Tag: california

California Is a Nobel Powerhouse

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You can keep your Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, and Tonys. Take your Pulitzers, Bookers, and Peabodys, too. Even the Pritzker and the Fields Medal don’t quite measure up. For me, nothing competes with the Nobel Prize as a symbol that someone has truly changed the world.

I’m not a scientist, but my mind lives in that space. Science, more than anything else, runs the world and reshapes it. This newsletter was born out of my fascination with how things work and the quiet mechanics behind the visible world and my love for all that California has to offer in the way of innovation and natural beauty. I love standing in front of something familiar and asking: why? how? what exactly is going on here? And nothing satisfies that intense curiosity more than science.

That said, I’ve never loved the word science. It feels cold and sometimes intimidating, as if it applies to people in lab coats and not to everyone else. I kinda wish there were a better word for that spirit of discovery that lives in all of us. Maybe it’s wonder. Maybe curiosity. I dunno. “Science” turns people off sometimes, unfortunately.

Whatever you call it, the Nobel Prize represents the highest acknowledgment of that pursuit. It is the world’s way of saying: this mattered. This changed something. And there are few places (if any) on Earth that can rival California when it comes to the number of people who have earned that honor.

This year, 2025, was no different. Three of the Nobel Prizes announced this week carried California fingerprints, adding to a tradition that stretches back more than a century.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine came first. It went to Mary Brunkow, Shimon Sakaguchi, and Fred Ramsdell, the last of whom studied at UCLA and UC San Diego. (In epic California fashion, Ramsdell, who studied at UCLA and UC San Diego, didn’t even learn he’d become a Nobel laureate until after returning from a trip deep into the Wyoming wilderness, where he’d been out of contact with the outside world. What’s more Californian than that?) Their research on regulatory T cells explained how the immune system knows when to attack and when to stand down. Ramsdell’s discovery of a key gene that controls these cells has transformed how scientists think about autoimmune disease and organ transplantation.

Next came the Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to John Clarke of UC Berkeley, Michel H. Devoret of UC Santa Barbara and Yale, and John M. Martinis of UC Santa Barbara (big shout out to UCSB!). Their award honored pioneering work that revealed how the strange laws of quantum mechanics can be seen in circuits large enough to hold in your hand. Beginning in Clarke’s Berkeley lab in the 1980s, the trio built superconducting loops that behaved like subatomic particles, “tunneling” and flipping between quantum energy states. Those experiments helped create the foundation for today’s quantum computers.

The Chemistry Prize followed a day later, shared by Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi of UC Berkeley for discoveries in metal–organic frameworks, or MOFs. These are crystalline materials so porous that a single gram can hold an entire roomful of gas (mind blown). MOFs are now used to capture carbon dioxide, filter water, and even pull drinking water from desert air. Yaghi’s Berkeley lab coined the term “reticular chemistry” to describe this new molecular architecture. His work has become one of California’s most important contributions to the climate sciences.

California Institute of Technology (Photo: Erik Olsen)

Those three announcements in as many days lit up California’s scientific community, has garnered many headlines and carried on a tradition that has made the state one of the world’s most reliable engines of Nobel-level discovery.

The University of California system now counts 74 Nobel Prizes among its faculty and researchers. 23 in physics and 16 in chemistry. Berkeley leads the list, with 26 laureates, followed by UC San Diego, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and UC San Francisco. Even smaller campuses, such as UC Riverside, have ties to winners like Barry Barish, who shared the 2017 Nobel in Physics for detecting gravitational waves.

Linus Pauling with an inset of his Nobel Prize in 1955 (Wikipedia – public domain)

Caltech, which I have written about extensively and is quite close to my own home, counts 47 Nobel laureates (faculty, alumni, or postdocs). Its history is the stuff of legend. In 1923, Robert Millikan won for measuring the charge of the electron. In 1954, Linus Pauling received the Chemistry Prize for explaining the nature of the chemical bond. He later won the Peace Prize for his anti-nuclear activism, making him the only person to win two unshared Nobels.

Stanford University sits not far behind, with 36 Nobel winners in its history and about 20 currently active in its community. From the development of transistors and lasers to modern work in medicine and economics, Stanford’s laureates have changed the modern world in ways that is impossible to quantify, but profound in their impact.

These numbers tell a clear story: since the mid-twentieth century, about one in every four Nobel Prizes in the sciences awarded to Americans has gone to researchers based at California institutions, an extraordinary concentration of curiosity, intellect, and ambition within a single state.

University of California Santa Barbara (Photo: Erik Olsen)

California’s Nobel dominance began early. In the 1930s, UC Berkeley’s Ernest Lawrence invented the cyclotron, a device that would transform physics and eventually medicine. Caltech, meanwhile, became a magnet for the world’s brightest physicists and chemists.

Over the decades, California’s universities turned their focus to molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics. In the 1980s, the state’s physicists and engineers drove advances in lasers, semiconductors, and now, quantum circuits. And as biotechnology rose, San Diego and the Bay Area became ground zero for breakthroughs in medicine and life sciences. One of the great moments in genetics took place in Asilomar on the coast. 

Nobel Museum in Stockholm, Sweden (Photo: Erik Olsen)

This is all about more than geography and climate (although those are a big sell, for sure). California’s research institutions kick ass because they operate as ecosystems rather than islands. Berkeley physicists collaborate with engineers at Stanford. Caltech chemists trade ideas with biotech firms in San Diego. Graduate students drift between labs, startups, and national research centers like Lawrence Livermore and JPL. The boundaries between university and industry blur, with campuses like Stanford turning breakthrough discoveries into thriving commercial ventures (look how many of our big tech brains came out of Stanford). In California, research doesn’t end in the lab, it often turns into companies, technologies, and treatments that generate both knowledge and enormous economic value. Just look at AI today. 

Check out our Etsy store for cool California wildlife swag.

I think the secret is cultural. Over the years, I’ve lived on the East coast for almost two decades, and abroad for several as well, and nothing compares to the California vibe. California has never been afraid of big risks. Its scientists are encouraged to chase questions that might take decades to answer (see our recent story on just this idea). There’s an openness to uncertainty here that works well in the natural sciences, but can also be found in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and, of course, space exploration. 

When next year’s round of early morning calls comes from Stockholm, it is a good bet that someone in California will pick up. Maybe a physicist in Pasadena, a chemist in Berkeley, or a physician in La Jolla. Maybe they’ll pick up the phone in bed, maybe a text from a spouse while camping, or on a morning jog. That’s when a Swedish-accented voice tells them that the world has just caught up to what they’ve been quietly building for years.

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Corals Revealed as Never Before Through a Groundbreaking New Microscope in California

A fluorescence image of a polyp from the coral Stylophora pistillata (side view) taken with the BUMP. (Credit: Or Ben-Zvi)

(We did a video about this story as well. We hope you watch! )

The story of corals in the modern age on this planet is one of near-total despair. I’ve done several stories on corals and have spent many hours diving reefs around the world, from the Mesoamerican Reef in Belize to the unbelievably robust and dazzling reefs in Indonesia. There are still some incredible places where corals survive, but they are becoming fewer and farther between. I don’t want to get too deep into all the statistics, but suffice it to say: scientists estimate that we have already lost about half of the world’s corals since the 1950s, and that number could rise to as much as 90 percent by 2050 if current rates of bleaching and die-offs continue.

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What’s crazy is that we still don’t completely understand corals, or exactly why they are dying. We know that corals are symbionts with microscopic algae called zooxanthellae (pronounced zo-zan-THEL-ee). The corals provide cover, a place to live, and nutrients for the algae. In return, the algae provide sugars and oxygen through photosynthesis, fueling coral growth and reef-building. But when the planet warms, or when waters become too acidic, the relationship often collapses. The algae either die or flee the coral. Without that steady food source—what one scientist I interviewed for this story called “a candy store”—corals turn ghostly white in a process known as bleaching. If stressful conditions persist, they starve and die. 

But why? 

Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla (Photo: Erik Olsen)

“We still have no idea, physiologically, in the types of environments where bleaching predominates, whether the animal is throwing them out because it’s going to try to survive, or whether the little tiny plants say to the animal, ‘look, we can’t get along in this environment, so we got to go somewhere else’” says Dr. Jules Jaffe, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, California, and the head of the Jaffe Laboratory for Underwater Imaging. 

The Great Barrier Reef, once Earth’s largest living structure, has suffered five mass bleaching events since 1998, and vast stretches have become little more than graveyards of coral skeletons. The scale of this ecological disaster is almost unimaginable. And so scientists around the world are in a race to figure out what’s happening and how to at least try to slow down the bleaching events sweeping through nearly every major reef system.

An image of Montipora coral polyps taken with the BUMP. Each polyp has a mouth and a set of tentacles and the red dots are individual microalgae residing inside the coral tissue. (Photo: Or Ben-Zvi)

One place where scientists are making small strides is at the Jaffe Lab, which I visited with my colleague Tod Mesirow and where researchers like Dr. Jaffe and Dr. Or Ben-Zvi have developed a new kind of underwater microscope that allows them to get close enough to corals to actually see the algae in action. 

This is no small feat. Zooxanthellae are only about 5–10 microns across, about one-tenth the width of a human hair, and invisible to the naked eye. With the new microscope and camera system, though, they can be seen in astonishing detail. The lab has captured unprecedented behavior, including corals fighting with each other for space, fusing together, and even responding to invading algae.

When I first reported on this imaging system years ago, it was still in its early stages. At the time, it was known as the BUM for Benthic Underwater Microscope. Since then, the Scripps team has added a powerful new capability: a pulsing blue light that lets them measure photosynthesis in real time. They call it pulse amplitude modulated light or PAM, and so now the system is known as the BUMP. 

A field deployment of the BUMP in the Red Sea, where local corals were imaged and measured.  (Photo: Or Ben-Zvi)

Here’s how it works: blue excitation light stimulates the algae’s chlorophyll, which then re-emits some of that energy as red fluorescence. By tracking how much of this red fluorescence is produced, researchers can calculate indices of photochemical efficiency, essentially how well the algae are converting light into energy for photosynthesis. This doesn’t give a direct count of sugars or photons consumed, but it does provide a reliable window into the health and productivity of the algae, and by extension, the coral itself.

What’s crucial is that all of this imaging takes place in situ—right in the ocean, on living reefs—rather than in the artificial setting of an aquarium or laboratory.

Dr. Or Ben-Zvi, doctoral scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (Photo: Erik Olsen)

New tools are essential if we’re going to solve many of our biggest problems, and it’s at places like Scripps in California where scientists are hard at work creating instruments that help us see the world in entirely new ways. “There’s so much to learn about the ocean and its ecosystems, and my own key to understanding them is really the development of new instrumentation,” says Jaffe.

Dr. Ben-Zvi gave us a demonstration of how the system works in an aquarium holding several species of corals, including Stylophora, a common collector’s coral. She showed us the remarkable capabilities of the camera-microscope, which illuminated and brought into crisp focus the tiny coral polyps along with their algal partners. On the screen we watched them in real time, tentacles waving as they absorbed the flashes of light from the BUMP, appearing, almost, as if they were dancing happily.

The Benthic Underwater Microscope PAM (BUMP) in action in the lab at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.
(Photo: Erik Olsen)

What this new tool allows scientists to do is determine whether corals may be under stress from factors like warming seas, pollution, or disease. Ideally, these warning signs are detected before the corals expel their zooxanthellae and bleach. Researchers are also learning far more about the everyday behavior of corals: something rarely studied in situ, directly in the ocean. 

That in-their-native-environment aspect of the work is crucial, because corals often behave very differently in aquariums than they do on wild reefs. That’s where this microscope promises to be a powerful tool: offering insights into how corals really live, fight, and respond to stress.

The view of La Jolla from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (Photo: Erik Olsen)

Of course, what we do once we document a reef under stress is another matter. Dr. Ben-Zvi suggests there may be possibilities for remediation, though she admits it’s difficult to know exactly what those are. Perhaps reducing pollution, limiting fishing, or cutting ship traffic in vulnerable areas could help. But given that we seem unable—or unwilling—to stop the warming of the seas, these measures can feel like stopgaps rather than solutions. Still, knowledge is the foundation for any action, and this new tool is a breakthrough for coral imaging. If deployed widely, it could generate an invaluable dataset for researchers around the globe. The scientists behind it even hope to build multiple systems, perhaps commercializing them, to vastly expand the reach of this kind of monitoring.

But even Jaffe concedes it may already be too late: “Could a world exist without corals? Yeah, I think so,” he said. “It would be sad, but it’s going that way.”

All the same, the images the tool produces are breathtaking, and at the very least, they might jolt people into realizing that this is a crisis worth trying to solve. If we can’t, then future generations will be left only with these hauntingly beautiful images to remember the diverse and gorgeous animals that once flourished along the edges of the sea. 

A healthy coral reef in Indonesia (Photo: Erik Olsen)

Is that valuable? Yes, but not nearly as valuable as saving the living reefs themselves. Dr. Jaffe told us,

“I’m on a mission to help people feel empathy toward the creatures of the sea. At the same time, we need to learn just how beautiful they are. For me, the combination of beauty and science has been at the heart of my life’s work.”

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His words capture the spirit of this research. The underwater microscope isn’t just a scientific instrument. It’s a lens into a hidden world, one that may inspire people to care enough to act before it’s gone. Too bad the clock is ticking so fast.

(We did a video about this story as well. We hope you watch! )

The Unsung California Labs That Powered the Digital Revolution

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory working with the Big Aperture Thulium (BAT) laser system, part of the laser and plasma research that laid the groundwork for generating the extreme ultraviolet light at the heart of today’s most advanced chipmaking machines. (Photo: Jason Laurea/LLNL)
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When I started this Website, my hope was to share California’s astonishing range of landscapes, laboratories, and ideas. This state is overflowing with scientific discovery and natural marvels, and I want readers to understand, and enjoy, how unusually fertile this state is for discovery. If you’re not curious about the world, then this Website is definitely not for you. If you are, then I hope you get something out of it when you step outside and look around. 

I spend a lot of time in the California mountains and at sea, and I am endlessly amazed by the natural world at our doorstep. I am also fascinated by California’s industrial past, the way mining, oil, and agriculture built its wealth, and how it later became a cradle for the technologies and industries now driving human society forward. Of course, some people see technologies like gene editing and AI as existential risks. I’m an optimist. I see tools that, while potentially dangerous, used wisely, expand what is possible.

An aerial view of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1960, when the Cold War spurred rapid expansion of America’s nuclear and scientific research campus east of San Francisco Bay. (Photo: LLNL Public Domain)

Today’s story turns toward technology, and one breakthrough in particular that has reshaped the modern world. It is not just in the phone in your pocket, but in the computers that train artificial intelligence, in advanced manufacturing, and in the systems that keep the entire digital economy running. The technology is extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV). And one of the most important points I want to leave you with is that the origins of EUV are not found in Silicon Valley startups or corporate boardrooms but in California’s national laboratories, where government-funded science made the impossible possible.

This article is not a political argument, though it comes at a time when government funding is often questioned or dismissed. My purpose is to underscore how much California’s national labs have accomplished and to affirm their value.

This story begins in the late 1980s and 1990s, when it became clear that if Moore’s Law was going to hold, chipmakers would need shorter and shorter wavelengths of light to keep shrinking transistors. Extreme ultraviolet light, or EUV, sits way beyond the visible spectrum, at a wavelength far shorter than ordinary ultraviolet lamps. That short wavelength makes it possible to draw patterns on silicon at the tiniest scales…and I mean REALLY tiny.

Ernest Orlando Lawrence at the controls of the 37-inch cyclotron in 1938. A Nobel Prize–winning physicist and co-founder of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence’s legacy in nuclear science and high-energy research paved the way for the laboratory’s later breakthroughs in lasers and plasma physics — work that ultimately fed into the extreme ultraviolet light sources now powering the world’s most advanced chipmaking machines. (LLNL Public Domain)

At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, researchers with expertise in lasers and plasmas were tasked with figuring out how to generate a powerful, reliable source of extreme ultraviolet light for chipmaking. Their solution was to fire high-energy laser pulses at microscopic droplets of tin, creating a superheated plasma that emits at just the right (tiny) wavelength for etching circuits onto silicon.

The movement of light on mirrors in an ASML EUV lithography machine. More on it below.

Generating the light was only the first step. To turn it into a working lithography system required other national labs to solve equally daunting problems. Scientists at Berkeley’s Center for X Ray Optics developed multilayer mirrors that could reflect the right slice of light with surprising efficiency. A branch of Sandia National Laboratories located in Livermore, California, worked on the pieces that translate light into patterns. So, in all: Livermore built and tested exposure systems, Berkeley measured and perfected optics and materials, and Sandia helped prove that the whole chain could run as a single machine.

Each EUV lithography machine is about the size of a bus, costs more than $150 million, and shipping one requires 40 freight containers, three cargo planes, and 20 trucks. (Photo: ASML)

It matters that this happened in public laboratories. The labs had the patient funding and the unusual mix of skills to attempt something that might not pay off for many years. The Department of Energy supported the facilities and the people. DARPA helped connect the labs with industry partners and kept the effort moving when it was still risky. There was no guarantee that the plasma would be bright enough, that the mirrors would reflect cleanly, or that the resists (the light-sensitive materials coated onto silicon wafers) would behave. The national labs could take that on because they are designed to tackle long horizon problems that industry would otherwise avoid.

Only later did private industry scale the laboratory breakthroughs into the giant tools that now anchor modern chip factories. The Dutch company ASML became the central player, building the scanners that move wafers with incredible precision under the fragile EUV light. Those systems are now capable of etching transistor features as small as 5 nanometers…5 billionths of a meter. You really can’t even use the “smaller than a human hair” comparison here since human hair variation is so large at this scale as to render that comparison kind of useless. However, many people still do.

The ASML machines are marvels of tech and engineering. Truly amazing feats human design. And they integrate subsystems from all over the world: Zeiss in Germany manufactures the mirrors, polished to near-atomic perfection, while San Diego’s Cymer (now part of ASML) supplies the laser-driven plasma light sources. The technology is so complex that a single scanner involves hundreds of thousands of components and takes months to assemble.

ASML’s EXE:5000 High-NA EUV lithography machine — a room-sized tool that etches the tiniest features on the world’s most advanced computer chips. (ASML)

It was TSMC and Samsung that then poured billions of dollars into making these tools reliable at scale, building the factories that now turn EUV light into the chips powering AI and smartphones and countless other devices. Trillions of dollars are at stake. Some say the fate of humanity lies in balance should Artificial General Intelligence eventually emerge (again, I don’t say that, but some do). All of this grew from the ingenuity and perseverance, along with the public funding, that sustained these California labs.

It’s disappointing that many of the companies profiting most from these technological breakthroughs are not based in the United States, even though the core science was proven here in California. That is fodder for a much longer essay, and perhaps even for a broader conversation about national industrial policy, something the CHIPS Act is only beginning to deal with.

However, if you look closely at the architecture of those monster machines, you can still see the fingerprints of the California work. A tin plasma for the light. Vacuum chambers that keep the beam alive. Reflective optics that never existed at this level before EUV research made them possible.

A photorealistic rendering of an advanced microprocessor, etched in silicon with extreme ultraviolet light — the kind of breakthrough technology pioneered in U.S. national labs, but now fabricated almost entirely in Taiwan, where the future of digital society is being made.

We often celebrate garages, founders, and the venture playbook. Those are real parts of the California story. This is a different part, just as important. The laboratories in Livermore, Berkeley, and Sandia are public assets. They exist because voters and policymakers chose to fund places where hard problems can be worked on for as long as it takes. The payoff can feel distant at first, then suddenly it is in your pocket. Like EUV. Years of quiet experiments on lasers, mirrors, and materials became the hidden machinery of the digital age.

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A Tiny California Seaweed Could Make a Big Dent in Livestock Methane

Flasks of Asparagopsis taxiformis growing at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Researchers are studying this red seaweed for its potential to slash methane emissions from cattle when added in small amounts to their feed. (Photo: Erik Olsen)
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Inside a long, brightly lit basement lab at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, a large aquarium filled with live corals sits against the wall, the vibrant shapes and colors of the coral standing out against the otherwise plain white surroundings. Nearby, in a side alcove, dozens of glass flasks bubble with aerated water, each holding tiny crimson clusters of seaweed swirling in suspension, resembling miniature lava lamps. These fragile red fragments, born in California and raised under tightly controlled conditions, are part of a global effort to harness seaweed to fight climate change.

Cattle and other ruminant livestock are among the largest contributors to methane emissions worldwide, releasing vast amounts of the gas through digestion and eructation. Burps, not farts. The distinction is not especially important, but it matters because critics of climate science often mock the idea of “cow farts” driving climate change. In reality, the methane comes primarily from cow burps, not flatulence.

But I digress. 

Cattle at Harris Ranch in California’s Central Valley, one of the largest beef producers in the United States. Livestock operations like this are a major source of methane emissions, a greenhouse gas more than 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. (Photo: Erik Olsen)

Globally, livestock are responsible for roughly 14 percent of all human-induced greenhouse gases, with methane from cattle making up a significant portion of that total. The beef and dairy industries alone involve more than a billion head of cattle, producing meat and milk that fuel economies but also generating methane on a scale that rivals emissions from major industrial sectors. Because methane is so potent, trapping more than 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, the livestock industry’s footprint has become a central focus for climate scientists searching for solutions. 

Enter Jennifer Smith and her colleagues at the Smith Lab at Scripps in beautiful La Jolla, California. Their team is tackling urgent environmental challenges, from understanding coral die-offs to developing strategies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, among them, the cultivation of seaweed to curb methane from cattle.  

The seaweed species is Asparagopsis taxiformis. Native to tropical and warm temperate seas and found off the coast of California, in fact right here off the coast in San Diego, it produces natural compounds such as bromoform that interfere with the microbes in a cow’s stomach that generate methane gas, significantly reducing the production of methane and, of course, it’s exhalation by the animals we eat. It turns out the seaweed, when added to animal feed can be very effective:  

Asparagopsis taxiformis, commonly known as red sea plume, a tropical red algae being studied for its ability to cut methane emissions from cattle. (Photo: Wikipedia)

“You need to feed the cows only less than 1% of their diet with this red algae and it can reduce up to 99% of their methane emissions,” said Dr. Or Ben Zvi, an Israeli postdoctoral researcher at Scripps who studies both corals and seaweeds.

Trials in Australia, California, and other regions have shown just how potent this seaweed can be. As Dr. Ben Zvi indicated, even at tiny doses, fractions of a percent of a cow’s feed, other studies have shown that it can reduce methane by 30 to 90 percent, depending on conditions and preparation. Such results suggest enormous potential, but only if enough of the seaweed can be produced consistently and sustainably.

“At the moment it is quite labor intensive,” says Ben Zvi. “We’re developing workflows to create a more streamlined and cost-effective industry.”

Which explains to bubbling flasks around me now. 

Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego (Photo: Erik Olsen)

The Smith lab here at Scripps studies every stage of the process, from identifying which strains of Asparagopsis thrive locally to testing how temperature, light, and carbon dioxide affect growth and bromoform content. Dr. Ben Zvi is focused on the life cycle and photosynthesis of the species, refining culture techniques that could make large-scale cultivation possible. At Scripps, environmental physiology experiments show that local strains grow best at 22 to 26 °C and respond well to elevated CO₂, information that could guide commercial farming in Southern California.

The challenges, however, are considerable. Wild harvesting cannot meet demand, and cultivating seaweed at scale requires reliable methods, stable yields, and affordable costs. Bromoform content varies widely depending on strain and growing conditions, so consistency remains an issue. Some trials have noted side effects such as reduced feed intake or excess mineral uptake, and long-term safety must be established since we’re talking about animals that we breed and raise to eat.

“It’s still a very young area, and we’re working on the legislation of it,” says Ben Zvi. “We need to make it legal to feed to a cow that eventually we either drink their milk or eat their meat. We need for it to be safe for human consumption.” 

Dr. Or Ben Zvi (Photo: Erik Olsen)

And, of course, large-scale aquaculture raises ecological questions, from nutrient demands and pollution to the fate of volatile compounds like bromoform.

To overcome these obstacles, collaborations are underway. UC San Diego and UC Davis have launched a pilot project under the UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative to test production methods and carbon benefits. In 2024, CH4 Global, a U.S.-based company with operations in New Zealand and Australia that develops seaweed feed supplements to cut livestock methane, partnered with Scripps to design cultivation systems that are efficient, inexpensive, and scalable. Within the Smith Lab, researchers are continuing to probe the biology of Asparagopsis, mapping its genetics, fine-tuning its culture, and testing ways to maximize both growth and methane-suppressing compounds.

At a time when university-based science faces immense pressures, the Smith Lab at Scripps provides a glimpse of research that is making a real impact. The coral tanks against the wall belong to another project at the lab, and we have another story coming soon about the research that readers will find very interesting, but the bubbling flasks in the alcove reveal how breakthroughs often start with small details. In this case, the discovery that a chemical in a widely available seaweed could have such a dramatic, and apparently harmless, effect on the methane that animals make in their guts. These modest but powerful steps are shaping solutions to global challenges, and California, with its wealth of scientific talent and institutions, remains at the forefront. It is one of many other stories we want to share, from inside the labs to the wide open spaces of the state’s natural landscapes. 

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Riding Wave Energy in Los Angeles

Turning the steady motion of the Pacific into clean electricity, Eco Wave Power’s pilot at the Port of Los Angeles tests whether wave energy can become a real piece of California’s renewable future.

Eco-Wave’s Wave Energy Station at the Port of Los Angeles (Photo: Erik Olsen)
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Earlier this week at the Port of Los Angeles, I stood with my colleague Tod Mesirow as a blue ribbon was cut and seven steel floaters dipped into the tide at AltaSea Marine Center in San Pedro. It was a milestone moment: the first onshore wave-energy project in the United States.

Wave energy is the process of converting the up-and-down motion of ocean waves into electricity. Engineers have been experimenting with the idea for decades, with pilot projects around the world, but very little major success. While no country has yet deployed wave power at large scale, efforts like this onshore wave-energy project in the United States aim to prove it can become a reliable part of the renewable mix.

Hydraulic hoses outside the Eco Wave Power container channel pressurized, eco-friendly fluid from the rising and falling floats. This motion drives pistons that power a generator, turning the steady rhythm of small waves along the Port of Los Angeles into clean electricity ready for the grid. (Photo: Erik Olsen)

Eco Wave Power, the company behind the technology, framed the event as the beginning of a new chapter in renewable energy, one that could eventually bring the restless motion of the sea onto the grid on a meaningful scale. As my instagram feed will attest, big waves contain a lot of power (the algorithm knows I love big wave surfing). But that’s not what this project is about. Instead, it relies on the small, steady waves that are almost always present along the California coast. Each rise and fall pushes eco-friendly hydraulic fluid through a system of pistons and pipes, building pressure that drives a motor connected to a generator. The process transforms the ocean’s rhythm into electricity, which can then be fed into the nearby grid. This approach doesn’t depend on dramatic swells, but on the reliable pulse of the sea.

Inna Braverman, the CEO of Eco-Wave told me that the pilot project’s small capacity is a proof of concept for a much larger series of installations along the California coast. “The installed capacity of this conversion unit is 100 kilowatts,” Braverman says. “The amount of power actually generated depends on the height and the weight period of the waves. So, 100 kilowatt installed capacity is up to 100 households.”

The choice of location is not incidental. The Port of Los Angeles is one of the busiest harbors in the world, lined with piers, breakwaters, and aging industrial structures that provide ideal platforms for attaching wave-energy devices. Unlike offshore wind, which requires building foundations in open water, Eco Wave Power’s design capitalizes on existing waterfront infrastructure, keeping costs lower and operations more accessible. The port also happens to be surrounded by electrical infrastructure, with substations and transmission lines nearby. That means energy generated by the floaters can be quickly sent into the grid, without the long and costly buildouts often required for renewable projects in remote places. And perhaps most importantly, this demonstration is unfolding at the doorstep of greater Los Angeles, a region of nearly 19 million people where clean energy demand is immense. To test wave power here is to bring it directly into the heart of a major population center, where its success or failure will matter on a national scale.

Harnessing the Pacific’s rhythm, Eco Wave Power’s bright blue floats rise and fall along the Port of Los Angeles breakwater, marking the nation’s first onshore wave-energy project and a new experiment in turning ocean motion into clean electricity. (Photo: Erik Olsen)

Congresswoman Nanette Díaz Barragán called the project “history in the making” and tied it to her proposed $1 billion Marine Energy Technologies Acceleration Act, aimed at scaling up wave and tidal systems nationwide. California has already passed Senate Bill 605, directing the creation of a wave-energy roadmap, and local leaders like Port of Los Angeles officials spoke of the technology as a key tool to help the San Pedro Bay port complex reach its zero-emission goal within the next decade.

For Eco Wave Power, this was not just a ribbon cutting but the opening of a U.S. market that has long been cautious about marine renewables. Braverman announced future projects in Taiwan, India, and Portugal, while partners from Africa described feasibility studies in South Africa and Kenya. Taiwan’s pilot at Suao Port could grow to 400 megawatts, while the Port of Ngqura in South Africa is being studied as a showcase for diversifying away from coal.

Inside the power container at the Port of Los Angeles, hydraulic fluid from the rising and falling floats is pressurized to drive a generator, transforming the steady rhythm of the ocean into clean electricity ready to be fed into the grid. (Photo: Erik Olsen)

The optimism is real, but the facts are more sobering. Wave energy has been tested in several places around the globe, often with promising beginnings but mixed long-term outcomes. The Mutriku plant in Spain has generated steady power for more than a decade, but at modest efficiency. Sweden’s Sotenäs project closed after just a few years of operation. The ocean is brutal on hardware: salt, storms, and marine growth wear down even the best-engineered devices. Costs remain high, and grid-scale capacity is far from proven.

Still, the potential is undeniable. The International Energy Agency estimates that global wave and tidal power could, in theory, supply a significant fraction of the world’s electricity needs. Unlike solar or wind, waves are relatively constant, offering a stable, predictable form of renewable generation. That reliability could make wave energy an important complement to other renewables, especially as grids grow more complex and storage remains expensive.

Inna Braverman, founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power, speaks at the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Port of Los Angeles, celebrating the launch of the nation’s first onshore wave-energy project and highlighting the technology’s potential to turn the ocean’s motion into clean, renewable electricity (Photo: Erik Olsen)

But honesty requires saying wave power will not, on its own, solve the climate crisis. It is a piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture. The bulk of clean energy in the near term will continue to come from solar and wind, with geothermal, hydropower, and nuclear filling important roles. If wave energy finds its footing, it will likely be as a regional player, most valuable in countries with long, energetic coastlines and strong political will to diversify.

Watching the floaters rise and fall yesterday, we could sense the tension between ambition and reality. This pilot is small, but it demonstrates a willingness to try something new, to take the step from research tank to open water. Braverman called it “opening the door to a new era of clean energy.” That door may open slowly, and perhaps only partway, but the act of trying matters. The ocean is vast and restless, and if we can learn to work with it, wave energy could one day be one of the many forces nudging us toward a sustainable future.

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The Story of Southern California Sand from Mountains to Surf

Beautiful day at a Southern California beach (Photo: Erik Olsen)
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Southern California’s beaches are a miracle. More than just landscapes, they’re cultural treasures. In movies, ads, and music, the coastline often feels like its own character. To many of us who live here, the coastline is not just a place to swim or sunbathe but a symbol of freedom, fun, and the state’s enduring connection to the Pacific Ocean. 

And let’s face it, the beach would not be the beach without sand. 

Pick up some California wildlife gifts at our Etsy store. Seriously, they’re cool.

I didn’t realize how essential sand is until I read Vince Beiser’s The World in a Grain. It quickly became one of my favorite nonfiction books in recent years … and I read a lot of nonfiction. Think about it: without sand, there would be no roads, no skyscrapers, no glass. That means no windows, no windshields, no microscopes or telescopes. No fiber-optic cables. No computer chips, since silicon, the foundation of modern technology, is essentially refined sand. The list is endless. I get that it’s not all beach sand per se, but that’s a quibble.

However, that’s not what I want to focus on here. What struck me, as I was walking along the beach the other day, was a simpler question: where does all the sand on Southern California’s beaches actually come from?

San Gabriel Mountains (Photo: Erik Olsen)

Well, put yourself for a moment on the beach in Southern California. No shoes. It turns out most of the grains between your toes actually began their journey high in the mountains above LA, on craggy slopes far from the shore. Mostly, we are talking about the San Gabriel Mountains and other peaks in the Transverse Ranges that run east-west across Southern California. The rugged, crumbling peaks are made of granite and other crystalline rocks rich in quartz, feldspar, and mica. Through the relentless process of erosion, wind and rain loosen these minerals, which tumble into streams and rivers, such as the San Gabriel and Santa Ana and are carried out to sea. During storms, torrents of sediment rush downhill toward the coast, and that’s where ocean currents take over.

This region where wave action dominates is called the littoral zone (no, not the literal zone), and it is where sand gets pushed around through a process known as longshore drift. Waves arriving at an angle push sediment along the shore, creating a conveyor belt that can carry grains for miles.

Lifeguard tower in Southern California (Photo: Erik Olsen)

In Southern California, this natural process has been reshaping the shoreline for thousands of years, constantly adding sand to some beaches while stripping it away from others. A lot has changed recently though (I mean “recent” in geologic terms). Humans, as we often do, have f*cked things up a bit, changing the nature of our beaches since the late 1800s. The piece I wrote recently about the Wedge in Newport is a good example. Breakwaters and other “shoreline armoring” built along our coast have altered the movement of sand, sending much of it into deep water where it is lost.

Dams have also cut off a huge portion of sediment that would once have reached the coast, reducing Southern California’s natural sand supply by nearly half. To make up the difference, beach managers spend millions each year dredging sand from offshore deposits or harbor entrances and pumping it onto the shore. We’ve been doing this for nearly a century. Between 1930 and 1993, more than 130 million cubic yards of sand were placed on Southern California beaches, creating wide stretches like Santa Monica and the Silver Strand that are much larger today than they would have been naturally. And if you think this is a temporary thing, forget it. With climate change driving stronger storms and rising seas, the need to keep replenishing sand is only going to grow.

Big Tujunga Dam in Southern California (Photo: Erik Olsen)

For decades, geologists believed that rivers supplied as much as 90 percent of California’s beach sand. That view has shifted. Research from Scripps Institution of Oceanography shows that coastal cliffs also play a huge role on some beaches. Along the stretch from Dana Point to La Jolla, cliff erosion has been shown to contribute about half of the beach-sized sediment, and in some places up to 68 percent. This is especially true in dry years, when rivers deliver less. Still, on a statewide scale, rivers remain the main suppliers of sand. Studies from the California Coastal Sediment Management Workgroup show that, under present conditions, rivers account for about 90 percent of sand reaching Southern California beaches, with bluff erosion contributing roughly 10 percent.

Littoral cells in Southern California (Source: California Coastal Commission)

The sand’s story does not end at the shoreline. California’s coast is divided into littoral cells, essentially self-contained systems with their own sand sources, transport pathways, and sinks. Most sand in Southern California moves north to south, carried by waves arriving from the northwest. Eventually, much of it is lost into submarine canyons like Mugu, Newport, and Redondo, where it drops into deep water and exits the system.

Beach sand can also come from more subtle sources. Shell fragments from marine life, volcanic ash from distant eruptions, and even windblown desert dust can mix into the sediment. Perhaps not surprisingly, in recent decades, scientists have discovered another ingredient in our sand: plastic. Studies at Point Reyes and Golden Gate National Parks found an average of about 140 microplastic particles per kilogram of beach sand, which works out to roughly 50 pieces in a single measuring cup. Even beaches farther south, like Cabrillo, average nearly 40 pieces per kilogram.

Staff collect sand samples at Cabrillo National Monument. Testing revealed that Cabrillo sand had the lowest average concentration of microplastics of all of the West Coast parks studied. Point Reyes and Golden Gate had the highest. (Photo: National Park Service)

Offshore sediment cores show that microplastic deposition has doubled every 15 years since the 1940s, with most fragments being synthetic fibers shed from clothing. These findings show that California’s sand is no longer entirely natural; it now carries the pernicious imprint of modern consumer life, with fragments of plastic woven into its mix of minerals and shells. Interestingly, the concentration of microplastics off the coast of California, where researchers carried out their studies, appears to be lower than in many other parts of the world. “If they were doing the same thing in the Yellow Sea in China, right outside some of the big rivers like the Yangtze and Yellow River, the concentrations would probably be huge and cause adverse effects,” University of Michigan eco-toxicologist Allen Burton told Wired Magazine.

But look, the chance to walk or run on the beach is one of the real gifts of living in California. The sand that sticks to your towel, finds its way into your shoes, or gets stuck into your hair has traveled a long, remarkable journey to reach the shore. It’s true that some of it now includes plastic, which is unfortunate, but that doesn’t diminish the joy of being at the beach. In a world where so much feels fast, fleeting, and digital, there’s something really cool and satisfying about putting your toes in the sand, a remarkable substance that is totally crucial to modern civilization, yet which is also timeless and ancient and part of the natural world around us.

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The Physics and Geology of The Wedge, California’s Most Dangerous Wave

Dangerous surf at The Wedge in Newport Beach, California (Photo: Erik Olsen)
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Having spent much of my youth in Newport Beach, my life was shaped by the ocean. I spent countless days in the surf, bodyboarding, bodysurfing, or playing volleyball on the sand with friends. When a southern storm rolled through, we’d rush to Big Corona and throw ourselves into the heavy swells, often getting slammed hard and learning deep respect for the ocean, a respect that I still harbor today. Sometimes the waves were so large they were genuinely terrifying, the kind of surf that would have made my mother gasp, had this not been an era when parents rarely knew what their kids were doing from dawn to dusk. That freedom, especially in Southern California, made the ocean feel like both a playground and a proving ground.

Across the channel at the Newport jetty was where the action was most intense. The surf was bigger, louder. We sat on the sand and held back, watching the brave and sometimes the foolish throw themselves into the water. That place, then and now, is called the Wedge.

The Wedge in Newport Beach, California (Photo: Alex Verharst 2016)

There is something unforgettable about the Wedge and the way its waves crash with such raw force. Sometimes they detonate just offshore, sending water skyrocketing into the air; other times they slam thunderously against the sand, eliciting groans and whoops from bystanders. The waves behave strangely at the Wedge, smashing into one another, often combining their force, and creating moments of exquisite chaos.

These colliding waves are what make the place both spectacular and dangerous, the result of a unique mix of physics and geology that exists almost nowhere else on earth. That combination has made it, to this day, one of the world’s most famous surf and bodysurfing spots. If you want a glimpse of what I mean, just search YouTube, where the insanity speaks for itself. This compilation is from earlier this year.

And of course, who could forget this one surfer’s unique brand of SoCal eloquence.

So how did the Wedge turn into one of the most famous and dangerous surf spots? The truth is, it’s mostly the result of human engineering.

The Wedge with Newport Harbor’s West Jetty in the background (Photo: California Beaches)

The Wedge’s origin story begins in the 1930s, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers extended Newport Harbor’s West Jetty to protect the harbor mouth from sand buildup and currents. What no one anticipated was that this angled wall of rock would create a perfect mirror for waves arriving from the south and southwest. Instead of dispersing, these waves slam into the jetty and reflect diagonally back toward the shore. The reflected energy doesn’t dissipate, it collides with the next incoming wave. When the two wave crests line up in phase, their energies combine, and the result is a much steeper, taller, and more powerful wave. In physics this is known as constructive interference: two sets of energy stacking into a single, towering peak.

This wave-doubling effect only works under specific conditions. Long-period south swells, often generated by hurricanes off Mexico or storms deep in the South Pacific, line up nearly parallel to the jetty. Their orientation means maximum contact and reflection. Surfers and bodysurfers describe the result as a pyramid-shaped breaker, or wedge, rising steeply before collapsing with extraordinary force. On the biggest days, these waves can reach 20 to 30 feet, twice the size of surrounding surf.

Crowds gather to watch the carnage at The Wedge in Newport Beach (Photo by D Ramey Logan)

Geology and geography make the situation even more dramatic. The seafloor near The Wedge slopes upward very steeply into a narrow strip of beach. Instead of allowing waves to break gradually, the bathymetry forces them to jack up suddenly, creating a thick lip that pitches forward into shallow water. It’s called a shorebreak, and man, they can be dangerous. More on that in a moment.

Unlike classic point breaks such as Malibu, where waves peel cleanly along a gradual reef, The Wedge produces brutal closeouts: vertical walls of water that crash all at once, leaving no escape route.

It actually can get worse. After each wave explodes on the beach, the backwash races seaward, colliding with the next incoming swell and adding more turbulence. Surfers call it chaos; lifeguards call it dangerous, even life-threatening. Spinal injuries, broken bones, and concussions are common at The Wedge. By 2013, the Encyclopedia of Surfing estimated that the Wedge had claimed eight lives, left 35 people paralyzed, and sent thousands more to the hospital with broken bones, dislocations, and other trauma—making it the most injury-prone wave break in the world. A 2020 epidemiological survey places The Wedge among the most lethal surf breaks globally (alongside Pipeline and Teahupo’o), largely due to head-first “over the falls” impacts on the shallow sea floor.

The Wedge in Google Maps

Interesting fact: Long before the Wedge was built, the waves pounding that corner of the Newport Beach jetty were already fierce. In 1926, Hollywood icon John Wayne (then still Marion Morrison) tried bodysurfing there while he was a USC football player. He was slammed into the sand, shattering his shoulder and ending his athletic scholarship. The accident closed the door on his football career but opened the one that led him to Hollywood stardom.

Oceanographers have studied the physics behind the Wedge’s unique surfbreak in broader terms. Research into wave reflection and interference confirms what locals have known for decades: man-made structures like jetties can redirect swell energy in ways that amplify, rather than reduce, wave height. Studies on steep nearshore bathymetry show how sudden shoaling increases the violence of breaking waves. The Wedge combines both effects in one location, making it a rare and extreme case study in coastal dynamics. In other words, yes, it’s gnarly.

Of course, with all that danger comes spectacle, and when the Wedge is firing, it’s not unusual for hundreds of spectators to line the sand and jetty to watch. In August 2025, the California Coastal Commission approved plans for a 200-foot ADA-compliant concrete pathway and a 10-foot-wide viewing pad along the northern jetty, designed to make the experience safer and more inclusive. The project will provide better access for people using wheelchairs, walkers, and strollers, while also giving life guards and first responders improved vantage points when the surf turns chaotic.

I still get to the Wedge on occasion to watch the carnage. And while in my younger years, I might have ventured out to catch a wave or two if the conditions were relatively mellow, today, I prefer the view from shore, leaving the powerful surf to the younger bodysurfers hungry for a rush.

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