Doomslayer: Weekly Progress Roundup

Aug 03, 2025

The world’s smallest snake has been rediscovered in Barbados after it was lost to science for nearly 20 years.
A team of scientists has discovered thriving ecosystems nearly 10 kilometers beneath the ocean surface—deeper than ever observed before—sustained by chemical-rich fluids seeping from the seafloor. Notably, the researchers found life on 19 of their 23 dives, suggesting that these deep-sea trench ecosystems may be more common than previously thought.

Helion Energy has broken ground on the site of a planned fusion power plant, part of an optimistic initiative to supply a Microsoft data center with electricity by 2028.
Ore Energy, a Dutch battery manufacturer, has become the first to connect an iron‑air battery to the grid. Their prototype uses a reversible rust reaction—iron oxidizes to release power when discharging, and reverts back when charged—to provide up to 100 hours of energy storage, far beyond the 4–8 hours typical of lithium-ion batteries.
China is proving that nuclear power in the West is way more expensive than it needs to be. While the US and France have seen costs climb for decades thanks to overregulation, bespoke reactor designs, and fragmented supply chains, China has kept costs low by doing the opposite.

Health & Demographics

Timor-Leste has eliminated malaria.
Brazil has opened the world’s largest Wolbachia-infected mosquito factory after field trials saw the insects slash dengue, Zika, and chikungunya incidence.
Doctors in Italy have restored a man’s sight using an innovative gene therapy. The treatment involved injecting a viral vector into the man’s eye to deliver a working copy of a missing gene, allowing retinal cells to produce the protein needed for vision.

iNaturalist, a popular wildlife identification app, has become a core tool in ecological research. Since its launch in 2008, users have logged more than 250 million species observations, contributing to over 5,000 peer-reviewed papers.
A research project called African Next Voices is creating an open-access database of 18 African languages containing thousands of hours of translated and transcribed voice recordings. The goal is to make it easier for large language models to learn and support these widely spoken but underrepresented languages.

Female genital mutilation in Egypt, while still widespread, is becoming less popular. In 2014, 61 percent of girls ages 15–17 were mutilated; by 2021, that fell to 37 percent. Public support for the practice has also fallen; 30 percent of Egyptian women supported genital mutilation in 2021, down from 75 percent in 2000.