World Problems on ZME Science

Japan in more trouble after an explosion at a nuclear plant

The earthquake that occured yesterday near the coast of Japan, the 4th most powerful earthquake ever to be recorded, is causing even more problems, after the direct damage, the aftershocks, the tsunamis, and the fire tsunamis; this time, things can get way, way bigger and worse, and the disaster toll keeps rising. An explosion at […]

Bottled water is 1900 times more expensive than tap water

Oh, it’s this topic again ! It seems for some reason, which eludes me, more and more people are buying and drinking bottled water, even if the tap water is usually perfectly fine – and 1900 (!) times cheaper. About 2.7 million tons of petroleum-derived plastic is used for making bottles every single year only […]

Massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake hits Japan, creates tsunami

It’s been a busy tectonic month, and things aren’t about to chill down. A massive 7.9 magnitude Earthquake has just hit the Northern coast of Japan, triggering a more than four meter tall tsunami that wiped down cars and other property along the coastline, but it’s still unclear how many people were injured or killed. […]

Canadian husky dog slaughter shows the unknown face of the olympics

The Canadian olympics of 2010 will forever be stained with the blood of 100 husky dogs who were brutally killed with a knife and a shotgun, because they were no longer profitable. For Canadians and tourists, the blue eyed huskies who took them on sleds were nothing less than icons; but for Outdoor Adventures, the […]

Haiti spreading cholera and maybe polio; now will we care ?

It’s been a little over a year since the earthquake that caused so much damage and cost so much lives, and people are starting to wonder what the situation is like in Haiti; or actually, not so many people are wondering about that. United Nation’s special envoy, former Canadian Governor-General Michaelle Jean sums it up […]

Millions of dead fish wash up on the coast of Brazil

Another mystery, even bigger than the one with the birds in Arkansas is puzzling researchers from all over the world, as dead fish hit the coast of Brazil, with CNN reporting that there are over 2 million dead fish in Chesapeake Bay. Experts have first suggested that this is probably caused by a combination of […]

Italy becomes the first country to totally drop plastic bags

You probably don’t know it yet, but our planet has a major problem with plastic. I wasn’t able to find an accurate statistic of how much of this is caused by regular ordinary plastic bags that everybody uses, but it’s definitely a considerable number. After a laudable initiative taken on by the city of Seattle, […]

Fisheries have no more place to expand on Earth

A new study that just makes you say ‘Wow!’ was published in the online journal PLoS ONE by researchers from the University of British Columbia; they concluded that our planet has absolutely no more place to expand fisheries after charting the systematic development of the industry. The study is the first one of this kind, […]

1 in 5 vertebrates threatened by extinction

About twenty years ago, pretty much every nation on the globe agreed that biodiversity has to be protected, and significantly reduce the damage done to it by 2010. Well, as you probably know, it’s 2010, and there have been no big results – quite the opposite. More and more animals are going extinct each year, […]

Iran almost completed their first nuclear reactor. Should we worry ?

This seems to be the one of the most asked questions these days; what’s my opinion on it ? You should worry about it just as much as you worry about a brick suddenly falling in your head – probably less. After decades of development and hard work (yeah, that’s right, people from all around […]

Hungary: the toxic red sludge has reached the Danube

In case you don’t know, a few days ago a toxic red sludge “broke free” from a Hungarian metal plant reservoir, and the damage it has done is huge. Several people have been killed, over a hundred have been injured, and the damage done to the nearby houses and the environment is very significant. But […]

A fifth of all plants threatened by extinction

It seems that more and more species are threatened by extinction, and this doesn’t apply only to animals. A recent analysis conducted the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew together with the Natural History Museum, London and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) concluded that 22% of all the plants in the world are […]

Study shows tiger "clusters" are the last hope for species

As the dramatic decline of the tigers becomes more and more abrupt, it seems more and more possible that pretty soon, we will be living in a world without tigers. Numerous plans and various approaches have been taken, but the results have been pretty scarce so far, and the fate of these wonderful felines seems […]

3D supercomputer simulation predicts disastrous outcome for L.A. on the next "Big One"

The San Andreas fault is notorious for its unstable seismic nature, being the center stage for America’s most devastating earthquakes as well as the object of imagination for different artists. We’ve all marveled and even laughed at movies, magazines or comic books depicting scenes like a earthquake ravaged L.A. or a newly formed island state […]

Ecuador will receive 3.6 billion $ not to drill for oil in a historic pact

The race for oil drilling is tougher than ever, and the effects are quite often extremely damaging for the environment (I’m sure pretty much everybody knows about the BP oil spill already). However, the UN has come up with an initiative, the first of its kind, that promises to protect at least a handful of […]

Ethiopia's forest area triples

Ethiopian authorities announced that thanks to large-scale reforestation campaigns the forest cover of their country has tripled since 2000. The African country has suffered from severe droughts in the past, and their solution to this problem turned out to be just great. “Ethiopia was able to increase its forest coverage to nine percent now from […]

A World Without Tigers: 3 down, 6 to go!

I’m not sure if most of you are aware of this, but consider this: there are only 3,200 tigers left in the world! Almost three times fewer than there were 10 years ago and more than 30 times fewer than 100 years ago (back then 100.000 tigers roamed freely through Asian jungles. This includes the […]

Bill Gates is paying for artificial clouds to fight greenhouse gases

To be quite honest, I was never really fond of the man, but ever since he quit his executive positions at Microsoft, I’m starting to like him more and more. The reason is not that he’s giving money away, but the causes he’s giving the money for. I’m not really sure how practical this idea […]

James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change

James Lovelock is one of the world’s most brilliant minds alive at the moment; he developed numerous technologies for NASA, and currently dedicates most of his efforts to the environment and futurism. He is largely known for the development of the Gaia Hypothetis. Well, according to the man… we’re just too stupid to prevent climate […]

NASA is stunned to find life beneath 183 meters of Antarctic ice

At nearly 200 meters below the ice, there is no light, the temperature is way below 0 degrees, and scientists were expecting to find nothing more than a handful of microbes – and for good reason. So it’s easy to understand why they were so surprised to find not a single (evolved) life form, but […]

Giant squids take to California

Yes ladies and gents, giant squids are all over the California beaches. Each of the squids weighs about 40 pounds, but some of them reach 60 and even more than that. I haven’t been able to find out what’s up with them, or why they gathered in such numbers, but according to scientists, this happens […]

13 countries make a plan to save tigers

Just a short while ago, I was telling you about the extremely worrying decline of the Siberian tigers (and not just them). It’s obvious that if nothing changes, the odds are they’ll be going extinct, perhaps even during our lifetime (which is the case for numerous mammals, actually. Russia and a dozen other Asian countries […]

3 legged serval rescued nearby Arizona desert

At a first glance, this doesn’t seem like much. Just an animal rescued. But if you look more carefully, I think you’ll find it’s more than this; it’s a symbol. A symbol of how people don’t care about animals, regardless of how rare they are and how well they can take care of themselves. This […]

The girl who silenced the world for five minutes

Her name is Severn Suzuki, and here you have one of perhaps the most impressive speeches of all time, delivered by her (only a 12 year old at the time) at a UN meeting, at the Earth Summit in 1992. [After 5 minutes] An incredible story Severn Suzuki was born in a remarkable family, with […]

Just in case you didn't know, there's a garbage island twice as big as France in the Pacific Ocean

I was surprised to talk to a bunch of people today and find out they didn’t know about this, so I figured this is definitely something worth knowing. Here’s the deal. There’s a whole lot of garbage floating around; a whole lot ! Some are above the surface, some are below. What happens is they […]

What YOU can do to help Haiti

As you probably know, a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, basically destroying the country. The situation there was extremely bad even before, but now hospitals are down, there’s no water and no food for a very big part of the population and no way to receive medical treatment; it’s estimated that there are between 100.000 and […]

Mammals, half way extinct??

The previous 5 mass extinctions wiped out more than three quarters of the world’s animals, and if things continue to move in the same way, the same thing will happen in North America, according to a University of California, Berkeley, and Pennsylvania State University analysis. Numerous scientists have warned that the direction things are moving […]

Blue whales singing lower every year, baffled scientists say

Blue whales are not only the biggest living creatures in the world right now, but the biggest ever to have ‘walked’ the face of the earth; they’re also the loudest for that matter. After recovering from near extinction in the beginning of the 20th century, blue whales are finally getting a part of the respect […]

Siberian tigers face dramatic decline, drawing near extinction

The Siberian tiger is the biggest feline to walk the face of the Earth at the time, but if today’s trends continue, that will change in the not so distant future; and not because other species will grow bigger, but because the Siberian tiger can become extinct. There were around 300 tigers living in Eastern […]

Rift in African desert will become ocean

In 2005, a huge 35 mile rift broke the Ethiopian desert apart and immediately led to geological claims that a new ocean was appearing there because two parts of the African continent were being pulled apart. However, the claims were quickly dismissed as being too controversial. However, a new study published in the latest issue […]

Israel, in danger of being hit by tsunamis

Dr. Beverly Goodman of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa was doing some research on the ancient port and shipwrecks of the place, when she stumbled upon information that led her to this conclusion. “There is a likely chance of tsunami waves reaching the shores of Israel. Tsunami […]

Fighting against soot - more important than ever

Most of the talk about global warming revolves around carbon dioxide, sometimes giving the false impression that it alone is responsible for global warming and all its implications. However, numerous studies have revealed a new enemy, one almost as dangerous as carbon dioxide: soot. The black powdery pollutant is responsible for numerous climatic shifts, especially […]

Life had a big rebound following marine mass extinction event

In 1980, Luis Alvarez and his team shocked the whole world when they announced their theory that an asteroid impact that took place 65 millions years ago was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs and much of that time’s living organisms. Despite the fact that they delivered substantial evidence, there are still some minor […]

Immortality - just 20 years away

Raymond Kurzweil is one of the most prolific inventors and futurists; he’s the one who developed text to speech synthesis and a synthesizer that develops and even creates poetry, among others. He has also predicted new technologies that would appear and some directions that our society would take, and he got it right. Now, the […]

Huge dust storm chokes Sydney

A significant part of Australia’s east coast, including country’s biggest city, Sydney, has been engulfed by a shroud of red dust blown mostly from the desert outback. Visibility was so bad that most if not all flights were delayed, and of course, there were the usual folks who started screaming that this is the […]

Invisibility cloak to give buildings protection against earthquakes

The surface waves. Not the Love wave you want to be in.Researchers from the University of Liverpool conducted a study that shows it is possible to create what they have called an ‘invisibility cloak’ that would in fact protect buildings from earthquakes. This would come just in time, as a major earthquake threat seems more […]

Half of ALL americans use vibrators

Ladies and gents (really, stay away from this one kids; trust me, save whatever is left of your innocence), I’ve got to admit this: I thought I forgot how to read. I read the study about 7-8 times, believing it was about half of all women. No, fail. It includes men. After the awe faded […]

Haiti needs water

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, with it’s dazzling 70% unemployment rate and more than 3 quarters of the people living in extreme poverty. To top it off, water, what you need the most for survival, is polluted. The World Bank pretty much summed it up in a few words: Haiti has […]

Top 10 new animals of 2008

Every year, the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists announce the top 10 new species described in the past year, and this year was a good one. We have among others the bacteria that lives in hairspray, the oldest known vertebrate (fossilized), an insect 56 cm […]

In Madrid and Barcelona cocaine is in the air

It’s quite impossible not to be aware of the fact that someone is smoking marijuana somewhere around you because of its particular smell. However, who would have suspected that the air people breathe in a certain area of a city could in fact hide traces of 5 powerful drugs in it? This is what researchers […]

5 pandemics that plagued mankind before COVID-19

In late 2019, weird reports of a virus started emerging from a city most people have never even heard of (Wuhan). It didn’t cause a wave at first. Most people were just going about their lives, blissfully unaware of what was about to happen: a pandemic that would take the whole world by storm, causing […]

Researchers find out why swine flu is harder on some than others

Despite the fact that some researchers claim the swine flu is already declining, we are still on the verge of a pandemic that threatens to spiral out of control if we don’t take action. However, the major problem was to understand the virus, because there are still many things we have yet to find out […]

Fossil magnetism proves mass extinction theory

The mass extinction theory is… a theory, because there are still some blanks left in to fill by scientists; of course, there are those who try to fight it and find other theories and those that try to back it up and fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. Now, the latter camp recorded […]

Earth Day 2009 - don't let it be just another day!

In case you didn’t know, today is Earth Day and this year we are celebrating it for the 39th time. If you gladly supported Earth Hour this is a great new opportunity to show that you do care about the environment and that you believe in a sustainable future ( see here how). If you […]

Cleaning products give birth to deadly antibiotics-resistant bugs

Disinfectants, all kinds of shampoos, fabric softeners…we love them , we use them and then they go down the drain. Nothing bad about cleanliness, isn’t it? Unfortunately, our foamy friends can prove to be a timebomb as they can create invisible monsters: bugs that are not affected by antibiotics. Researchers from England have discovered this […]

Earth Hour 2009

Earth Hour is an initiative started by the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund) that asks people everywhere in the world to turn off the light and other unnecessary household appliances for one hour, to raise awareness towards the need to tackle global warming and other environmental problems. The “grandfather” was an idea […]

The day our Sun brought darkness

About 20 years ago, on March 13, 1989, the whole province of Quebec, Canada, suffered a blackout that by now has reached legendary proportions among astronomers and electrical engineers. Still, what made it reach this status wasn’t its proportions, but the fact that it was caused by the sun, or a solar storm to be […]

Is the Dead Sea going to die?

Whenever we hear something about the Dead Sea, we immediately think about the deepest point on Earth and, of course, about salt…a whole lot of salt. However, all these may soon become part of the history as the sea is shrinking at an alarming level and according to researchers from the University of Technology in […]

Malaria to be defeated by starving parasite to death

It claims the life of a child every 30 seconds and about 40% of the entire world population is at risk because of it. About 500 million people become very ill with malaria every year and about 2 million of them don’t make it. The situation seems really grim especially as in some parts of […]

Martin Luther King day

Today, on the 3rd Monday of January, ZME Science pays homage to the man that was Martin Luther King, being grateful for all his lifetime achievements. Also, it’s not hard at all to observe how much today’s world would need a man of his calibre. He was an African American. He was an activist, and […]

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