A new breakthrough in biology allows scientists to grow food without sunlight

No worries mate.

Even humanity in it’s entirety stoped burning fossilized sunlight today which scientifically what hydrocarbons are. It will be over 500 years before the oceans and the natural carbon cycle pulls the atmospheric CO2 levels to preindustrial levels of 180ppm all our staple food is C4 plants they evolved during the last ice ages and the interglacial periods all of the common food grasses (rice,corn,wheat,sorghum,millet,barley) grow perfectly fine down to 150ppm humans have put up a 500+ year buffer to CO2 starvation sleep well my friend the carbon cycle will cradle you in its life giving warmth.

I think it’s more for urban use. Those rooftops are usually surrounded by taller buildings, which block sunlight.

Also, to be used in warehouses/underground.

Alright! Someone else thinking about those lava tubes. Heard they are about 50’ in diameter and safe as long as you don’t get run over by the things traveling inside.

I’d prefer to be among the first to flash out in the poof.

In the dark. How well does the solar cell work in the dark? The only thing truly in the dark are the researchers.

I see reading comprehension skills are not your forte.

They are using solar power to run a electrochemical reaction cell that takes water , CO2 and the electricity from the solar cell and turns that into a chemical called acetate. When mixed with water acetate is acetic acid commonly known as vinegar.

I’m ready for the part you missed here it is pay attention. They then take that liquid acetate and put it in tanks in THE DARK with what they want to grow. Since plants can directly uptake acetate and use it for their cellular respiration those plants can now grow in that tank wait for it..wait for it IN THE DARK without any sunlight. That is a massive breakthrough it decouples the growing of plants from needing sunlight on them.

The electrochemical cell can use electricity from any source they could have used wind turbines or gas turbines or nuclear power. The electrochemical cell doesn’t care where the DC voltage comes from.

The reason they used a solar cell is to compare the efficiency per square meter of surface area in sunlight to that of a square meter of plants doing conventional photosynthesis that is why they uses solar cells. Their process is 18 times more output per square meter of sunlight and that is a big deal try to keep up and welcome to the 21st century.

The bottom line is that the energy to drive the growth comes from the sun via solar cell. The acetate stores & delivers the energy. We’ve invented a new form of photosynthesis.
It could be driven by nuclear generated electricity, allowing growth on cloudy days & at night, perhaps it is an improvement.

It’s a massive improvement. The electricity could come from any source. Wind turbines running full speed in the middle of the night when demand is low and wind is maxed out. Texas now routinely goes 100% wind powered at night with so much surplus ERCOT pays customers to take the power with negative rates. Nuclear could and should be used it is humanities densest energy source ever convinced. Turning inorganic CO2 , water and electricity to organic carbon energy is a huge deal it allows for the first time in history the cultivation of food crops completely decoupled from solar input using nuclear or geothermal energy sources humans could live underground indefinitely or on space ships in deep space far from the Sun. The density that this process brings is a breakthrough alone. Since no light is needed to grow food you can track and stack food production in high rise density barely imagined a few years ago. A single high rise building sized warehouse stacked floor to ceiling with grow tanks and trays would feed millions of humans. Using single celled algae,fungi and protein forming cell lines feed acetate even higher densities are possible where rather than trays growing plants such as rice or wheat or soy beans you have 50 foot tall tanks with hundreds of thousands of gallons of growing single cell organisms combining protein, carbohydrates, lipids and the B minerals those tanks could feed millions if not billions in a 1800 kcal a day complete ration. Using not a single ray of sunlight. A normal sized nuclear power plant of 1500 megawatts would feed millions of humans probably tens of millions of making human kibble like rations. The amounts of animal feed would be staggering too or better yet grow cellular cultures of meat cells using the acetate as an intermediary to glucose or some other 6 carbon sugar. No need for cattle which could be feed acetate directly. Grow cultured meat in tanks by the thousands of tonnes per tank , ground up in ground meat form it would be genetically identical to the animal it was biopsied from and would be ground meat just like any other ground meat product. In a chicken nugget or burger paddie one would not be able to tell the difference from cultured to slaughtered ground meat products. Any one of these advances is created by decoupling the growing of a food product from sunlight via electrical chemical synthesis. It is nothing short of a paradigm shift in thousands of years of agriculture and food production. NASA will be all over this as will every agency tasked with the continuance of government since growing food in bunkers is their first priority for long term continuance.