Author: Sam Allcock

More than ten years have passed since Mark Post watched a food critic chew the priciest hamburger ever served in a London studio with lights shining and cameras rolling. In many parts of Europe, the patty was more expensive than a small apartment. Honest but courteous, the critic said it needed salt. That was in 2013. Now that I’m watching the video, it has an odd innocence to it, the kind of optimism you only experience before reality starts billing you. Back then, the promise was clear and almost cinematic. meat that hasn’t been killed. protein devoid of pasture. A…

Between the slow grind of America’s addiction crisis and the emergence of weight-loss culture, an unexpected tale has been developing inside medical offices. Patients came in for diabetes treatment or to lose weight, and when they left, they described something strange. Dinner wine no longer tasted like a treat. After lunch, the cigarette lost its appeal. Some were only able to say that the desire had subsided. In the field of addiction research, that silence is now the loudest signal. Epidemiologist Ziyad Al-Aly of WashU Medicine began to wonder if anecdotes were turning into evidence after he began to hear…

Nuclear fusion has been the joke of clean energy for decades. It was always thirty years away, always on the verge, and always consumed more electricity than it generated. The MIT reactor that is altering that pattern doesn’t resemble the fusion machine that Hollywood envisions. Surrounded by parking lots and the kind of unglamorous logistics that characterize true science, it is housed in a low industrial building outside of Boston. However, as I watch this play out, I get the impression that something truly unique is taking place. A magnet is the key to the breakthrough. Not a metaphor, but…

On a clear morning, stroll along the cliffs close to Hastings. The sea appears incredibly serene, almost staged. It has a picture-perfect appearance that makes you forget what’s going on a few miles away. However, there has been something much less attractive going on for years beneath that serene exterior. Large nets—some of which are wider than a Premier League field—continue to be hauled over areas of the ocean floor that the British government maintains are protected. One thing can be inferred from the map. Another is said by the water. After a minute of contemplation, the figures are truly…

These days, you can walk along practically any coastline and notice subtle changes until they become noticeable. A fishing vessel returned to port ahead of schedule. A thinner market stall than it was the previous summer. A reef that is devoid of color and resembles bleached bone rather than living architecture. For decades, the ocean has been silently bearing the consequences of our climate choices, and there is a growing sense that the bill is finally coming. The World Meteorological Organization’s most recent State of the Global Climate report clarified the dynamic in a way that the general public hasn’t…

On a clear morning, you will see Schipkau almost before you realize it. A partially completed lattice mast ascending into a sky that, until recently, was primarily occupied by slow-moving freight trains and coal dust. From the road, the crane next to it appears enormous, but it is somehow too small for what is being constructed. The scale has a subtly hopeful quality as well as a hint of absurdity. It has been a long time coming, but this is Brandenburg’s wind moment. Lignite mining, a type of industry that simultaneously shapes towns, accents, and family histories, was once what…

The swamps in the center of Central Africa were long regarded as a sort of geological savings account. Carbon entered and remained there. The material became older the deeper you dug into the Cuvette Centrale’s peat, and it was assumed that anything that had been buried there for three millennia would respectfully stay buried. Now, that assumption is beginning to seem dubious. Two sizable lakes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mai Ndombe and Tumba, may be releasing truly ancient carbon, according to research recently published in Nature Geoscience by a team led by Travis Drake at ETH Zurich.…

The majority of the world is still unaware of a subtly radical development taking place in a region of southern Japan. Residents of Shibushi, a small town in Kagoshima Prefecture, dispose of their dirty diapers in bin bags with names written on the side, just as other towns might handle cardboard or glass bottles. It appears unremarkable. It isn’t. What transpires following collection could ultimately change how the world views one of its most enduring waste issues. Diapers don’t break down. They also don’t act like regular trash, as anyone who has stood close to a household bin on a…

On a warm January afternoon, traveling south from San Angelo, the road winds through a section of rocky pasture where only the shadows move more quickly than the cattle. Wind turbines are responsible for those shadows; they are tall, white, and appear almost too tidy for the surrounding dust. Most days, Duff Hallman observes them from his backyard. He claims that they slow his pace at 74, which is noteworthy for a man who continues to work fifteen-hour days on a ranch that has been owned by his family for four generations. The easy part was supposed to be the…

Somewhere in the open Atlantic, the water starts to move at dusk. No one has ever accurately counted the number of tiny creatures that emerge from the darkness below. Lanternfish, zooplankton, and krill. They feed on phytoplankton in the thin layer of water that is still exposed to light as they follow the setting sun upward. They sink once more by morning. It has been occurring for millions of years on every ocean, every night. However, there seems to be a problem with that nightly migration these days. Tim Smyth, a marine scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, had no intention…