ELON MUSK'S PLAN TO POWER THE UNITED STATES ENTIRELY ON SOLAR HAS ONE KEY FLAW

Elon Musk has an idea: move the entire United States onto solar energy, using a 100-by-100 mile patch of land. The only problem is, you'd probably need a bit more than that. The idea, a long-time favorite of Musk's, resurfaced in December 2019 when a Twitter user asked Musk about an old quote from Bill Gates. The Microsoft co-founder declared in 2011 that solar was "cute," but the answer lies in solutions like nuclear. Musk declared that Gates was "def wrong," declared that solar power offers one gigawatt per square kilometer, and cited a 2015 blog post from University College London written by energy research associate Andrew Smith. "I was rather surprised, and indeed touched, to be cited in an argument between Elon Musk and Bill Gates," Smith tells Inverse. "It was quite unexpected to this working-class Grimsby lad to be called as a witness on Twitter to resolve an argument between billionaires."