traditional ACs transfer heat by using a compressor and a fan to circulate a refrigerant and turn it from liquid to gas.

Solid-state systems, on the other hand, move heat through conductive materials like gadolinium and bismuth telluride—which could theoretically cool spaces and surfaces with fewer messy side effects. 

The catch is whether they can match the efficiency of conventional AC. “One of the key questions that remain is why are the solid-state coolers not as efficient as typical thermodynamic cycles?” says Pramod Reddy, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan who studies heat transfer. 

Research and pilot programs are underway to test a range of approaches. Brooklyn-based Mimic Systems uses thermo­electric cooling, which passes a current through semiconductive materials to shift heat from one side to another. Its room-scale climate control system is being piloted in an apartment in Vancouver.

The German company Magnotherm is set to test its system, which relies on a magneto­caloric setup that transfers heat by magnetizing and demagnetizing materials, in a chain of supermarkets. A team in Hong Kong has announced that its elastocaloric device, whose material heats and cools as it expands and contracts, can dip below 0 °C. And the UK’s Barocal is betting on barocaloric systems, which change temperature in response to shifts in pressure. 

But experts, especially in thermoelectrics, have doubts about how well any solid-­state scheme can compete. For most modern HVAC systems, the coefficient of performance (COP) is 3, explains Jeff Snyder, a professor at Northwestern University who studies electrical and thermal conductivity. That essentially means the system moves three units of heat for every unit of energy that goes into it.

Thermoelectrics in particular tend to have a much lower performance at high levels of temperature change, Snyder says, which means they’re best suited for niche uses such as cooling the back of a car seat. 

brown HVAC unit below a window
Mimic’s room-scale thermoelectric HVAC unit is being tested in a Vancouver apartment.
COURTESY OF MIMIC SYSTEMS, INC

Efficiency, however, isn’t everything, argues Lindsay Rasmussen, a manager at the Rocky Mountain Institute’s climate tech accelerator Third Derivative, which supports both Magnotherm and Mimic. In the US, most ACs currently in use employ a refrigerant called R410A, which has a global-­warming potential more than 2,000 times that of carbon dioxide. Plus, their moving parts can make them less durable, especially compared with a solid-state model that’s less mechanically complex.

Still, a dearth of units makes it hard to answer the efficiency question. To understand how well alternatives work, says Rasmussen, researchers need to compare their long-term energy consumption with that of conventional models instead of simply looking at COP. Mimic claims, for example, that its room-scale model should match the draw of a typical AC unit over the course of a year. Elastocaloric and barocaloric systems also have promise, Rasmussen adds, but room-scale prototypes are probably two to three years away. 

In the end, the likelihood that solid-state cooling could replace compressor-based AC is slim. But as the planet warms and places like India install tens of millions of new AC units over the next decade, supplanting even a small number could make a dent. “If [solid-state] could take over even a 5% market share,” Rasmussen says, “that is a really large potential impact.” 

Sara Kiley Watson is a science journalist specializing in climate and sustainability. She’s based in The Hague.

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