There’s a new method for removing oil contaminating bodies of water. The process involves skimming the oil with water-repellant leaves or textiles. These materials don’t absorb the oil but act as an adhesive. They transport the oil into clean containers.…
In April 1986, the most catastrophic nuclear accident the world has ever seen happened in the former USSR, near the city of Chernobyl. A nuclear reactor exploded and burned, spreading radiation as far away as Sweden. More than 300,000 people…
Discarded plastics don’t just wash up on beaches and interfere with marine life. They also steep in our oceans, creating a toxic brew that harms the bacteria responsible for generating 10 percent of our oxygen. A new study shows that…
In the Houston shipping channel on May 10, 2019, a tanker navigating in heavy rain collided with two barges, dumping a smelly liquid called reformate into the water. Reformate, which is used to increase octane levels in gasoline, is highly…
In May 2019, American explorer Victor Vescovo and his team completed the deepest-ever ocean dive—35,849 feet below the surface. Descending in a submersible to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, Vescovo identified new species of shrimp-like creatures called…
An exhaustive U.N. report outlines the massive impact human activity has had on the natural world, suggesting that one million plant and animal species could face extinction within decades without major changes. What’s behind the crisis? A number of factors,…
Marine scientists who studied crustaceans from three Pacific Ocean trenches, including the Mariana Trench, have discovered the depth of the influence of human activity on ocean ecosystems. Shrimp-like amphipods feeding at the bottom of the trenches were found to have…
The Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986 is considered the most horrific peacetime nuclear disaster in history. More than 100,000 people had to permanently relocate because of dangerous radiation levels, and a 1,000-square-mile Exclusion Zone was established.…
A 24-year-old Dutch college dropout has designed something that just might help save the oceans from plastic trash. A man named Boyan Slat raised more than $30 million to build an ocean-cleaning machine. He started a nonprofit in the Netherlands…
For years, China was willing to import and deal with huge amounts of plastic trash from other countries. Recycling plastic waste was a profitable business for them. But on December 31, 2017, China banned the import of most plastic waste.…