The Key to California’s Survival Is Hidden Underground

PLUS: It's Getting Too Hot to Make Snow, and more.

View this email in your browser  |  Manage newsletter preferences 01.18.23 Your weekly roundup of the best stories on health care, the climate crisis, genetic engineering, robotics, space, and more. For all our science coverage, visit WIRED Science.   The Key to California's Survival Is Hidden Underground CLIMATE SOLUTIONS | 4-MINUTE READ  The state is ping-ponging between severe drought and catastrophic flooding. The solution to both? Making the landscape spongier. By Matt Simon   It's Getting Too Hot to Make Snow MELTING POINT | 4-MINUTE READ  Some ski resorts rely on machines to keep powder on the slopes. But snow guns guzzle water, are energy-intensive, and need cool temperatures to operate. By Chris Baraniuk   What You Need to Know About the Kraken Covid Variant COUGH | 4-MINUTE READ  XBB.1.5, aka the Kraken, is sweeping the Northeast US and dodging immunity. But that doesn't mean it's time to panic. By Amanda Hoover   A Teenager Solved a Stubborn Prime Number 'Look-Alike' Riddle NUMBER THEORY | 7-MINUTE READ  In his senior year of high school, Daniel Larsen proved a key theorem about Carmichael numbers—strange entities that mimic the primes. By Jordana Cepelewicz   This Seriously Hipster Bean Is Coffee's Best Hope for Survival BEAN THERE | 5-MINUTE READ  Climate change is straining the world's two favorite coffee species. Could a resilient 19th-century alternative solve the brew's existential crisis? By Matt Reynolds More from WIRED Science The US Just Greenlit High-Tech Alternatives to Animal Testing Lasers Are Mapping Scotland's Mysterious Iron Age Passages When Did the Anthropocene Actually Begin? How Airports Catch Illicit Radioactive Cargo The Tonga Eruption Is Still Revealing New Volcanic Dangers Trending on WIRED THE LAST COWBOYS | 28-MINUTE READ Life as a 21st-Century Trucker By Andrew Kay Technology, corporate greed, and supply-chain chaos are transforming life behind the wheel of a big rig. I went on the road to find exactly how. GET WIRED Get WIRED for just $29.99 $5. Includes unlimited access to wired.com plus free stickers! Subscribe now. Have questions or comments? Reply to this email.   This email was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our email address, wired@newsletters.wired.com, to your address book.   View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe or Manage your newsletter subscriptions   Copyright © Condé Nast 2023. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.