Cleaner space, purer hearts, + what’s new in 3D and energy
By Susanna Camp and Elana Spivack
Welcome to the Investors Lab from Science News. This week’s issue is brought to you by our small but mighty team: our founding content curator Susanna Camp, new addition to the content team Elana Spivack (give her a warm welcome!), plus our fearless editor Carmen Drahl. Like what you see? Subscribe today, share with friends, or reach out if you have feedback or content suggestions. Thank you for reading!
🖥Beyond the Screen: Investing in the Immersive Future of 3-D Displays
Science News’s Maria Temming highlights an exciting step toward a sci-fi staple: 3D displays that allow users to reach out and touch virtual objects.
✋Fantastic Elastic
A volumetric display renders a true 3-D image that viewers can marvel at from all angles without assistance from specialized glasses or headwear. However, these displays prohibit interaction, because they’re in a rigid frame and so attempting to touch them could harm the user.
Enter FlexiVol, a volumetric display spearheaded by a team at Spain’s Public University of Navarre. FlexiVol uses a matrix made from rows of elastic strips that are similar to what’s used in the waistbands of comfy pants. Users can stroke or press the bands or slip their fingers between them. By oscillating up and down, the strips render a full 3-D image. Cameras following hand movements allow users to interact with and manipulate the projected graphic display. In a user study of 18 participants, interacting with FlexiVol was faster and more accurate than using a 3-D mouse.
🐕Visions for Volumetrics
Participants also suggested potential applications for the technology. Some users suggested leveraging FlexiVol for artistic applications like 3-D modeling, sketching, and painting as well as film editing. Another suggested surgical studies, portraying a simulation of an operation or even allowing teleoperation. Still another user imagined it as an online shopping simulator. The authors themselves envisioned how FlexiVol could create a virtual pet that users can touch and play with. It could also come in handy for educational simulations, like in museum installations or teaching others to visualize and assemble complex objects like engines.
💰Display Disruptors
Since FlexiVol is still in its infancy, there aren’t any companies using it yet. But traditional volumetric displays have been around for over a decade in some cases. These are just a few companies that could integrate FlexiVol in the coming years.
- VividQ: This U.K.-based company offers computational holographic display technology. Either for augmented or virtual reality, these holographs offer true 3-D displays. In 2024, VividQ raised over $7.5 million in Series A funding.
- Voxon Photonics: Based in Adelaide, Australia and founded in 2012, this volumetric display hardware and software company creates a 3-D volumetric display that measures 20.5 inches by 10 inches and uses up to 16 million color voxels, or 3-D pixels. For its last round of venture funding in 2018, it raised $1.5 million.
This futuristic tech feels so close, you can reach out and touch it.
🗑️ Space Trash Collectors’ New Moonshots
A Soviet spacecraft crashed into the Indian Ocean this month, writes SN’s Lisa Grossman. Experts couldn’t say beforehand exactly when or where the car-sized object would strike the Earth upon reentry, but the return to terra firma highlights the growing issue of space debris in low-Earth orbit.
🛰️The Kosmos Krash
The Kosmos 482 was supposed to go to Venus but got stuck in Earth’s lower atmosphere where it orbited in an ever-smaller trajectory for the past 53 years. While many newer satellites, such as those in SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, are designed to deorbit and burn up within five years, a substantial number of other fragments and defunct objects pose collision risks.
🚀Payloads offer a payoff
A few firms are tackling this growing problem by tracking and monitoring debris, developing capture and removal technologies (e.g., robotic arms, nets), providing on-orbit servicing to extend the life of satellites, and developing methods for deorbiting defunct objects.
Here are some innovators we’re training our sights on:
- Astroscale: This Japanese startup is developing technologies for satellite end-of-life services and the capture and removal of defunct satellites and other debris removal. Astroscale has raised approximately $383 million in total funding since its establishment, most recently from a 2023 Series G round that brought in an additional $83.6 million.
- ClearSpace, a startup spun off from the Swiss university EPFL, is working on several missions to remove debris from orbit. Notably, the original target for removal was changed after the mission was announced. The original plan was to intercept the 112-kilogram Vespa payload adapter, but it was later changed to a new obstacle, the Proba-1, a 94-kilogram satellite. The bottom line: there’s a lot up there. The mission is supported by a $93 million contract from the European Space Agency (ESA).
- NorthStar Earth & Space: This Canadian company focuses on providing precise tracking of satellites and debris to help prevent collisions, a strategy they call space situational awareness. The company has raised a total of $134 million across five funding rounds.
The race is on to clear the final frontier.
⛈️ Harnessing the Storm: Rain-Generated Electricity
A new hydroelectric technology is harvesting electricity from raindrops, as Jude Colman writes in SN. This supercharged innovation could provide sustainable power solutions, particularly in areas with limited access to traditional energy sources.
👩🏼🔬👨🔬The Science of Rain Power
Researchers are uncovering the mechanisms by which raindrops can generate electricity. The effect involves the interaction between water droplets and certain materials. When a raindrop comes into contact with a surface, there’s an exchange of ions (electrically charged atoms). This creates a separation of charge, similar to what happens when padding across a rug and then getting a shock touching a light switch.
Some ways that water flows through a conduit (with varying degrees of flow, the presence of air, etc) are better at attracting or generating ions, which enhances the voltage produced. Based on these findings, researchers are developing a technique that relies on charge separation during rain capture, a process where oppositely charged particles become spatially divided, creating a voltage between them. The method could be scaled up by installing rain-catching tubes on roofs or next to water sources such as waterfalls that create spurts of water ideal for plug flow (a movement pattern where thin streams of water flow with air pockets between them). “We think it will be helpful in rainy places,” says Siowling Soh, an engineer leading the study at the National University of Singapore, “including tropical countries like Singapore.” We can think of some other places, too. Namely, everywhere.
🌍The Global Need for Electricity and Off-Grid Solutions
The need for reliable and affordable electricity is a global imperative. Billions of people, particularly in developing countries, lack access to consistent power, hindering economic development and quality of life. Off-grid solutions are crucial in these areas, where extending traditional power grids is often impractical or cost-prohibitive. Rain-generated electricity offers a unique opportunity to provide decentralized power in regions with abundant rainfall. This is especially important for homes, schools and clinics in remote areas, as well as for disaster relief when central power supplies are down and emergency power is needed.
⚡️Companies Leading the Charge: Zola Electric and Beyond
While rainwater-generated electricity is not quite out of the lab, a few startups are already making significant strides in providing off-grid energy solutions, demonstrating the viability of decentralized power systems. While primarily focused on solar energy, their success highlights the potential for similar models to be applied to other innovative technologies like rain-generated electricity.
- ZOLA Electric: With offices in the Netherlands and San Mateo, Calif., Zola Electric does most of its work in Africa, providing pay-as-you-go solar systems for low-income households, energy storage solutions, and smart energy management. They’ve raised over $230 million in debt and equity financing since 2011.
- d.light: Based in Palo Alto, Calif., d.light targets off-grid communities worldwide. They provide access to solar energy solutions such as lanterns that are cleaner than the kerosene lamps some households rely on. The company has raised over $490 million in funding and financing since 2020.
- Bboxx: This Kigali, Rwanda–based company provides off-grid solar solutions in Africa and Asia, using technology and financing models to make clean energy accessible. They’ve raised a total of $131 million, including a $50 million Series D round led by Mitsubishi Corporation in August 2019. Bboxx has also invested $100 million in Rwanda, including training over 1,000 people.
The forecast: Sun today, rain tomorrow? We can’t wait to see some rainmakers emerge on the market for off-grid solutions.
🫀Plastics and Heart Disease
Sigh, we were just getting used to the grim reality that we have plastic in our brains. Now comes the troubling news that plastic is coming for our hearts. Skyler Ware reports for SN on recent research into the impact of plastics on cardiovascular health.
🔎Hidden dangers: How plastic chemicals affect our health
Research conducted by Sara Hyman and colleagues at NYU Langone Health found that phthalates, chemicals commonly used in household plastics to make them more flexible, contribute to heart disease — the leading cause of death worldwide. These toxins can enter the body multiple ways: leaching through food packaging into the foods we eat, spreading through inhalation, or being absorbed through skin contact. Further research suggests that phthalates can interfere with our hormones, which in turn can negatively impact heart health. Mounting evidence of the harms from phthalates highlights the importance of finding safer substitutes.
📈The market for bioplastics
What about bioplastics, you ask? Compared to traditional petroleum-based materials, bioplastics are often made from plant-based material such as corn or rice starch, sugarcane, or algae. First created in the 1920s, they are generally considered to be both healthier and more sustainable because they break down relatively quickly. The global bioplastics market was valued at almost $8 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $98 billion by 2035.
Not so fast, though. Just because a plastic is bio-based doesn’t mean it’s biodegradable. And bio-based polymers have also recently come under scrutiny, thanks to one study showing they may be just as toxic as petroleum-based options.
🌳New biotech solutions
Some biotech materials companies are using microorganisms, organic compounds, and other organic materials to produce chemicals and materials, including phthalate alternatives, with greater sustainability and safety. This approach can create building blocks for plastics and other products without relying on fossil fuels or harmful additives.
- ZymoChem was started in 2013 by researchers Harshal Chokhawala and Jon Kuchenreuther, inspired by the learning of the harmful effects of disposable plastic diapers. Their flagship product BAYSE is a bio-based, biodegradable absorbent material made by engineering microorganisms that can efficiently produce essential chemical building blocks. Its potential applications include water treatment, period pads and diapers. Based in San Leandro, California, the company has raised over $50 million, including a $21 million Series A round in 2024.
- Bellingham, Washington–based biomaterials company Tidal Vision makes polymer packaging materials from chitosan, the abundant organic material made from a substance found in insects, crustaceans, and fungi. The company closed a $140 million investment round this year.
- Pulpex, a U.K.-based renewable packaging firm, is making a plant-based material from wood pulp that could replace plastic and glass bottles with between 40–70% lower emissions than 33 cL plastic bottles. Notably, Pulpex gained the backing of two state-owned funds in its $80 million Series D round in February 2025.
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