The Lab

Three tracks are already under way, and a fourth opens in January. This is the year the container has to exist for.

Named leads are in conversation. Nothing on this page is announced, and one laboratory's work is confidential at its principal investigator's request.

A Hycean world

Hydrogen over a planet-wide ocean, built on K2-18b, the most credible biosignature candidate anyone holds. Atmospheric modeling, internal structure, the first three-dimensional circulation models of Hycean worlds, and the ecology such an ocean could carry. Led by Prof. Nikku Madhusudhan, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge. The anchor: multi-year, laboratory-based.

A technosignature world

Working name Aster, led by Dr Sofia Sheikh of the SETI Institute. The premise inverts SETI's founding bias. We can only detect the most extreme, the most industrial, the most in some ways stupid of civilizations — and such civilizations do not last. Aster uses its technology to stabilize itself instead: damping volcanism, deflecting asteroids, holding off a snowball state, opening a star shade against its own brightening sun. It optimizes for longevity rather than for detectability.

An origins-of-life world

Designed by convening rather than by a single investigator, through the OoLEN network. Led by Estelle Janin and Alexandre Champagne-Ruel.

A biobot world

With Michael Levin, opening January 2027.

What it costs

The program costs between $141,000 and $362,000. What that buys a scientist is the speculative year: the one no funding body will underwrite, the one that produces the concept rather than the paper.