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For three seasons, The Toys That Made Us has uncovered the hidden histories of the most beloved playthings in modern history, from Barbie to Lego to Power Rangers . Now, the behind-the-scenes artwork showcased on the series is going to be collected in a handsome book, The Art of The Toys That Made Us , for which Toys That Made Us producer Nacelle and publisher Oni Press are launching a Kickstarter. The Kickstarter will also include Nacelleverse: Year Zero , the collected edition of Nacelle's all-new comics featuring tales of several cult-classic toy lines. Collider is proud to exclusively reveal the all-new wraparound cover for Nacelleverse: Year Zero , by Canadian comic artist Karl Kerschl ( Gotham Academy ).

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For ten glorious days starting on April 1, 2026, one human endeavor captivated our home planet across continents and time zones: the NASA Artemis II mission to orbit the moon, the first crewed mission to cislunar space since 1972. In an Easter-Passover week that had especially demoralizing headlines on global conflicts, this mission presented a powerful vision of what journeying together and taking enormous risks for a shared purpose towards a shared future could look like.

Much has been spoken and written about the scientific and personal achievements of the Artemis II mission and its trailblazing astronauts . Their humanity, and what it did for humankind at large, is perhaps a quieter yet just-as-celebratory achievement.

In a time of trillion-dollar AI IPOs , when the seemingly planned obsolescence of humanity itself looms on our collective horizon, the Artemis II astronauts reminded us that they considered it the honor of a lifetime to do this for us - and as us - while transmitting daily that they couldn’t wait to come home to us. As Christina Koch shared at the end of the translunar injection burn (TLI) on day 2 , while Artemis II set its course to leave Earth's orbital space for the moon as well as its return trajectory: "With this translunar injection burn, we do not leave Earth. We choose it."

From their morning wake-up music playlists (which inspired many to enquire about submitting their compositions for future crewed missions), to the reading out of their menus and details of their daily workouts or sleep schedules, we were reminded that these astronauts were navigating with us in real time the humdrum work of staying alive while conducting amazing science. This signal reached Earth as a continuous invitation to fellowship, and the record-breaking viewership of Artemis II built like a slow cooker feast, with global engagement increasing from launch to splashdown .

The Artemis II livestream introduced many viewers to the unavoidable aspects of spaceflight missions, such as the timing lag and blackouts in communications that will endure regardless of future technological advancements.

Sometimes this was wonderfully funny, like when the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney sought reassurance from the Artemis II astronauts that they preferred maple syrup to Nutella over their pancakes , with the astronauts bursting into laughter a few seconds after the media in-room chuckles.

At other times, it was the quiet anticipation of unprecedented history like the 40-minute communications blackout when the Orion spacecraft traveled behind the moon, or the heart pounding nailbiters of the 6-minute blackouts during the TLI or re-entry to Earth. In an era that rewards instantaneity over pauses, the globe watched and waited together. Such communication lags will compound dramatically for more distant worlds we explore, yet will still tether us profoundly in real time to one another despite our attention- and time-deprived schedules.

Artemis II astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch smile after being recovered onto a U.S. Navy vessel following splashdown. (Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls) The Artemis II livestream also brought home the challenges of human bodily functions far from home. An inordinate amount of media attention and communications airtime was devoted to the brand new model of NASA toilet which developed issues just hours after launch and later became unfunctional on day 3 of the mission. Panels of NASA and space studies experts were asked by journalists about whether the astronauts were able to do either one or both of "#1" or "#2", or why the toilet gave off burning smells, highlighting the very human realities of boldly going where no one has gone before.

We also saw the rocking of the Orion capsule framed by the darkness of space and the background of the moon or Earth. We watched as each astronaut took their turn with the mandatory daily exercise routine to prevent bone density loss, cardiovascular issues and other health declines in a microgravity environment (only one astronaut can work out at a time, owing to space restrictions and to prevent buildup of exhaled carbon dioxide in an enclosed environment).

The Artemis II crew give a group thumbs-up inside their Orion capsule. (Image credit: NASA) The Artemis II mission was full of deeply personal experiences and observations shared by the astronauts, made even more powerful by their unscripted nature. Commander Reed Wiseman's impromptu words of gratitude to the thousands of engineers and staff involved with the successful TLI, and the spontaneous naming of craters on the far side of the moon including - as the astronauts wept and hugged - one for his deceased wife Carroll , connected us in real time to their, and therefore our, evolving scientific and human perspectives.

This gratitude was echoed in a recent interview at the Kennedy Space Center , in which Wiseman shared that he had just received a handwritten note at the airport written on a boarding pass, stating "Thank you for reminding us about joy and hope in the universe again", which he expanded on to thank all the hands that helped the Artemis II mission succeed.

There were also moments during the mission when they simply ran out of words, like when they saw shades of colors on far-side lunar craters on what appears from Earth as a gray barren world. They called for new language to describe what they were seeing.

The moon and earth as seen through the window of the Artemis II crew's Orion spacecraft (Image credit: NASA) NASA recently issued a call for filmmakers, documentarians, songwriters, and poets to contribute to mission storytelling, especially encouraging in the wake of the cancellation of the artist-focused dearmoon mission . Perhaps a Dictionary of the Moon and an Embassy of the Moon , as Dutch artist Marjolijn van Heemstra has proposed, will become possibilities in the future.

Towards the end of the 1997 movie "Contact," based on the 1985 book by Carl Sagan, astronaut and SETI scientist Dr. Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster) is overcome by the experience of interstellar travel and the dazzling views it brings. She says in a choked voice "they should have sent a poet."

In the case of Artemis II, we sent four.

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Albert Einstein is one of a handful of scientific minds in history who made profound mental leaps that arguably no other researcher could have achieved during their era. There just wasn’t sufficient scientific data to motivate anyone else to come up with Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity (though some came close ). In fact, the core principles of relativity are counterintuitive to minds that evolved here on Earth, where objects move slowly, gravity feels like a force, and time is a yardstick that consistently measures our lives.

Famously, Einstein made his breakthroughs by performing thought experiments in which he imagined himself in extreme physical situations, like riding a beam of light or standing in a falling elevator. By projecting himself into a reality beyond our natural human experience, he transformed our understanding of space, time, and gravity.

Of course, Einstein isn’t the only innovator to make mental leaps that were well ahead of his time. Alan Turing invented the field of computer science before anyone had built a truly programmable computer. Using pure logic and imagination, he envisioned a “ Universal Turing Machine ” decades before the components existed to create one. He even predicted that programmable machines would enable human-like intelligence, a milestone we now call “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) , and put forth his famous Turing Test to assess when AI reaches this level.

Unfortunately, Turing’s test relies too much on human judgement. He proposed using a human evaluator to hold a blind conversation with both a human and a machine. If the evaluator could not reliably determine which participant was human, the machine would have implicitly matched human intelligence. It turns out, this test fails because people are too easily fooled due to our inherent tendency to anthropomorphize anything that behaves remotely human.

A better Turing Test

Many benchmarks have been proposed for assessing the arrival of AGI , but most require machines to solve problems whose solutions could be embedded within the data used to train them. As a result, it has been challenging to find repeatable tests that require an AI to make genuinely original and creative leaps.

This brings me to the “ Einstein Test ” proposed by Benrimoh et al. and recently endorsed by Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist Demis Hassabis. The concept is to build special versions of frontier models trained only on the scientific information available to Einstein before his breakthroughs. If such an AI system could independently derive the special and general theories of relativity, it would demonstrate that AI could make creative leaps at the upper limits of what a human brain has ever achieved.

I like this test because it sets a high bar and could be replicated in disciplines outside theoretical physics. Hassabis, who oversees Google DeepMind, suggested the Einstein Test is a good benchmark for AGI, which he estimates there’s a 50% chance of achieving by the end of the decade. If this happens, it could unleash a flood of scientific advancements as the world suddenly deploys thousands of “AI-powered Einsteins” to solve thousands of hard problems, all at software speeds.

As context, we have experienced rapid acceleration in innovation over the past 100 years as the world transitioned from mechanical improvements, which progressed at a roughly linear rate, to digital advancements that have progressed closer to an exponential rate. AGI could push things even faster, driving innovation at a hyperbolic rate because AI is likely to operate at steadily increasing speeds and could trigger recursive loops of self-improvement.

Would this be good for humanity?

I’ve been focused on this issue for 20 years. While I agree with Hassabis that society would benefit from a tsunami of genius-level advancements, I fear superintelligence could have a demoralizing impact on us humans. After all, when AI systems can make leaps at the level of an Einstein or Turing, and do so in a fraction of the time, human scientists and inventors may never have the opportunity to make grand breakthroughs. In fact, from an innovation perspective, we could soon pass “ Peak Human ” as AI systems take the reins.

I hope this doesn’t happen, but superintelligence could mean we never produce another genius-level innovator like Einstein or Turing, at least not a human one. In addition, this threat might not be limited to science and technology. What if superintelligence means we never have another human Shakespeare, Aristotle, Confucius, or Dickinson? This is harder to predict, but certainly within the realm of possibility. Would this be demoralizing?

In the spirit of an Einstein thought experiment, ask yourself this: How would you feel if your favorite new TV show were written entirely by AI ? Or your favorite new comedian, a hilarious AI? Or the hottest new fashion designer? Or the most influential political thinker? None of these things are certain to happen, but all could happen. If so, how would that impact our collective psyche? Our human dignity? This is a genuine risk factor that is not getting sufficient attention. In fact, this month, the United Nations held its first-ever Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, and these issues were not on the agenda.

I know that many who read this will insist AI could never write the next Breaking Bad or do creative standup at the level of George Carlin, and I hope those people are correct. That said, I worry those views are rooted more in denial and wishful thinking than an objective assessment of the power and trajectory of AI. In fact, I see many people cling to outdated views of AI being nothing but statistical parrots. As I covered in Big Think in January , this stance is untrue of modern AI systems like Gemini and Claude.

Believe me, I would love to see AI hit a wall before reaching human-level intelligence. In fact, I clung to this view for much of my career. Then, 15 years ago, I asked myself a simple question: Why is this the most likely future? I had no reasonable answer and had to admit it was rooted mostly in wishful thinking.

So, I asked the next logical question: What can we do to ensure that human intelligence remains relevant in an age of superintelligence? For me, the answer boils down to five simple words: keep humans in the loop . I am not talking about giving an elite group of people supervisory control over a superintelligence in the hope they can contain it or align it with human interests — I’m skeptical either will work over time. I mean building systems in which large numbers of ordinary humans are part of the thinking itself.

Specifically, I believe we should shift our priority from purely digital superintelligence to a hybrid method I refer to as “ collective superintelligence .” This means building systems that incorporate human values, morals, sensibilities and interests into the process — not by training them on data about humans but by connecting them to groups of real humans .

This might sound like science fiction, but evolution has gone down this path many times before. From bird flocks and fish schools to bee swarms, groups of brains can form real-time systems that exceed the intelligence of every individual member by leveraging their combined insights and perspectives. Biologists call this “swarm intelligence,” and as I described in Big Think in June , it could enable humans and AI agents to “think together” at scale, producing superintelligent systems that are genuinely human at their core.

From a practical perspective, instead of releasing millions of AI agents designed to replace people (as is currently happening), we should be releasing AI agents designed to connect people — harnessing, amplifying, and integrating our human collective intelligence with AI systems. The resulting hybrid collective superintelligence would likely drive innovations more slowly than a purely artificial superintelligence, but it would think in ways that are inherently more human than the alternative.

Personally, I’ve been researching the potential of hybrid human-AI systems for the past decade through a company I founded, Unanimous AI. In an early NSF-funded study performed in collaboration with Stanford University Medical School, we found that teams of human doctors working in collaboration with AI systems could outperform both humans and AI systems working in isolation, demonstrating a symbiosis that harnesses the advantages of both while overcoming their respective limitations.

I know that many people reading this would prefer that superintelligence never happens (myself included), for it will mean there are countless brains in our lives that are smarter, faster, more creative, and more knowledgeable than any person — even Einstein-level geniuses. In other words, for the first time since humans climbed down from the trees, our species may lose cognitive supremacy in our natural environment. This changes our role in the world.

Can we prevent it? Unfortunately, the race to AGI is unlikely to slow — the economic and political pressures are only growing stronger. Superintelligence will likely arrive , and it could make us feel like mere observers in a rapidly changing world that’s driven more by AI than humans. An alternative is to push for collective superintelligence . If we take this path, there still could be another human Einstein — it might just be all of us, together.

This article Have we seen the last Einstein? is featured on Big Think .

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LONDON - Lockheed Martin on Monday introduced a cheaper Patriot interceptor as the U.S. and partner nations grapple with the exorbitant costs of shooting down cheap drones and missiles.

The PAC-3 Adapted Capability Effector, or ACE, will cost less than half of what a PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement, or MSE, interceptor costs, the defense firm said, and can be used with legacy equipment.

The announcement, which came during London’s 2026 Farnborough Airshow , comes as the U.S. looks to reduce its dependence on expensive interceptors to combat mass-produced munitions, a juxtaposition that has come under increased scrutiny as American forces have blown through the country’s finite interceptor stockpile to combat Iran’s relatively inexpensive drones during Operation Epic Fury.

The PAC-3 interceptors cost an estimated $4 million, far more than the $35,000 typical price tag of an Iranian Shahed drone. Experts warn that the U.S.’ increased interceptor use has raised concerns about whether stockpiles can be replenished quickly enough to sustain a prolonged campaign.

The PAC-3 ACE is designed to combat airbreathing threats — weapons that rely on oxygen for propulsion — cruise missiles and close- and short-range ballistic missiles.

Lockheed Martin said the new interceptor will still be compatible with the Patriot weapon system and Integrated Battle Command System, which enables the company to speed up development, an effort it says will be coordinated jointly with American and European partners.

U.S. forces in the Middle East have leaned heavily on the Patriot system, which uses radar to detect and track an incoming threat, calculate its trajectory and then guide an interceptor towards a predicted collision point, using a hit-to-kill method.

Patriot systems have become integral to Ukraine’s defense against Russia and as Kyiv’s missiles run out, the country pleaded for more interceptors before joining with nine other nations to create Freyja, a Patriot alternative, amid a global shortage of anti-ballistic interceptors.

The U.S. currently relies on a layered missile defense network that includes the Patriot system, the Navy’s Aegis Combat System — armed with SM-3 and SM-6 interceptors — and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD.

In April, Lockheed Martin announced that the Navy was preparing to bring PAC-3 MSE interceptors to sea for use by its Aegis system, which uses advanced radars to identify, track and then guide missiles. The company was awarded a multimillion dollar contract but did not specify a dollar amount or timeline in the announcement.

In the same month, the Pentagon also agreed to a $4.7 million contract with Lockheed Martin to accelerate PAC-3 MSE interceptor production.

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Since Avatar: The Last Airbender ended its three-season run on Nickelodeon in 2008, no one has been able to quite recapture its magic. M. Night Shyamalan’s 2010 live-action film was an unmitigated disaster. Netflix’s live-action series alternates between being too brutal in its portrayal of the horrors of war and so faithful to the source material it feels unnecessary, while lacking all the charm of the animated series. Even the show’s original creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, faltered with their sequel The Legend of Korra , which had moments of greatness but also spent too much time on YA tropes and mediocre villains. It took nearly 20 years, but Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender finally delivers the worthy follow-up fans have been waiting for.