Everyone’s had a disaster during which a few drops of water render a computer all but useless. But what if the computer was water to begin with? Scientists at Stanford University have developed just that — a new kind of computer that runs on water droplets with the help of H2O’s unique physical properties.
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This Computer Runs on Water
A World of Water Woes
It’s easy to look at a portrait of Earth and think of our home as a water planet. After all, 75 percent of the surface is covered with water. But the thin skin of liquid that surrounds our rocky home is misleading—if you took all the water on the planet and bunched it into a ball, that ball would be less than half the diameter of the Moon. That’s not a huge amount of water.
Almost all of the rest flows through the world’s lakes, streams, rivers, soils and groundwater. A tiny percentage is water vapor in the atmosphere, driving our weather and climate. That doesn’t leave much for the 7 billion people on the planet, and even less for some populations because all that water isn’t evenly Read more
How Did Water Come to Earth?
Morning dew and roaring falls inspire poets. Hurricanes and typhoons wreak devastation. Melting glaciers and rising tides challenge us all, even in an ever more thirsty world.
The Great Water Challenge
The Middle East and North Africa is the region most affected by water scarcity in the world, and for the moment, the situation seems set to worsen.
“In Yemen, we do not have many sources of fresh water and rain water is certainly not enough for our needs,” Gunid Ali Abdullah, planning director at Yemen’s Ministry of Agriculture, tells TerraViva in Rome. “We are all the time having to dig deeper and deeper to get water from aquifers.” Read more
Dwindling Water Supplies Make Every Drop Count
Drought and chronic water shortages played a significant role in sparking Syria’s civil war and in unrest throughout much of the Middle East, water experts now believe.
Around the world, water demand already exceeds supply in regions with more than 40 percent of the world’s population. That may climb to 60 percent in the coming decade, a new study has found. Read more