Hearing and Deaf now can drink from the ocean!

1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, but that's not going to be a problem in the future. We figured out how to purify the salty water from the ocean into fresh water. How awesome!

A quick background:
70% of the world is water. That is equal to about 300 quintillion gallons. That's a lot of water, but we couldn't drink most of it because it comes from the ocean. The ocean water is too salty for us to drink. It'll make us sick.

California actually established the first full-scale seawater desalination facility last year, but it wasn't until this year that the California Department of Public Health finally approved the water for public use. How exciting! That means we'll never have to worry about running out of freshwater.

How it works:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/californias-first-full-scale-desalination-plant-lets-residents-drink-pacific-ocean

First, the plant will filter all the dirt and chemicals out of the water. Then it will go through a special layer of a membrane consisting of millions of holes. The holes will be big enough to allow water go through, but not for the salt. That's probably the simplest explanation you'll find. The reason why we haven't established this technique all over the world is because it is expensive, but then again our technology is finding ways to make it cheaper and affordable.

Cool huh? :)