MIT Technology Review unveils its «Impossible» issue: from the Moon to synthetic blood and AI with real limits

The content received is not a full article but the index page of MIT Technology Review's November/December 2026 issue, titled “The Impossible issue.” This summary is therefore brief and limited to what appears on that page: the text of the features is not available.

The introduction argues that dreaming of living on the moon or uploading our brains to a computer is fun, but that pursuing the impossible goes far beyond utopias. The issue explores what can be achieved when one has the audacity to push toward the most ambitious goals, from synthesizing blood to building an AI with real safeguards.

The main features listed on the page are:

• “Are we there yet?”: progress reports on six transformative technologies that have been “just around the corner” for years.

• “What it would take to build a city on the moon”: a piece on what building a lunar city would require. According to the teaser, Mars may be hell, but the moon is not far behind.

• “The US military's race to make fake blood”: DARPA is funding a redoubled effort to develop a storage-stable blood substitute that would meet what field and trauma medics need most: more blood.

• A feature on startups betting on “blended” meat to reduce red meat consumption. It asks whether this approach will finally get people to eat less beef, a food with a heavy climate cost.

• “Six wild ideas for perpetuating your mind”: six ideas for perpetuating the mind, as part of the quest for cognitive immortality.

• “We're putting too much faith in AI's ability to say no”: today's LLMs are designed to refuse dangerous requests, but that ability to refuse is far from infallible. The page warns that it could become an instrument of repression.

The issue also includes other pieces. One deals with AI labs buying data from defunct startups to train their models: most startups fail, and a new industry is giving their data a second life in AI. Others cover Energy Dome and its carbon dioxide batteries for long-duration grid energy storage, and a visit to Samsung's new semiconductor complex, which is building fabs for the AI memory boom. There is also a piece on the future job of delivery-drone air traffic controller, a story on the PRIMA implant that lets patients with advanced macular degeneration read and do crosswords, a profile of ecologist Daisy Dent on rainforest regeneration and a piece on the physical limits of computing. Rounding out the issue are a work of fiction, “Love is infrastructure,” and the “AI Hype Index,” this time titled “AI loves cheating.”

The page offers no figures, results or conclusions from any of these pieces. To assess any of them, the original articles need to be read.