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There are days when my own children are crawling into my lap with a book while I continue to process footage of children suffering in conflicts on the other side of the world. My high school students are writing the kind of poetry that leaves me speechless, even as I privately wonder about their career options as artificial intelligence receives more investment than the arts. Yet, my experience in New Mexico has shown me that another approach is possible. 

I have a unique vantage point, both as a parent and an educator who sees these challenges reflected in the lives of my students and their families. My local school district in New Mexico has yet to pivot to hybrid learning in response to the palpable fear parents felt, while the actions of federal agents created widespread fear in their community. My state is not banning books and restricting curricula. Instead, as a recent transplant to the state, I’m in awe of the ways New Mexico invests in children and our more vulnerable residents.

After the 2024 election, a shockwave swept through my school as students grappled with what another Trump presidency would mean for their futures. At the performing arts school where I teach, we have a high percentage of queer and trans students, a stark contrast to my previous school in California, where most LGBTQ+ students often chose to remain closeted until well after graduation. I grieve for what my previous students lost when they did not acknowledge or affirm their queer and trans classmates. In English class, they missed robust discussions; the depth their queer and trans peers bring to literary discussions, while leveraging queer theory, translates into highly analytical and more engaging coursework. In the scope of a school day, there were countless other ways all students missed a more complete experience, while their queer and trans peers chose safety in an environment hostile to their identities. 

And while New Mexico is much less hostile to trans residents, I still can’t imagine what it would be like to be growing up in a world that constantly demands you to defend and fight for your humanity. Guaranteed care by the state means nothing if authority figures are consistently exposed to negative messaging about transgender people or if your lack of insurance prevents you from getting the life-saving care you need. 

And yet, trans students in New Mexico are able to attend school in an environment with teachers who are largely committed to affirming a variety of gender identities, select curriculum that allows LGBTQ students to see themselves, bond with accepting and encouraging peers from across the gender spectrum, and learn from LGBTQ teachers who embody a hopeful future of what it means to be your full self in your career. This is all possible when a school doesn't just accommodate gender and sexual diversity, but embraces it. Extensive research confirms the ways in which affirming environments like ours can be life-saving for LGBTQ teens, especially trans students.

Earlier in my career, I felt optimistic about my queer and trans students’ futures. Today, seeing my trans students grapple with the new political realities has renewed my commitment to making an optimistic future visible for them. In a past article, I reflected on my role as a teacher in presenting a hopeful future for my students during unhopeful times. There is no one for whom this is more crucial than our queer and trans students. 

Ultimately, I wonder what it would look like for our world to care about children as much as the state of New Mexico does. What will happen when all children can attend high-quality early childhood education without adding to the financial burden of a growing family? What does it look like when gender affirming care is protected by law? Or when our lawmakers prohibit book and curriculum censorship? Or when we finally decide that school shootings do not have to be a certainty of American life? 

I know these questions will remain abstract while we watch students as young as Liam Ramos fear for their lives. But we cannot have a different future if we are not imagining a better one in the present. I’m thankful for my students, past and present, who encourage my imagination.

This story is part of an EdSurge series chronicling educator experiences. These stories are made publicly available with support from the Learning Commons. EdSurge maintains editorial control over all content. (Read our ethics statement here.) This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. %!s()

It's much harder to make a smaller, cheaper car as good, especially when that car needs to be a lot more mass-market in terms of sales volume and consumer appeal. And the compact crossover segment is an especially competitive one, whether you're looking just at EVs or at SUVs broadly. Luckily, Rivian seems to have nailed it with the R2. It's fantastic to drive on- and off-road, just as thoughtfully engineered and designed as its big siblings, and its packaging and pricing are aimed right at the heart of the market. The Rivian R2 might be even better than you hoped — it certainly exceeded my own high expectations.

Full disclosure: Rivian flew me to Salt Lake City, put me up in the Waldorf for a night and fed me a few meals so I could drive the R2. There were dozens of Mormon missionaries on my flight home, which I think is why I've spent the past week sick at home.

It lives up to the Performance name

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The only R2s we get to drive are the dual-motor Performance model, which has 656 horsepower and 609 pound-feet of torque. That's only 9 hp less than an R1S Dual Performance (but 220 fewer torques), and the R2's 3.6-second 0-to-60-mph time is just two tenths behind its bigger sibling. It certainly feels quick in practice, especially when in Sport mode, but not in the same way as the R1. Rivian chose to sacrifice some off-the-line punch in favor of improved mid-range acceleration, and it is especially impressive when pressing the throttle on corner exit or on the freeway. The car never feels too reactive or twitchy, though, and it's easy to drive smoothly.

New for the R2 is a front motor that automatically disconnects for better efficiency, as opposed to the rear motor being the one that disconnects in the R1 models, and the transition is imperceptible and immediate. In Sport mode the front motor is always engaged, which is why the whirr from the motors is a lot louder and more noticeable — but don't worry, there's still no fakery or volume enhancement going on. Torque distribution between the axles is constantly variable, defaulting to 40:60 front/rear, though it more often sends more twist to the rear, and the amount sent to the front wheels doesn't typically exceed 60%. Rivian continues to be one of the best at tuning regenerative braking, with the R2's strongest setting offering true one-pedal driving that feels telepathic whether driving around town or in the canyons.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

There's no air suspension like you get in an R1, but you really don't need it. The Performance's semi-active setup has three different settings for the adaptive dampers, with the softest still being composed enough in corners and the stiffest being far from harsh. There isn't much body roll, and it handles weight transfer and quick changes in direction well. It's a comfortable ride no matter the setting, perhaps even more so than the occasionally flinty R1S. The R2 Performance we're driving has 21-inch wheels with Rivian-specific Pirelli Scorpion MS tires, sized 255/55, that are pretty quiet at highway speeds and offer more than enough grip for spirited driving. And you will want to do some spirited driving.

The R2's steering rack is from a different supplier and has a different setup than the R1, and it feels more accurate and provides a bit more feedback. But surely most of the R2's nimbleness can be chalked up to its weight: Rivian has yet to say a curb weight, but the R2 weighs around 2,000 pounds less than an R1S (so peg it at around 4,600 pounds) and it feels even lighter than that. In Sport mode on a very tight and twisty road near Mill Canyon Peak, the R2 is a joy to drive quickly, more akin to a big hot hatch than a small SUV. Making it all even better is the confirmation that a tri-motor, rally-inspired R2X model is coming soon.

Sufficient specs

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Where the R2 doesn't really stand out is its battery and efficiency. Though all three are more expensive than the R2 Performance to start and are more outright luxury cars, the R2's biggest competitors are also new on the scene this year: the BMW iX3, Mercedes-Benz GLC EV and Volvo EX60. Those Europeans all use 800-volt architectures where the R2 only has a 400-volt setup, and all three boast charging speeds of over 300 kW and ranges of more than 400 miles, with the R2 falling short in both regards.

I mean, the R2's range is totally fine; great, even. Dual-motor R2s get an EPA-estimate range of 330 miles depending on the wheel and tire package, beating out cars like the Tesla Model Y, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Cadillac Optiq. The upcoming rear-wheel-drive Standard Long Range model, which uses the same 87.9-kWh battery pack, will do 345 miles. Rivian hasn't yet said what the R2's peak fast-charging rate is, and that's probably because it's not that impressive — the company says it can charge from 10% to 80% in 29 minutes, about the same as a Toyota bZ. Not exactly class-leading. It has a NACS port on the driver's side rear quarter-panel for easy access at Tesla Superchargers, and in another first for Rivian, it can do bi-directional charging of up to 11 kW.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

Though the R2 won't travel as far on the highway as its competitors, its Autonomy+ suite of driver-assistance systems is very good and makes highway driving a lot nicer. The system's hardware (11 cameras and five radar sensors) is built into every R2, with Launch Package cars getting lifetime access while later buyers will have to pay a $49.99 monthly subscription or a $2,500 one-time fee. In addition to all your regular features like adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, lane-departure warning and lane-keeping assist, Autonomy+ adds Rivian's Level 2 hands-free driving system that can be activated on 3.5 million miles of roads in the U.S. and Canada.

It's easy to turn on, requiring a simple tug on the shifter while on the freeway, and the system works extremely well. It stays nicely centered in the lane, and the car doesn't yell at me to take control or look ahead if I gaze at the landscape for a couple seconds. While it won't pull off unprompted lane changes, hitting the blinker will activate an automatic lane change. Rivian is working on a Level 2 point-to-point hands-free system that's also possible with the R2's current hardware, with the aim to launch it later this year through an OTA update.

What a cutie!

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If you're reading this review then the R2's exterior design is probably very familiar to you already, but I will at least say the longer I look at it in person and the more specs I see, the better it looks — and the more different it is from the R1S. Yes, they're clearly siblings, but the R2 has a lot of details that set it apart and make it look even better to my eyes. For instance, I really love the crisp line that flows from the top of the pill-like headlights to form the U-shaped valley in the hood, how the shorter headlights' three-dimensional surrounds stick out from the nose, and the turn signals built into the front wheel arch trim. The hood itself is a nice clamshell, with the shutlines aligning with a crease along the body side, and short overhangs, tucked-in bumpers and strong shoulders give the R2 a great stance.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

There's one major problem with the design, though — the incredible Borealis purple paint won't be available until next year, and if you want the darker Forest Green that won't be available until later this year. The Catalina Cove blue is nice, at least, but other than those options and the Launch Green color, the R2's color palette is pretty tame. The wheel designs are also boring. Come on, Rivian, at least give us one rally-style wheel option!

Performance and Premium trims get one feature that's very rare in the automotive world, and one that could end up being solely responsible for a big chunk of R2 sales: the rear drop glass. Like on a Toyota 4Runner, the rear window is powered, lowering down into the tailgate so you can fit longer stuff in the cargo area or, more likely, so you and your dog can enjoy some fresh air. In addition to a button near the rear view mirror that lowers just the rear glass there's another button that lowers all five windows, and it can also be lowered from outside the car by pressing a touch-sensitive button in the rear window surround.

Rivian really knows how to design interiors

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

The interior design will also look and feel very familiar to anyone who's been in an R1, but Rivian has made a lot of little tweaks based on customer feedback and its experience making the larger cars. People wanted more storage space, so Rivian moved the door speakers to the center console, improving audio quality and allowing for large water bottles to fit in the door pockets. There are two gloveboxes, one in the normal spot and another beneath the center screen, and the center armrest has a good amount of room inside and two sizable slide-out cupholders. Ahead of the center console there's an open space to place bags.

Despite the R2 being so much smaller than an R1S, even the tallest among us won't be lacking for space, especially if you sit in the back seat. There's 40.4 inches of legroom and 40.4 inches of headroom in the second row, both figures more than you get in an R1S, and the flat floor is pretty low, so your knees aren't angled up high. The front seats are supportive for my 5-foot-9 self, and while the driving position is definitely assertive and SUV-like, I don't feel like I'm sitting too high up. Visibility is also great, especially out the front. The R2's hood design gives me a good idea of where the corners of the car are and where the wheels are placed, but it doesn't feel too tall or long. The side windows are big, too.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

With the rear seats up the R2 has 28.7 cubic feet of cargo space, two and a half cubes more than an Ioniq 5, and folding the 40/20/40-split rear seats down flat opens that space to 79.4 cubic feet, 21 whole cubes more than the Hyundai. You also get an underfloor storage area that's big enough to fit a carry-on suitcase, and the frunk will hold 5.2 cubic feet of stuff, big enough for a carry-on and a backpack or six grocery bags. The hood is power-opening, and while you have to close it yourself, it'll latch itself.

In addition to looking very similar to the R1's interior, the R2's cabin feels just as well-built and high-quality, certainly worth the Performance's price tag. Rivian's Adventex bio-based leather alternative is nicer than a lot of other leatherettes, with real accent stitching all over the place. Almost everything you touch has padding behind it, including the grab handles on the doors. There's a big swath of birch wood trim on the dashboard, and a great textile is used on the door panels and seatbacks. Sadly, if you want the off-white Ocean Coast interior color you'll have to wait until later this year.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

Rivian continues to have one of the best (if not the best) infotainment systems in the industry, and the R2's software has undergone a subtle redesign. The bezels around the screens are thinner, and the 11.5-inch gauge screen is short and wider than what you get in the R1. The 15.6-inch touchscreen has redesigned menus, a shortcut bar on the left and some new functionality, like the ability to swipe pop-up boxes showing your current audio from the left to the right of the screen. Rivian has thankfully retained the cel-shaded look, which I absolutely love. All of the graphics, fonts, icons and other bits look wonderful and are easy to read at a glance.

There's still no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Good. I would never want to use CarPlay when Rivian's system is this fantastic, especially given how well-integrated everything is to the vehicle functions, and the presence of built-in apps like Apple Music. Rivian's navigation system and built-in route planning is wonderful, and it uses Google Maps data anyway, so why would I want to navigate from my phone's connection? I'm sure some of you in the comments will be mad about this, but you shouldn't be. CarPlay sucks, and Rivian is never going to add it.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

New in the R2 (and added to existing R1s) is the very cleverly named Rivian Assistant, the automaker's in-house-designed voice assistant. In addition to being able to control various infotainment functions, the assistant can change things like the drive modes and answer all sorts of questions about the car, even if it's offline. But because I'm having too good of a time talking with my drive partner, friend of Jalopnik (and former intern) Mack Hogan, I don't try it out while driving, only doing a static demo. Still, it seems like one of the better voice assistants on the market.

I can see your halos

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

The R2's real party piece is something you definitely haven't seen on any other car: the Haptic Halo wheels that are placed in the steering wheel, negating the need for any other buttons or controls. First of all, they look fantastic, appearing to float within the wood-trimmed spokes. There's a knurled finish on the rims, with a nice lined texture on the inner side. But then you actually use them, and your eyes will really widen.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

In addition to spinning them like you'd expect, you can click the halos in like a button or click them over side to side in either direction, and there's a different sort of haptic feedback to each type of action. When you get to the bottom of a menu, resistance is added into the haptics so you aren't just spinning it aimlessly. In addition to controlling things you'd expect, like the audio volume and track, they can also adjust the temperature and fan speed, change the gauge cluster display, and set the speed, follow distance and other settings for the driver-assist features. You can also spin or click the halos from the back side of the steering wheel, and doing so can have different functionality — for example, clicking in from the back of the right wheel brings up the drive mode selector.

I find myself adapting to the halos very quickly — it helps that what they're doing is clearly shown in the gauge cluster — but sometimes I scroll the wheel when I mean to click it to the side, especially when doing it from the back side. Rivian's engineers acknowledged they're still tweaking how the halos feel, and adjustments to both the action and functionality will be possible through over-the-air updates. Though they didn't say any specifics, in the future the halos will be able to control and adjust even more aspects of the car.

Ready for adventures

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

After our initial street drive we swap into R2s equipped with the 20-inch wheels and all-terrain tires, specifically 255/60 BF Goodrich Trail Terrain T/As. On tarmac there is barely more roughness and road noise than the bigger all-seasons, though they bring the range down to 307 miles. Still, it's not a bad trade-off for the capability you get, and it's just an extra $1,000. We start the off-road portion of the drive on a hard-packed dirt road, on which the R2 remains very smooth and quiet, with no annoying chattering or shudders. The general All-Terrain mode is suited for basically everything, but the Performance trim also has a Soft Sand mode and, best of all, Rally mode. Rally reduces the stability control (you can fully turn it off, too) and gives the car a more tail-happy setup, and it is pretty easy to slide around in the dirt, though I don't have much opportunity to drive sportily here.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

When we get onto the actual slow-going off-road trail, we switch back into All-Terrain. Every R2 regardless of wheel/tire setup has 9.6 inches of ground clearance, a tenth more than an Outback Wilderness, and it can wade through nearly 20 inches of water. Every obstacle the trail throws at us is tackled with ease in the R2, from steep inclines covered in huge rocks to off-camber turns with treacherous ruts. There's never a moment where it feels like the car is struggling for traction, and the regenerative braking and powertrain tuning makes it really easy to modulate the throttle in tricky sections. The 360-degree cameras are even higher-resolution than the facelift R1, and unlike some other cars, Rivian doesn't cut out the feed above low speeds.

While the initial trail could probably be tackled by your average crossover on all-terrains, Rivian also has us go up an especially tough route that's even narrower and rockier. Again, the R2 bounds up it no problem, like a happy little mountain goat. There's only a couple moments where we hear the underbody scrape, and when we do get some two- or three-wheel action to show off the articulation, the R2 always feels stable. There's no need for any hill-descent control, off-road crawl function, anti-roll bar disconnect or other fancy off-roader features. Out of the box, the R2 is well set-up and ready to go do whatever outdoorsy stuff you want.

The base model is no penalty box

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

The first production R2s have already made it into the hands of customers, with the Performance being the only variant currently rolling off the line. All the R2s come with the Launch Package right now, which comes with lifetime Autonomy+, the towing package, a special finish for the key fob and the ability to get Launch Green paint. Its starting price of $59,485 really ain't bad, especially given how much stuff it comes with.

Every R2 Performance has heated and ventilated front seats with 12-way adjustment and power lumbar, heated rear outboard seats, a 9-speaker premium audio system with 2 midwoofers and 2 subwoofers, matrix LED headlights with adaptive high beams, integrated tow hooks, a pop-out flashlight in the driver's door that also doubles as a hand warmer, and the rear drop glass.

Coming later this year will be the dual-motor Premium, starting at $55,485. It's got 450 hp and 537 lb-ft with a 0-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds, still nothing to sneeze at, and the same 330-mile range as the Performance. Aside from the extra, um, performance, the only actual features that the Performance gets over the Premium is the semi-active suspension, the Soft Sand and Rally modes, and launch control. All that other stuff I mentioned above is present in the Premium.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

In the first half of next year Rivian will start building the Standard model (the silver one seen above), which will cost you $49,985. It has 19-inch wheels, a less-nice interior without heated seats, a less-nice sound system, no matrix headlights and none of the off-road drive modes. The rear-wheel-drive Standard has 350 hp and 355 lb-ft, but it'll be available with dual-motor all-wheel drive as an option. But that won't be the cheapest one.

Originally Rivian said it wouldn't be putting the real base-trim R2 Standard into production until late 2027, but that timeline has been moved up by half a year due to strong demand, with the car now set to launch in the summer. While the Standard Long Range has the same battery pack as other R2s, the base one will get a smaller pack with a range of only 275 miles. Rivian says it will start at $46,485, and though it doesn't have as many features, you aren't getting a penalty box. The automaker brought along an R2 Standard for us to poke around while parked, and the interior is still really damn nice. Its surfaces are just as padded, there's cool flecked plastic trim, and wonderful textiles on the dash and doors.

Rivian is aiming to sell around 25,000 R2s this year, more than half the total vehicles it sold in 2025, and eventually, Rivian says its plant in Normal, Illinois, could produce more than 150,000 R2s annually. That's a big goal, especially given the current appetite for EVs in the U.S., but given how damn good the R2 is, I don't think it'll be a hard one to hit if Rivian can pull off the launch. This is a real Goldilocks product — it's the right size, it's the right price, it's got the right specs, it's got the right design and engineering. The 2027 Rivian R2 is simply satisfying in basically every regard, a crossover all sorts of people will easily fall in love with. And that bodes really well for the R3, which is still on track to come out next year with an even better design and an even lower price. %!s()

Modern physics offers a remarkable lens on reality. In just over a century, it has decoded the architecture of atoms, traced the early history of the universe and produced laws that seem to hold everywhere, from Earth’s crust to distant galaxies. It is tempting to believe that these theories aren’t just accurate, but inevitable – that any sufficiently intelligent civilisation would eventually uncover the same truths.

I used to believe that, too. But lately I have started to wonder whether physics is less a window onto universal reality and more of a mirror, reflecting the particular kind of minds we happen to have.

That unsettling thought emerges when you ask a deceptively simple question: would alien scientists, shaped by a different biology or culture, arrive at the same physics that we have? Or might they develop something that works just as well, but looks utterly foreign – built on concepts and assumptions we would struggle to recognise?

This question sits at the heart of my book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, which imagines various scenarios of first contact, each designed to probe a foundational assumption of modern physics. In developing it – often in conversation with philosophers of science – I have come to realise something surprising: many pillars of physics that feel hardwired may actually be contingent. But recognising that doesn’t weaken science. It may be how we make it better.

I’ve spent my life doing physics. When I am not teaching at the University of California, Irvine, I work at the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, analysing data from the Large Hadron Collider. But a few years ago, conversations with philosophers forced me to revisit a question I hadn’t seriously considered since my student days: what is physics, really?

At its core, physics aims to explain how the universe works – not just what we observe, but what lies behind those observations. It looks for patterns, builds models that expose hidden structure and, ideally, distils everything down to a small set of rules from which the rest follows. By that measure, it has been spectacularly successful.

Yet physics never describes the universe in full. It describes carefully chosen versions of it.

Consider predicting the path of a comet. In principle, we could account for every gravitational tug, the slow loss of material as ice sublimates, even the way an irregular shape causes the comet to tumble. In practice, we must decide what to include and what to ignore. There is no single correct model – only models that are good enough for the question at hand.

This is true throughout physics. Even our most precise theories rely on approximations and assumptions that make the mathematics tractable. And it isn’t clear that the theories we treat as fundamental really are. They may simply be effective descriptions that work at human scales. There is no guarantee that, by probing nature ever more finely, we will eventually strike bedrock.

If physics depends on choices – about simplification, representation and emphasis – then alien physicists might reasonably make different ones.

What if aliens don’t experience time the way we do?

Imagine that aliens arrive on Earth. They have mastered interstellar travel and touched down near Paris. We send linguists and scientists to greet them, hoping for a technological windfall. The delegation returns empty-handed.

“They can’t share their technology,” the lead physicist explains. “Because of what will happen 74 years from today.”

The implication is disturbing. These aliens don’t experience time as a flowing sequence, but as a complete structure, something navigable rather than endured. Human physics, by contrast, is built on the idea that the present generates the future. Causes precede effects. The universe computes itself forward, moment by moment.

But what if that picture is a human convenience, rather than a cosmic necessity?

We know that any workable physics must obey certain constraints. A universe that allows unrestricted messages from the future quickly collapses into a paradox. But within those limits, the structure of time may be more flexible than we usually admit.

Hints of this already exist in our own theories. Quantum entanglement links distant particles so that measuring one appears to instantaneously fix the state of the other, despite the fact that there can be no information exchanged between them. This alone strains our intuitions. But matters become stranger when relativity enters the picture. Observers moving at different speeds disagree about the order of events. In some frames of reference, one measurement appears to influence another before it occurs.

The standard response is to insist that nothing physically problematic has happened: no faster-than-light signals, no causal contradictions. But that reassurance relies on clinging tightly to a classical notion of causality that quantum mechanics has never fully respected.

Some physicists have taken a more radical approach. In so-called retrocausal interpretations of quantum mechanics, future events are allowed to help shape the present. Measurements don’t merely reveal outcomes; they help define them, even backwards in time. The universe no longer computes itself strictly step by step.

If aliens had a radically different construct of time, they might adopt such ideas naturally, rather than treating them as unsettling exceptions. And perhaps we may eventually need to do the same.

What if aliens don’t insist on a single theory of nature?

Now imagine the aliens invite us aboard their ship for a scientific conference. Earth sends its brightest minds. We present our best theories. The aliens listen politely, then respond.

One group describes a framework that reproduces all known experiments using unfamiliar concepts. A second presents another, incompatible approach. Then a third. Each works. Each is internally consistent. None can be reduced to the others.

Finally, someone asks the obvious question: which one is true?

The aliens seem puzzled. All of them, they say. Why choose?

Human science assumes that competing theories must ultimately fight it out, with only one surviving as the correct description of reality. When multiple explanations fit the data, we design experiments to eliminate all but a single winner.

This strategy is powerful and often effective. But it is a preference, not a logical necessity. Science today often tolerates pluralism more than it admits. Weather forecasting is a striking example. Modern meteorology relies on suites of models, each tuned to different assumptions and scales. These models routinely disagree, and experts decide which to trust depending on context. No single model is treated as the uniquely correct one.

Another example comes from classical mechanics. At school, we learn Newton’s laws as a story about forces pushing and pulling objects through space. But the same motions can be derived in a very different way, by tracking how energy flows through a system, or by assuming that nature somehow “chooses” the path that minimises a quantity called “action”. To most physicists, these are just alternative ways of doing the same sums.

Philosophers of science, however, would point out that each framework elevates a different concept to centre stage – force, energy, optimisation – and offers a different account of what, at bottom, is driving the motion. The fact that these pictures cannot be told apart by experiment shows that empirical success alone may not be enough to tell us which account, if any, deserves to be called the “true” one.

This suggests an alternative vision of science – not a march towards a single, final theory, but a toolbox of frameworks, each useful in different situations. Aliens might adopt such an approach from the outset, without ever feeling the need to crown a single description as the truth.

What if aliens never felt the need to do physics at all?

Finally, imagine that aliens arrive by opening a wormhole. The technology is astonishing. Surely they must possess deep insights into gravity, perhaps even quantum gravity.

But what if they don’t?

What if their space-bending technology is the result of millions of years of trial and error rather than theoretical understanding? They know how to build it and how to use it, but not why it works – and they may not care.

This sounds implausible only because we are used to thinking of technology as the offspring of science. Historically, the relationship often ran the other way. Humans made steel, glass and antibiotics long before understanding the underlying chemistry or biology. Cathedrals were built before calculus.

The tight coupling between science and technology that we take for granted is a recent and culturally specific achievement.

It is tempting to assume that any intelligent species would be driven to ask “why”. But that urge may reflect human psychology rather than a universal feature of intelligence. Other species might value reliability over explanation, or usefulness over understanding. They could build extraordinary technologies without ever developing anything recognisable as physics – not because they failed to take the next step, but because the step never seemed necessary.

These scenarios are speculative. But they point to something easy to forget. Physics is the cumulative result of many human choices: about what counts as an explanation, which inconsistencies matter and which questions are worth asking at all. It reflects our history, our tools and our values as much as it reflects the structure of the universe.

Recognising that doesn’t diminish physics. It does the opposite. The more aware we are of the assumptions baked into our theories and methods – about time, causality, truth and explanation – the more freedom we gain to rethink them. %!s()

Since 2018, The Audacious Project has invited visionary social entrepreneurs to propose their boldest ideas to solve the world’s greatest challenges, and collaborated with them to transform their ambitions into achievable and audacious, multi-year plans. 

Audacious has reached new heights — with more than $1 billion committed by the Audacious community at the end of 2025 to provide the flexible, long-term funding to launch and scale these bold ideas.

Audacious has also launched a reinvestment pilot program, providing a secondary funding round to previous grantees that demonstrated significant results after their initial five years of funding. The Audacious donor community has committed nearly $50 million in total follow-on funding to three selected organizations to scale their work and sustain their impact. This pilot demonstrates a commitment to flexible, long-term funding — and to the value of providing a longer runway for organizations creating transformational change. 

The 2025 Audacious cohort includes:

• Arc Institute, led by Silvana Konermann: Creating the world’s first high-utility virtual cell, an AI model accelerating medical breakthroughs toward cures for intractable diseases
• Braven, led by Aimée Eubanks Davis: Closing the college-to-career gap for low-income and first-generation college students in the United States by partnering with higher education and employers to prepare students for the workforce
• Imagine Worldwide, led by Rapelang Rabana: Scaling solar-powered, offline edtech learning solutions to reach students across Malawi, Sierra Leone and Tanzania
• Ipas, led by Anu Kumar and Jean-Claude Mulunda: Preventing unsafe abortion in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South Asia by removing systemic, legal and social barriers to care
• Plastic Solutions Fund, led by Nicky Davies: Reducing plastic production and fostering a reuse-based, circular economy in partnership with the #BreakFreeFromPlastic movement.
• Pure Earth, led by Drew McCartor: Protecting children from lead poisoning by helping 22 low- and middle-income countries implement proven approaches to prevent exposure and reduce health risks
• Destination: Home’s “Right at Home,” led by Jennifer Loving: Stopping homelessness before it starts by scaling a proven prevention model across the country, redefining how the United States responds to the housing affordability crisis
• Solutions for Our Climate, led by Joojin Kim: Transforming maritime trade into an industry  that drives global decarbonization
• The Ocean Cleanup, led by Boyan Slat: Stopping plastic from flowing into our oceans by intercepting and removing the waste accumulating in rivers
• Tiko, led by Serah Malaba: Empowering and protecting girls across Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa and Burkina Faso from HIV, unintended pregnancy and sexual violence by connecting them to free care and services

The Audacious Project reinvestment organizations include: 

• Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), led by Rebecca Firth: Establishing an Open Mapping Marketplace that connects trained and certified local mappers with decision-makers needing high-quality geospatial data to strengthen livelihoods and planning
• Last Mile Health, led by Lisha McCormick: Saving the lives of women and children across the African continent by partnering with governments to train community health workers to deliver cost-effective primary care and transform health financing  
• Thorn, led by Julie Cordua: Hardwiring child safety into the fabric of the internet by equipping technology companies and law enforcement with AI-driven tools to combat child sexual abuse, protect children at scale and outpace emerging threats

“This year’s cohort represents what happens when humanity’s toughest problems are met with courage. It is also a declaration of what they imagine is still entirely possible. Whether they are charting paths to plastic‑free oceans, unlocking access to life-saving health services for women and girls globally or harnessing AI to prevent disease, the breadth and depth of these interventions is awe-inducing,” said Anna Verghese, executive director of The Audacious Project. “We’re humbled yet again by what the Audacious community makes possible.”

“Daring ideas matter most when they become achievable,” said Chris Anderson, founder of The Audacious Project and TED chairman. “These grantees prove what’s possible when we come together to dream big, take risks and build a more hopeful future.”

Through its unique model, The Audacious Project brings together dedicated philanthropists to give in community with one another, allowing funders to connect with groundbreaking projects that aim to solve humanity’s biggest challenges. 

“The world’s problems are huge — they require audacious thinking and people willing to work together to solve them. I feel a real responsibility to give back and to support some of these immense issues through philanthropy. The Audacious Project helps me do that by connecting me with organizations that have big, bold plans and the vision to actually pull them off,” said Reed Hastings, founder and chairman of the board of Netflix and CEO of Powder. “What makes it unique is how it brings together diverse partners with serious, flexible capital to back the most visionary leaders out there. It’s an honor to be part of this community driving real systemic change.”

“Audacious brings together a community of grantees and funders who are optimistic, hopeful and believe that change is possible. As funders, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of philanthropic dollars, and to back grantee-led solutions to the problems that communities are facing. Amazing leaders deserve to be supported — and it’s our job to support them as future leaders of the world,” said Tegan Acton, founder and principal of Wildcard Giving.

Over the past eight years, the Audacious donor community has committed $4.6 billion in support of 70 bold projects spanning health, climate and community-led innovation, each one grounded in real-world work and designed to turn urgency into action. Audacious grantees have subsequently leveraged an additional $3 billion from other funders, catalyzing $7.6 billion in total funding. These figures point to the distinct power of collaborative philanthropy, when bold ideas and possibility are matched with a committed community that acts with purpose.

Audacious grantees have transformed educational systems worldwide, enrolling millions of girls in school, and have helped millions of people lift themselves out of ultra-poverty. They have driven medical breakthroughs — developing the world’s first computer-generated protein medicine, revolutionizing COVID-19 response systems and repurposing medicines to cure rare diseases. From developing the first whale language model to transforming how we track methane emissions, year after year, these projects redefine what is achievable in our world.

What these leaders imagine is possible. And we feel so lucky, together, to see a better future with them. %!s()

The no-cloning theorem was first discovered by researchers in the 1980s. It says that quantum states that describe all the information about a system can’t be copied. Attempting to measure the information to copy it would simply destroy the delicate quantum properties that you want to measure. This fact has proved important for quantum technologies like encryption, leading to simple protocols that prevent information from being copied and hacked.

Achim Kempf at the University of Waterloo in Canada and Koji Yamaguchi at Kyushu University in Japan have now shown that a quantum system can, in fact, be cloned, as long as the information about it is encrypted and enclosed with a special, one-off decryption key.

“You can make a lot of copies and generate redundancy in this way, but you have to encrypt the copies, and the decryption key can only be used once,” says Kempf. “This makes it compatible with a no-cloning theorem, because it says there can only ever be at most one clear, obvious, readable, non-encrypted copy of a qubit.”

Kempf and Yamaguchi arrived at this surprising conclusion after working on a seemingly unrelated problem – how a quantum Wi-Fi or radio station might work. This is something that is impossible under the traditional no-cloning theorem because multiple receivers would get the same identical quantum information.

But when the pair looked at how random fluctuations, or noise, would affect the copies of information that receivers see, they realised that their system might work. “We thought, what the hell? Why does quantum noise seem to mess with the no-cloning theorem?”

After analysing the problem more carefully, they realised that the noise was acting as an effective encryption mechanism, garbling the original message but in a way that could be reversed. If this was done intentionally, it could be exploited as a tool.

Once they had proved this result theoretically, the pair and other colleagues showed that this protocol could work on a real IBM Heron 156-qubit quantum computing processor.

Because the technique is fairly resistant to noise and errors that are ubiquitous in today’s quantum computers, the team found they could make hundreds of encrypted clones of single qubits, by repeating the process over and over again. “In fact, we ran out of real estate on the IBM processor. It holds only 156 qubits but we estimated that we can do more than 1000 encrypted clones before the [errors] make us stop.”

This modification to the no-cloning theorem could have uses for a quantum cloud storage or computing service, says Kempf. “If you send a file to Dropbox, it will save your data at least three times in three different computers that are geographically separated, so that if one is hit by fire, the other one by a flood, there’s a fair chance the third one survives,” says Kempf. “It used to be thought you can’t do that with quantum information, because you can’t clone it. But what we showed is that you can do it.”

“It’s an interesting quantum cryptographic protocol,” says Aleks Kissinger at the University of Oxford, and could have uses in quantum communication where you need some redundancy in the information being transmitted. However, it doesn’t affect the original no-cloning theorem because Kempf and his team’s method isn’t obviously cloning, he says. “It’s not so much cloning as a kind of spreading the [quantum] state to lots of other parties, in such a way that any one of those parties could later get it back,” says Kissinger. “It’s a clever trick, but I personally wouldn’t call that cloning.”

Kempf agrees. “It’s not cloning. It’s encrypted cloning,” he says. “That’s just a refinement of the no-cloning theorem.” %!s()