Ray Blanco:

NASA’s Powerful New Roman Space Telescope Is Complete — and Will Soon Begin Mission To Find 100,000 Alien Worlds

NASA recently revealed the first pictures of its newly constructed Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which could soon help researchers hunt for exoplanets, map the Milky Way and unravel some of the universe's biggest mysteries, such as the true nature of dark matter.

It could launch as early as May and begin collecting data before the end of 2026.

Roman is NASA's next flagship space telescope, following on from the Hubble Space Telescope, which launched in 1990, and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which launched in 2021. The orbital observatory is named after pioneering scientist Nancy Grace Roman — who served as NASA's first chief astronomer between 1960 and 1962.

The telescope is around 42 feet (12.7 meters) tall and weighs a hefty 9,184 pounds (4,166 kilograms). It began construction in February 2016, and the project has so far stayed within its initial budget of $4.3 billion.

Once launched, Roman will be positioned around 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth where JWST and the European Space Agency's Gaia and Euclid space telescopes already reside.

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Enrique Abeyta:

Trump To Push Big Tech To Fund New Power Plants As AI Drives Up Electricity Costs

President Donald Trump has reportedly reached a plan that would require Big Tech companies to bid on 15-year contracts for new electricity generation capacity. The move would effectively force companies to help fund new power plants in the PJM region as soaring demand from AI data centers pushes up electricity costs across the US power grid.

Earlier this week, Trump called on tech giants to “pay their own way,” arguing that households and small businesses should not bear the cost of power infrastructure needed to support energy-hungry data centers.

Microsoft quickly responded, saying it would “pay utility rates that are high enough to cover our electricity costs,” along with committing to other changes aimed at easing pressure on the grid. Other major tech companies are expected to follow suit. The costs could slow the pace of data center build-outs.

Forcing tech companies to shoulder higher electricity costs is likely to hit some firms harder than others. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon can pass at least some of those costs on to customers by selling data center capacity downstream. Meta, in contrast, does not have a cloud business, meaning its AI ambitions lack a direct revenue stream to offset rising power costs.

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James Altucher:

OpenAI Invests in Sam Altman’s Brain Computer Interface Startup Merge Labs

OpenAI has invested in CEO Sam Altman’s brain computer interface (BCI) startup Merge Labs.

Merge Labs, which defines itself as a “research lab” dedicated to “bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability,” came out of stealth on Thursday with an undisclosed seed round. A source familiar with the matter confirmed previous reports that OpenAI wrote the largest single check in Merge Labs’ $250 million seed round at an $850 million valuation.

The move deepens Altman’s competition with Elon Musk, whose startup Neuralink is also developing computer interface chips that allow people who suffer from severe paralysis to control devices with their thoughts.

Neuralink currently requires invasive surgery for implantation, where a surgical robot removes a small piece of skull and inserts ultra-fine electrode threads into the brain to read neural signals. The company last raised a $650 million Series E at a $9 billion valuation in June 2025.

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