Verge Science (2018 - 2018)

NASA’s InSight spacecraft just launched to Mars. Equipped with cutting-edge instruments to study Mars’ crust, mantle, and core, InSight will provide a never-before-seen look at the red planet’s inner workings. The Verge’s Loren Grush visited Vandenberg Air Force Base for the launch, which marks the beginning of InSight’s six-month journey to Mars.

That big “E” at the top of your doctor’s eye chart tells you whether you need glasses - but it also tells you a lot about the physics happening inside your eyes. We put human visual acuity to the test - in our office, and across a city.

Do you know what your blood type is? It’s a pretty basic health question with a pretty bizarre history. We take a look at some ill-fated blood experiments from yesteryear, and try to figure out why it is that all blood isn’t alike. And, our intrepid video director Cory Zapatka takes the question into his own hands with a blood typing kit and a needle...

You’ve probably heard for years that bees are in dire straights. Which is true…but it’s probably not the bees you’re thinking of. We talk to a bee researcher about what’s really at stake for bees, global agriculture, and all the almonds you’ve ever eaten.

The “memory palace” is a famous technique that makes incredible feats of memory possible (the world record for “number of digits of Pi memorized” is a whopping 70,000). And yet, most of us struggle to remember a new phone number. We perform some simple tests on ourselves to make better use of our frustratingly limited recall.

Cheese is delicious, beloved by many, and a teeming mess of microbes. Which microbes, exactly, has long been a mystery, but modern DNA sequencing tech is allowing researchers to take a peek behind the microscopic curtain. We visit a professional cheese cave, test (and taste) some cheddar, and wait a year for microbial magic to happen.

Ferrofluid is a bizarre, NASA-engineered material that was created for spaceships but never used. In this “lab practical” video, we’ll put ferrofluid through its paces, and explore some of the even stranger places it may yet be useful.

The election of Donald Trump has spurred an unprecedented number of scientists to enter politics for the first time. More than 60 candidates with science backgrounds are running Congress in 2018, and if they win, they’ll challenge a longstanding taboo against science in partisan politics. We follow Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist, as she seeks the Democratic nomination in a pivotal California district.

With the rise of tiny satellites, or cubesats, there’s a growing need for smaller rockets that can take miniature satellites into space. One rocket startup, Launcher, is joining the revolution with just four employees in a quiet corner of Long Island. They’re building an all-new rocket engine, and if it passes its test fires, it’ll pave the way for Launcher’s first rocket flights. We visited Launcher HQ to witness one of those pivotal tests.

E-waste is more than phones and laptops. There’s gold, silver, copper, and lots of other precious metals powering your electronics, and that makes for some valuable “e-waste”. And a recent study proposed that it’s now more cost-effective to dig minerals out of old electronics than out of the Earth. We crack open some old tech to see where these metals are hiding, and find out just how hard it is to reclaim them safely. Clarification: in citing India, China, and South Africa as suffering from growing e-waste problems, we didn’t mention that those countries are also producing record amounts of their own e-waste, in addition to anything being imported from other countries. E-waste from all sources is on the rise, forcing governments to figure out how to deal with it safely and efficiently.

Graphene is a form of carbon that could bring us bulletproof armor and space elevators, improve medicine, and make the internet run faster — some day. For the past 15 years, consumers have been hearing about this wonder material and all the ways it could change everything. Is it really almost here, or is it another promise that is perpetually just one more breakthrough away?

In the Western United States, “fire season” isn’t seasonal anymore — it’s year-round. Because more and more, wildfires are a thoroughly man-made disaster and are technically a misnomer. Here, we take a car and drone tour through some of the most fire-prone parts of California, and see firsthand the causes and effects of “fire season” that just keep getting worse and worse.

Sandy hit New York City almost six years ago and the city is still recovering. As storms grow even more frequent and severe, cities around the world are struggling to prepare themselves for the worst. We took a behind-the-scenes look at New York’s subway system to see all the disaster-grade gear the city is installing to help its people ride out the next “superstorm.”

Silicon Valley is home to tech giants, venture capital…and a years-long battle between an invasive species, a tiny bird, and a bunch of scientists trying to decide what counts as “nature.” We put on the biggest boots we could find and headed out to the strange salt flats of the San Francisco bay to check it out.

We talked to the co-founder of Tesla, JB Straubel, about why giant batteries are crucial to the future of power grids everywhere. Batteries are becoming more useful at powering bigger things like bikes, cars, and soon, entire cities. We explore some of the zanier forms of energy storage already in use around the country.

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?