The Year of Cosmic Shock

President Trump jokingly posts a doctored photo of himself leading an alien in chains out of Area 51, while, on a more serious register, his administration releases a huge tranche of previously undisclosed photos and information about UFOs. Elon Musk muses about human beings becoming an interplanetary species. Bryan Johnson preaches immortality through medicine. Markets panic when Claude’s Mythos AI proves — or appears — to be capable of hacking into some of the globe’s most secure digital systems. And we aren’t even halfway through 2026.