Weekly Dose of Optimism #173
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Space-based solar power
14 min read
The article discusses Overview Energy's breakthrough in power beaming from aircraft to ground, which is a stepping stone to orbital solar power. This Wikipedia article covers the history, physics, and engineering challenges of collecting solar energy in space and transmitting it to Earth - providing deep context for why this technology has been theorized since the 1970s but is only now becoming feasible due to the 'curve convergence' mentioned.
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Atavism
10 min read
The article references 'Atavistic Genetic Expression Dissociation' and the concept that aging cells 'revert to unicellular-like behavior.' Understanding atavism - the reappearance of ancestral traits - provides crucial context for Levin's research on how tissues lose coherence and drift toward earlier evolutionary states during aging.
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Wireless power transfer
16 min read
The article mentions Nikola Tesla's early vision for radio wave power transmission and Overview Energy's laser-based power beaming. This Wikipedia article covers the full history and physics of transmitting electrical energy without wires - from Tesla's experiments to modern implementations - giving readers the technical foundation to understand why efficient power beaming is now achievable.
Hi friends đź‘‹ ,
Happy Friday!
Bigggg week for the optimists. We have solar in space, $600M for cutting edge neuroscience, more Levin on aging (with a lil’ Telepathy Tapes), supersonic money-printing turbines, and math-solving AIs. Someone forgot to tell the good guys they’re supposed to take it easy in December.
Let’s get to it.
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(1) Overview Energy Launches Space-Based Solar Power & Beams Power
Marc Berte for Overview
A solar panel on the ground sees the sun about 25% of the time, whereas if you’re in a high orbit in space, you can see the sun over 99% of the time.
Big week for doing things in space that we currently do on earth.
First, Elon joined into the space-based data center conversation and hinted that it might be bigger than Starlink. Gavin Baker went on Invest Like the Best to argue that “The most important thing in the next 3-4 years is data centers in space,” to which Elon responded “True.”
Then on Wednesday, Overview Energy came out of stealth to announce that “our team achieved a world first in power beaming: delivering energy from a moving aircraft at ~5 km altitude to solar panels on the ground.” This is the same basic technology they’ll use to beam power from geostationary orbit down to wherever on earth needs it.
A few thoughts:
WE ARE TALKING ABOUT GENERATING POWER IN SPACE AND BEAMING IT TO EARTH AND
This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.