What If the Sahara Desert Was Covered With Solar Panels?

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In a world exhausted of fossil fuels, solar panels can provide a sustainable solution to our energy problems. But they also come with a couple of issues: for one, solar farms are massive, and they have to be set up somewhere that gets a lot of sunlight. Now, if only we had a large mass of unused land that gets guaranteed sunlight everyday… Could we cover an entire desert in solar panels? Would that be enough to power the entire world? What kind of problems could we run into?

88,000 tons of radioactive waste – and nowhere to put it

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The United States produces 2,200 tons of nuclear waste each year…and no one knows what to do with it. The federal government has long promised, but never delivered, a safe place for nuclear power plants to store their spent fuel. This means that radioactive waste is piling up all over the country. We visited one of the worst places where the waste is stuck: a beachside power plant uncomfortably close to both San Diego and Los Angeles. And we asked the people in charge of the waste there: what happens now?

Flying towards a mysterious weather phenomenon

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Atmospheric rivers are important but poorly understood weather phenomena that supply the West Coast with up to 50% of its annual precipitation. In an effort to understand them better, scientists have partnered with the Air Force to fly directly into these weather systems and study them. Verge Science collaborated with CalMatters to hitch a ride on a recent flight. It didn’t go as planned.

Why Do Scientists Create New Apples?

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The Cosmic Crisp apple hit produce aisles across America on December 1, 2019. The variety came out of Washington State University's breeding program, which has been developing the apple for the past 20 years. There are thousands of different kinds of apples on the market, and 2,500 of those are grown in the United States, like the Granny Smith, Fuji, Honeycrisp, and America's favorite, the Gala, which just beat out the Red Delicious variety for the first time ever in production, according to the U.S. Apple Association. And yet, scientists are still developing new varieties. But it's not just breeding programs making hybrids of the fruits and vegetables nearly everyone is familiar with.There's also scientists across the globe working on creating new varieties, whether it be apples or berries, mushrooms, or even crops like rice and wheat. This innovation isn't just the controversial GMO kind. In fact, crops have been cross bred to produce new varieties for hundreds of years. Here’s how how horticulturists and scientists create new varieties of fruits and vegetables, and why there's space in the produce aisle for innovation.

Are indoor vertical farms the future of agriculture? | Stuart Oda

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By 2050, the global population is projected to reach 9.8 billion. How are we going to feed everyone? Investment-banker-turned-farmer Stuart Oda points to indoor vertical farming: growing food on tiered racks in a controlled, climate-proof environment. In a forward-looking talk, he explains how this method can maintain better safety standards, save money, use less water and help us provide for future generations.