A team of U.S. engineers says it has built a fiber composite that can "heal" internal damage more than 1,000 times, a breakthrough that could dramatically extend the lifespan of everything from wind turbine blades to airplane parts.

In lab tests, the material repeatedly repaired a common failure called delamination, and the researchers estimate it could stretch typical composite lifetimes from a few decades into the range of centuries.

Why does that matter for the environment? Because modern clean-energy and low-emission technologies lean heavily on lightweight composites that are hard to repair and often difficult to recycle, so they tend to be replaced rather than truly fixed.