2026's Breakthrough Technologies? MIT Technology Review Chooses Sodium-ion Batteries, Commercial Space Stations (technologyreview.com) 61
As 2026 begins, MIT Technology Review publishes "educated guesses" on emerging technologies that will define the future, advances "we think will drive progress or incite the most change — for better or worse — in the years ahead."
This year's list includes next-gen nuclear, gene-editing drugs (as well as the "resurrection" of ancient genes from extinct creatures), and three AI-related developments: AI companions, AI coding tools, and "mechanistic interpretability" for revealing LLM decision-making.
But also on the list is sodium-ion batteries, "a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium." Backed by major players and public investment, they're poised to power grids and affordable EVs worldwide. [Chinese battery giant CATL claims to have already started manufacturing sodium-ion batteries at scale, and BYD also plans a massive production facility for sodium-ion batteries.] The most significant impact of sodium-Âion technology may be not on our roads but on our power grids. Storing clean energy generated by solar and wind has long been a challenge. Sodium-ion batteries, with their low cost, enhanced thermal stability, and long cycle life, are an attractive alternative. Peak Energy, a startup in the US, is already deploying grid-scale sodium-ion energy storage. Sodium-ion cells' energy density is still lower than that of high-end lithium-ion ones, but it continues to improve each year — and it's already sufficient for small passenger cars and logistics vehicles.
And another "breakthrough technology" on their list is commercial space stations: Vast Space from California, plans to launch its Haven-1 space station in May 2026 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. If all goes to plan, it will initially support crews of four people staying aboard the bus-size habitat for 10 days. Paying customers will be able to experience life in microgravity and conduct research such as growing plants and testing drugs. On its heels will be Axiom Space's outpost, the Axiom Station, consisting of five modules (or rooms). It's designed to look like a boutique hotel and is expected to launch in 2028. Voyager Space aims to launch its version, called Starlab, the same year, and Blue Origin's Orbital Reef space station plans to follow in 2030.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger for sharing the article.
This year's list includes next-gen nuclear, gene-editing drugs (as well as the "resurrection" of ancient genes from extinct creatures), and three AI-related developments: AI companions, AI coding tools, and "mechanistic interpretability" for revealing LLM decision-making.
But also on the list is sodium-ion batteries, "a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium." Backed by major players and public investment, they're poised to power grids and affordable EVs worldwide. [Chinese battery giant CATL claims to have already started manufacturing sodium-ion batteries at scale, and BYD also plans a massive production facility for sodium-ion batteries.] The most significant impact of sodium-Âion technology may be not on our roads but on our power grids. Storing clean energy generated by solar and wind has long been a challenge. Sodium-ion batteries, with their low cost, enhanced thermal stability, and long cycle life, are an attractive alternative. Peak Energy, a startup in the US, is already deploying grid-scale sodium-ion energy storage. Sodium-ion cells' energy density is still lower than that of high-end lithium-ion ones, but it continues to improve each year — and it's already sufficient for small passenger cars and logistics vehicles.
And another "breakthrough technology" on their list is commercial space stations: Vast Space from California, plans to launch its Haven-1 space station in May 2026 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. If all goes to plan, it will initially support crews of four people staying aboard the bus-size habitat for 10 days. Paying customers will be able to experience life in microgravity and conduct research such as growing plants and testing drugs. On its heels will be Axiom Space's outpost, the Axiom Station, consisting of five modules (or rooms). It's designed to look like a boutique hotel and is expected to launch in 2028. Voyager Space aims to launch its version, called Starlab, the same year, and Blue Origin's Orbital Reef space station plans to follow in 2030.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger for sharing the article.
Isn't this the theme of many movies (Score:2)
The list (Score:2)
The MIT list is AI + more AI + Gene editing and Gene manipulation + other (a tourist space station and more efficient batteries).
Apart from more efficient batteries, where are the technologies which drastically lower the cost of living, such as reducing the $200 per square foot build cost of a USA home?
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Good point (Score:2)
Agree.
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Yeah, but it's pretty unlikely that they will turn out to be super-predators that relentlessly hunt humans even when there's no point and can't be contained in zoos because... chaos theory? A much more realistic threat would be an invasive species that threatens ecosystems.
Sodium ion batteries.... (Score:3)
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Uh, have you ever handled sodium metal?
Lithium ion fires are caused by thermal runaway. Sodium ion is more stable.
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There is no sodium metal in sodium ion batteries, just like there is no lithium metal in lithium ion batteries.
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Uh, have you ever handled sodium metal?
Lots of people have in science classes, but usually not literally by hand, of course. I should note though, as a kind of a cool aside that I thought was fun to learn, that back in the middle of last century, sodium metal was actually used for electrical wiring. It turns out that it actually has a lower resistivity-density product which made it a potential replacement for aluminum and copper in utility wiring. It never caught on, but it's weird to think that it even worked in the first place.
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Re:Sodium ion batteries.... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are different levels of rare. Lithium isn't platinum, but it's not sodium either. I keep a tub of salt (50% sodium) in my kitchen cupboard. It's dirt cheap. Lithium can't compete with it on price.
Sodium can't match lithium on mass, but like the article says, the bigger use is for grid storage. Weight doesn't matter much if you aren't carrying the batteries around with you. Using sodium for grid storage makes it cheaper, and frees up lithium for cars.
Re:Sodium ion batteries.... (Score:4)
Really all this battery tech is placeholder until the solid-state battery nut is finally cracked which could be within a decade if things shake out right.
Re: Sodium ion batteries.... (Score:2)
Solid state is officially cracked, Donut Labs is already making them for 600km range motor bikes. It will filter into cars once production gears up
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We can certainly hope so. I am skeptical not least because the founder appears to be a bit of an oddball prone to grandiose claims, but they did make an actual hub motor, and I watched an interesting video that did a great job of unearthing a lot of information to see whether the claims might possibly be plausible and found that it was indeed possible they've done it.
Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Solid state batterie nuts are "cracked" already.
End of this month, the first electric motorbikes come on the market.
And: the batteries do not come from China, but Scandinavia, produced by NordicNano.
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Lithium being "rare" is a myth, that stuff is everywhere and earth has enough to last centuries even without recycling
That is true, but the oceans are literally about 1% sodium, and it can be extracted through a relatively simple process. That means that it's cheap and effectively limitless.
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Salt mines are even easier and cheaper, and they're located all over the world, often well away from oceans (Austria, Switzerland, and Kazakhstan all produce several hundred thousand tons or more per year from mines and salt flats). There's a mine in New York that produces 18,000 tons of salt per day. Remove the chlorine, and that's 7,000 tons of sodium per day from just one location.
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True, but most of the chemical processes involve dissolving the salt in water to start with. We mine salt from the ground mostly because it's cheaper and less energy intensive than extracting the water from seawater. However, if you're just going to crush the salt and dissolve it in water anyway, that may change the equation.
There is a question of both purity and concentration, of course. Mined salt deposits can be much purer NaCl than seawater, for example, because the salts may have precipitated in layers
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I was speaking relatively, like software artist mentioned above. Lithium may not be as rare as the "rare earth metals", but it's not as widely available as sodium or silicon or carbon. So once that supply is not an issue, the next steps - industrially processing it for batteries - is a question of managing the cost of production
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Lithium may not be as rare as the "rare earth metals"
None of the "rare earth metals" is rare.
It is just a name they got when Chemists tried to hunt them down, and trouble to find them - at the time when the periodic table had a lot of gabs.
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Promethium's natural availability is around 1e-15 ppm of the Earth's crust. It's actually cheaper to make it by bombarding uranium and then isolating the products to make the sub-kilogram annual volumes needed to meet commercial demand.
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Because Promethium has no stable isotope.
It basically does not exist in nature.
What was your point?
If you wanted to make one: you missed to make it.
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> no need to mine salt, it's everywhere
Most salt that we use is mined. Desalinization is expensive. It's cheaper and faster to use heavy machinery to dig it out of the ground. There's a mine in New York that produces 18,000 tons a day, and that's just one of several large mines in the US alone.
Yeah, plus unlike other things on the list (Score:2)
Sodium Ion batteries are no hypothetical technology... you can just buy them... online. They are around 80 Euros per kWh.
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There's a good explanation of what CATL's claiming for its Na batteries here.
https://www.batterytechonline.... [batterytechonline.com]
I find it interesting that one key use case may be replacing lead acid starter batteries for trucks. The power requirements for truck starter batteries have eased slightly over the years with things like assisted-start sequences, to the point where sodium can meet the need (although lithium would struggle). And sodium will outperform lead for cold start, deep discharge and lifetime.
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Various salts? We have oceans of sodium ions. Ionic sodium loves going into solution with water. That's why it's trivial to acquire because whatever ionic solid it's attached to, it wants to get away from and it does once water is applied.
And yes, CATL is predicting stupidly cheap batteries with basicall
paying a billion is not reproducible, for starters (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:paying a billion is not reproducible, for start (Score:5, Funny)
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How is a submarine a space station?
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Then why call it a space station when the word you were looking for is hotel? Also, hotel still seems like the wrong term for the actual submarine, which was just supposed to be a two hour descent. In any case, I suppose I'm being too pedantic.
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High pressure on one side, low pressure on the other side.
Inside oxygen rich atmosphere, but no oxygen replacement by plants, needs CO2 scrubbing and oxygen replenishment.
Problem of corrosion, being air tight, and tight to other "substances".
Restricted habitable space.
Toilet problem.
Locked water circle.
Needs food replenished for crew.
Difficult emergency and rescue operations.
Be abandoned at the wrong time at the wrong place: no chance for the crew to get home - not even as a corpse.
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The pressure differential for a space station doesn't need to be above one atmosphere. You reach that at 10 m underwater.
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Of course.
And? What is the point?
You would have a bigger point, if you would realize (or point out) that under water pressure, presses towards the inside, and is easier to handle than pressure going outward ...
Well, in theory. In practice we can handle both equally well, but use completely different approaches.
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Different approaches, but whether you're dealing with compressive or tensile loads, curved surfaces, as close to spherical as possible provide the most strength for the amount of material used.
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OK. I really have to start by pointing out that my question was not about how a submarine is like a space station, but how a submarine _is_ a space station. You might have gotten points by pointing out that the Earth is in space, but that's about it.
High pressure on one side, low pressure on the other side.
I mean, quite aside from the fact that what you're saying is the opposite of making a submarine a space station, 1 atmosphere is not really high pressure. The rubber walls of my tires are a few millimeters and they normally have about 2.5X that in relative press
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D'oh. Sorry to reply a second time to your one post, but I forgot to mention that you missed on: Full of rich people.
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People have been talking about commercial space stations and hotels on the moon at least as far back as the 1990s. Never seems to happen. Isn't a new idea, isn't a new technology, isn't going to happen anytime very soon either. Just a lot of embarassing hot air.
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...presently... Current sodium batteries... currently...
The article is about breakthroughs in technology. If sodium batteries were currently on a par with lithium ion, it wouldn't be a breakthrough.
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Transistors aren't very expensive. Most electronics already have DC-DC converters.
Also, "insane" is just silly.
https://www.batterydesign.net/... [batterydesign.net]
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I mean, CATL seem pretty confident, and they make more batteries than you by quite a large margin, including LFP. They don't have a habit of making bold public claims that then fall flat on their arse, so it seems unlikely that they will have done here, either. And they claim a bunch of advantages for Naxtra over LFP, including lifecycle, temperature tolerance, deep discharge tolerance, and safety. Of course, we will all wait for the first units to appear in production cars before reaching a firm conclusion
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CATL is Chinese.
The irrational hate of Americans for Chinese makes them blind to everything China is doing.
CATL is the biggest (since a few years, before that it was BYD), battery manufacturer and vendor.
It is a shame how degenerated american high tech is, if it is not for making a new fighter plane, Space X and/or Apple.
It is not that all new things come from China. The new solid state batteries come from Finnland. At least they are fabricated there.
Optical computing and based on that Quantum Computing: wo
Breakthrough Technologies We Need (Score:2)
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Idiocracy is unfolding in real-time.
Re:Breakthrough Technologies We Need (Score:5, Funny)
"Gorilla Glass" Automobile Windshields
In an accident you don't need the windshield to resist breaking. You need it to fragment into tiny bits that can't impale you. Auto glass is well designed for the purpose.
Sturdy Umbrellas
Let's stick to technologies that might actually be possible, not crazy fantasies!
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Wouldn't wear resistant heels by definition be, you know, slippery?
Sex tourism (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you've had a space-walk, used the zero-G toilet and visited the hotel prostitute, exactly what entertainment is available in space? "Futurarma" put an amusement park on the moon: The only reason to visit it.
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Edison made nickel iron batteries a century ago (Score:2)
which outlived most of their owners but they are not suitable to land millions in VC capital.
Sodium - Ion for cars probably not in 2026 (Score:1)
it doenst seem first usage for these new batteries will be cars. They need to sell and test on other things like storage to prove it is safe on the long term. And it is much easier to deploy than on cars. It is probably more around 2030 for cars.
Sodium's voltage curve sucks... (Score:3)
There are a number of YT videos (sorry, too lazy to look) that show sodium batteries and their voltage curves. Unlike lithium which is flat until almost dead, sodium sucks [diysolarforum.com].
Of course, the chemistry and battery tech will get better, but right now, I'd hold off on it for a year or two.