MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The Impossible issue features ‘Is it fun to dream about living on the moon or uploading our brains?’ For sure. But questing after the impossible is about way more than pipe dreams. This issue explores what we can do when we have the audacity to push for our most daring goals, from synthesizing blood to building AI with real guardrails. Plus: A bionic eye, the AI companies training models with dead startups’ data, and more.

Are we there yet?

Some transformative technologies have been “coming soon” for years. We ran progress reports on six big ideas to see how close they are to reality.

We ran progress reports on six potentially transformative technologies and ideas that have been “just around the corner” for years or, in some cases, decades. We called up experts with a bird’s-eye view of the fields to get a sense of what’s holding things back, and we chatted with folks running the studies, crunching the data, and building the prototypes that could make these dreams into realities. Then we placed each idea on a progress meter ranging from 0 to 10—0 being “We don’t even know where to begin” and 10 being “We did it!”

What it would take to build a city on the moon

Mars may be a hellhole, but the moon isn’t far behind.

The US military’s race to make fake blood

DARPA is funding a redoubled effort to develop a shelf-stable substitute for what field medics and trauma doctors need most: more blood.

These startups hope “blended” food will cut our appetite for red meat

Beef is a climate burden. Can “blended meat” finally succeed in getting us to cut back?