Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Technology is the single greatest contributor to climate change but it may also soon be used to offset the damage we’ve done to our planet since the Industrial Age began. In September 2018, a project in Myanmar used drones to fire “seed missiles” into remote areas of the country where trees were not growing. Less than a year later, thousands of those seed missiles have sprouted into 20-inch mangrove saplings that could literally be a case study in how technology can be used to innovate our way out of the climate change crisis.

“We now have a case confirmed of what species we can plant and in what conditions,” Irina Fedorenko, co-founder of Biocarbon Engineering, told Fast Company. “We are now ready to scale up our planting and replicate this success.”


According to Fedoranko, just two operators could send out a mini-fleet of seed missile planting drones that could plant 400,000 trees a day -- a number that quite possibly could make massive headway in combating the effects of manmade climate change.

The drones were designed by an ex-NASA engineer. And with a pressing need to reseed an area in Myanmar equal to the size of Rhode Island, the challenge is massive but suddenly within reach. Bremley Lyngdoh, founder and CEO of World Impact, says reseeding that area could theoretically house as many as 1 billion new trees.

“Obviously, planting a billion trees will take a long time without the help of drones,” Lyngdoh told Fast Company.

But they’ve now got a powerful new ally in their corner. For context, it took the Worldview Foundation 7 years to plant 6 million trees in Myanmar. Now, with the help of the drones, they hope to plant another 4 million before the end of 2019.

Myanmar is a great case study for the project. In addition to the available land for the drone project, the nation has been particularly hit by the early effects of climate change in recent years. Rising sea levels are having a measurable impact on the population.

In addition to their ability to clear CO2 from the atmosphere, healthy trees can also help solidify the soil, which can reduce the kind of soil erosion that has been affecting local populations in Myanmar.

Going forward, technologies like seed-planting drones could help stem the tide of catastrophic climate change while our governments and societies work to change the habits of consumers and corporations that are driving the problem.

Our endless hunger for new technology may be the driving force behind climate change and deforestation but it could also end up being the solution to a problem.

This article originally appeared last year.

More For You

Planets aligned; boys looking through telescope

The next parade will be in 2040.

All seven planets in our solar system will appear in Earth's sky for one night

Standing under the night sky is breathtaking. As stars, tiny pools of light, poke through an endlessly dark blanket, we feel humbled and are reminded of our great luck: We are here, in this moment, right now, a product of everything that has come before and playing a role in everything that will come after.

Nights like these already feel like a small miracle. But on February 28th, something positively incredible happens: the 2025 planetary parade. Imagine stepping out on a clear February evening and seeing not just one or two, but SEVEN planets shining brightly in the distance like a string of cosmic jewels.

Keep ReadingShow less
a man running up a vertical wall, three images

A gravity-defying stunt

Chinese man uses physics to miraculously escape from a 20-foot pit

A video went viral on the Chinese social media platform Rednote, also known as Xiaohongshu. It features a man who appears trapped at the bottom of a colorful pit—until he begins to run. The walls are nearly vertical and at least four to five times taller than the man (approximately 20 feet high). Yet, he manages to climb out in ten seconds or less by consistently running in a perfectly timed circle.


Keep ReadingShow less
The Himalayas on a clear day.

The towering Himalayas may seem unshakable, but deep beneath them, the Earth is shifting in ways scientists never expected.

Beneath the Himalayas, something unexpected is happening—and it could shake the world

The Himalayas, one of the most awe-inspiring mountain ranges on Earth, have long captured the imaginations of adventurers and scientists alike. Towering above the clouds, these colossal peaks hold not only breathtaking beauty but also crucial geological secrets. Recent research suggests something astonishing: the Indian tectonic plate—the very foundation of the Himalayas—may be splitting in two deep beneath the surface.

For millions of years, the Indian Plate has been pushing northward, colliding with the Eurasian Plate and giving rise to the Himalayas. But new findings from Stanford University geologist Simon L. Klemperer and his team indicate that this seemingly solid landmass is undergoing a dramatic transformation, one that could have significant implications for earthquakes and mountain stability in the region.

Keep ReadingShow less
Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev floating aboard the space station, holding a camcorder in microgravity, surrounded by equipment.

Sergei Krikalev aboard the space station, capturing moments while unknowingly becoming part of history.

He orbited Earth over 5,000 times while his homeland disappeared beneath him

It’s the stuff of science fiction—a brave explorer launches into space, only to return and find the world radically changed. But for Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, this was no movie plot. It was real life.

When Krikalev left Earth in 1991, he was a proud citizen of the Soviet Union, embarking on what was supposed to be a routine five-month mission aboard the Mir space station. But as political upheaval shook his homeland, his return was repeatedly delayed. By the time he finally made it back 312 days later, the USSR had collapsed, his country had ceased to exist, and even his hometown had a different name.

Keep ReadingShow less
Scientists extracted a Pink Floyd song from brainwaves and it’s haunting
Representative photo by Canva

Scientists extracted a Pink Floyd song from brainwaves and it’s haunting

The concept of reading thoughts once belonged to the realm of science fiction, but breakthroughs in neural decoding are turning it into reality. This technology, which interprets brain activity into meaningful signals, has already allowed scientists to reconstruct words and images from brainwaves. Now, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have taken it a step further. In August 2023, they managed to recreate a Pink Floyd song purely from brain activity, a discovery published in PLOS Biology that offers new insight into how the brain processes music.

A team led by Robert Knight and Ludovic Bellier conducted the study on 29 epilepsy patients at Albany Medical Center in New York who were undergoing brain surgery. While the patients were in the operating room, they listened to "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1" by Pink Floyd. Electrodes placed directly on their brains recorded the electrical signals produced as they processed the song. Using artificial intelligence, Bellier later reconstructed the track based entirely on these neural recordings. The final result was hauntingly distorted yet unmistakably recognizable. "It sounds a bit like they’re speaking underwater, but it’s our first shot at this," Knight told The Guardian.

Keep ReadingShow less