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Top 10 Most Polluted Rivers in the World

10. Mississippi River (U.S.A)

Mississippi River

The term Mississippi refers to “big river” or “great river”. It is the main river of the largest drainage system in the entire North America and also acts as the greatest natural and economic resource for the US. This river flows all the way down in the US and rises in the northern Minnesota, meandering slowly. Mississippi river valley is one of the most fertile agricultural region. But since the modern development took its girth in the basin, this cardinal river has started getting polluted with all agricultural sewage making the surrounding areas of the river mouth as a “dead zone”. A recent report by a campaign group in 2012 claimed that in the year 2010, about 12.7 million pounds of toxic materials were disposed in the river including poisonous chemicals such as nitrates, benzene and arsenic.

9. Sarno River (Italy)

sarnoriverwaterplantson

“Sarnus”, as was known to the Romans, this river originates at Mt. Sarno and passes through Pompeii to the south of the Italian city, Naples. The reason that this water body is regarded as the most polluted river in the whole of Europe is because of the dumping of all the industrial and agricultural wastes. Though the river makes partial use of itself by allowing to fish, transport and irrigate, large portions of it are covered by waste products while flowing through the Bay of Naples, defiling the aquatic animals and its environment.

8. Marilao River (Philippines)

Marilao river starts from the uplands of Rizal and flows through the Metro of Manila, in the Philippines. This river water is the most polluted, arousing a great concern not only to the government of Philippines but also the whole world. The non-profit environmental facility, known as the Blacksmith Institute, tagged this river as one of the world’s 30 dirtiest river in 2008, confirming the level of contamination as “high level”. Various non-recyclable objects such as plastic, bottles, polythene bags and all other junks come from the leather tanneries, gold refineries and other industries. Also, toxic substances such as manganese, zinc, nickel and cadmium are found mixed with river’s underground water making it undrinkable. Such toxicity made the river polluted and dangerous.

7. Yellow River (China)

Yellow River (China)

The yellow river which is also called the Huang He, is the second longest river in Asia and the sixth longest river in the world. It finds its origin in the Bayan Har mountains in Qinghai province of western China an empties into the Bohai sea near the city of Dongying in Shadong province. It’s called “yellow” because of the muddy water arising from loess in the lower course of the river making it yellow. Popularly considered as “the cradle of Chinese civilization”, this river was the main source of drinking water and irrigation. Of late, this river has been suffering from pollution that has made it impossible for people to drink. According to the report by UN Environmental Programme, 4.29 billion tons of industrial wastes and sewages was dumped in 1996, making one third of it unusable.

6. Jordan River (Israel)

Jordan River (Israel)

Jordan river originates in west Asia that flows to the Dead sea. The river is bordered by the State of Israel and West Bank to the west with Jordan lying to its east. This river has religious significance, it being the place where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. In the year 1964, the Israelis had built a dam on this river to divert its water to National Water Carriers. But the environmentalists say that these dam constructions have largely disturbed the ecosystem. Human consumption of the water is almost 70%-90% resulting in the reduction of flow. The water is now contaminated by huge amount of sewage and wastes. This caused a great concern for the environmentalists as they claimed that the level of pollution is increasing, releasing a foul smell due to agricultural wastes.

5. Yamuna River (India)

 Yamuna River (India)

Yamuna, the largest tributary river of the Ganges, originates from the yamunotri glacier in the Lower Himalayas. It passes through several states of north India before merging with the Ganges at the Triveni Sangam. The river meets the need of nearly 57 million people and accounts for 70% of Delhi’s water supplies. But this river is now affected deeply by pollution as millions of household garbage, municipal disposals and soil erosion due to deforestation find their way into the river each day. Even the toxic chemical substances including insecticides, fertilizers, pesticides, etc., are also found, making it the second most polluted river in India after Ganges.

4. Buriganga River (Bangladesh)

Buriganga River (Bangladesh)

Buriganga received its term after its dispatch from the river Ganges. With difficulty to trace the channel , probability is that it flowed past Rampur Boalia and terminates into Meghna estuary. This river is one of the most important rivers of Bangladesh and was also one of the main drinking sources along with trade and transportation since the 17th century. Ever since the 20th century, the river turned polluted. Hazardous pollutants like polythene, industrial and household sewage, plastics and even dead man and animals spoiled the river water in a grand scale. According to recent reports, 4500 tons of solid waste is dumped into the river everyday from Dhaka. Despite of every effort made to keep this river clean, it still remains a mess.

3. Matanza-Riachuelo River (Argentina)

Matanza-Riachuelo River (Argentina)

Originating in the capital city of Argentina, Buenos Aires, and empties into the Rio de la Plata, this river is known as the “slaughter creek” in English. It is 64 km long and defines the southern boundary of Buenos Aires federal district. This is a foul smelling river filled with toxic substances released from the household and industrial wastes. Millions of chemical wastes are being discharged in the water by petroleum companies resulting into water pollution. The government of Argentina including some pressure groups have tried controlling pollution but in vain.

2. Ganges River (India)

Ganges River (India)

Ganges or Ganga, is considered to be the holiest river in Hinduism. It originates from the gangotri glacier in the western Himalayas, flows south and east through the Gangetic plain of north India entering Bangladesh and merges into the Bay of Bengal. It acts as a trans-boundary river of India and Bangladesh. It is the second largest river in the Indian subcontinent and also was ranked as one of the five most polluted rivers in the world. Due to religious practices, this river has numerous pollutants ranging from household garbage in abundance to industrial wastes and toxic. Amplifying this, the religious offerings made to the river each day along with people bathing and disposal of dead bodies made the Ganges so polluted that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said that people living in the vicinity of the river are vulnerable to cancer.

1. Citarum River (Indonesia)

Citarum River (Indonesia)

Citarum river flows through the Indonesian province of West Java. It plays an important role in serving people great way by supplying water for irrigation and agriculture, industry, fishery and also in the electricity production. There are three hydroelectric power plant dams installed in this river. Despite of being generous, it is filled with tons of harmful substances from the industrial and domestic wastes. One can find bottles, plastic, rubber gloves, etc., floating on the surface making the river surface so densely covered by the solid wastes that the water can hardly be seen. It has disturbed the ecosystem severely. According to recent reports, the level of mercury is 100 times more than the legal amount. This has resulted in the dying of the river in certain parts.

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Top 10 Space Stories of the Decade

10. Saturn Moon Titan Explored

Saturn Moon Titan Explored

On Jan. 14, 2005, the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe dropped through Titan’s atmosphere after a seven-year trek attached to NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Huygens wasn’t designed to live for very long after atmospheric reentry, but it unveiled a mysterious outer solar system world to us for the first time.

Before this mission, very little was known about Saturn’s largest moon, and scientists were unsure whether Huygens would land on a rocky surface or in an ocean. Titan’s thick atmosphere  composed of primarily nitrogen and clouds of methane and ethane, about 50 percent thicker than our atmosphere signaled to scientists that Titan was similar to a young Earth.

Observations from the Huygens probe and Cassini spacecraft tell us that Titan and Earth share many features, such as sand dunes and lakes. But these features are heavily laced with organic molcules that could support life, leading researchers to speculate about Titan’s potential to nurture microbes.

9. Moon Water Confirmed

Moon Water Confirmed

India’s Chandrayaan-1 satellite confirmed the presence of water on the moon in September 2009, building on flyby observations by other probes on their way elsewhere. Although the lunar surface is still drier than Earth’s driest desert, evidence of water is there, hinting at a solar wind interaction with the moon’s surface that produces water and hydroxyl molecules.

It may not be an oasis up there, but future moon colonists could extract and purify the traces of water from the surface to use for drinking, food cultivation, oxygen and fuel. Or, our colonists could take a trek to the moon’s poles to mine water from the deepest craters

On Oct. 9, 2009, NASA dropped a spent rocket into a crater to produce a 100-foot-wide hole. They found water there too. That rocket produced a massive plume of dust that was analyzed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and ground-based observatories. At least 25 gallons of water ice was detected in the plume.

8. Organic Chemistry Collected from Comet’s Tail

 Organic Chemistry Collected from Comet's Tail

In 2004, the NASA Stardust mission chased after Comet Wild 2 to find out if the icy mass contained the building blocks for life, since meteorites found on Earth contained organic chemistry that originated from space. Sure enough, in August 2009, NASA announced that they had found samples of glycine  an amino acid  in Stardust’s collection plates. It didn’t stop there, there’s increasing evidence that exoplanets orbiting distant stars contain organic chemistry in their atmospheres.

In 2008, organic chemicals were detected in the disk surrounding a star called HR 4796A, 220 light-years from Earth. And most recently, NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes detected carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called HD 209458b.

These discoveries, sparked by Stardust, have transformed our understanding about how life may have formed on Earth. They also give us a strong hint that life may not be unique to Earth; the universe appears to be manufacturing organic chemistry everywhere.

7. A Supermassive Black Hole on Our Doorstep

A Supermassive Black Hole on Our Doorstep

There’s a monster living in the center of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years from Earth. By 2008, astronomers tracking the behavior of stars orbiting an invisible point confirmed that the monster is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A.

A lone star called “S2,” with a very fast orbit, has been tracked since 1995 around this invisible point. In 2002, Rainer Schödel and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics announced that the only explanation for S2’s fast orbit was that it was circling a very compact, massive object  a supermassive black hole  that was stopping the star from flinging out of its orbit into space.

In 2008, after S2 completed one 16-year orbit, it was confirmed that the star was orbiting a black hole with a gargantuan mass of approximately 4.3 million suns. The confirmation of a supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way boosted the theory that most galaxies contain a supermassive black hole at their cores.

6. Big Bang “Echo” Mapped for the First Time

Big Bang "Echo" Mapped for the First Time

In June 2001, NASA set out to find the ancient “echo” of the Big Bang by mapping the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation that buzzes like static throughout the cosmos, using the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) .

When the universe was born, vast amounts of energy were unleashed, which eventually condensed into the stuff that makes up the mass of what we see today. The radiation that was created by the Big Bang still exists, but as faint microwaves.

By mapping slight variations in the CMB radiation, the probe has been able to precisely measure the age of the universe (13.73 billion years old) and work out that a huge 96 percent of the mass of the universe is made up of stuff we cannot see. Only 4 percent of the cosmic mass is held in the stars and galaxies we observe; the rest is held in “dark energy” and “dark matter.”

5. Hubble Gets to Grips with Dark Energy

Hubble Gets to Grips with Dark Energy

In 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope was upgraded with a new instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, that revealed the presence of a mysterious force called “dark energy.”

The camera was set up to help researchers understand why Type Ia supernovae were dimmer than expected. Hubble’s observations of these supernovae discovered that they weren’t dimmer because the stars were different (they should all explode with the same brightness). The only explanation was that the universe’s expansion was unexpectedly and inexplicably speeding up. This accelerated expansion was making the light dim over vast cosmic distances. Hubble’s discovery led to a better understanding of what dark energy is — an invisible force that opposes gravity, causing the universe’s expansion to speed up.

4. Eris Discovered; Pluto Demoted

Eris Discovered; Pluto Demoted

In January 2005, Mike Brown and his team at Palomar Observatory, Calif. discovered 136199 Eris, a minor body that is 27 percent bigger than Pluto. Eris had trumped Pluto and become the 9th largest body known to orbit the sun.

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided that the likelihood of finding more small rocky bodies in the outer solar system was so high that the definition “a planet” needed to be reconsidered. The end result: Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet and it acquired a “minor planet designator” in front of its name: “134340 Pluto.”

Mike Brown’s 2005 discovery of Eris was the trigger that changed the face of our solar system, defining the planets and adding Pluto to a growing family of dwarf planets.

3. Dark Matter Detected

Dark Matter Detected

In the summer of 2006, astronomers made an announcement that helped humans understand the cosmos a little better: They had direct evidence confirming the existence of dark matter — even though they still can’t say what exactly the stuff is. The unprecedented evidence came from the careful weighing of gas and stars flung about in the head-on smash-up between two great clusters of galaxies in the Bullet Cluster.

Until then, the existence of dark matter was inferred by the fact that galaxies have only one-fifth of the visible matter needed to create the gravity that keeps them intact. So the rest must be invisible to telescopes: That unseen matter is “dark.”

The observations of the Bullet Cluster, officially known as galaxy cluster 1E0657-56, did not explain what dark matter is. They did, however, give researchers hints that dark matter particles act a certain way, which they can build on.

2. Mars Surface Gives up Signs of Water

Mars Surface Gives up Signs of Water

In 2008, NASA’s Mars Phoenix lander touched down on the Red Planet to confirm the presence of water and seek out signs of organic compounds. Eight years before, the Mars Global Surveyor spotted what appeared to be gullies carved into the landscape by flowing water. More recently, the Mars Expedition Rovers have uncovered minerals that also indicated the presence of ancient water. But proof of modern-day water was illusive.

Then Phoenix, planted on the ground near the North Pole, did some digging for samples to analyze. During one dig, the onboard cameras spotted a white powder in the freshly dug soil. In comparison images taken over the coming days, the powder slowly vanished. After intense analysis, the white powder was confirmed as water ice.

This discovery not only confirmed the presence of water on the Red Planet, it reenergized the hope that some kind of microbial life might be using this water supply to survive.

1. Alien Planets Spotted Directly

Alien Planets Spotted Directly

The first alien planets — called exoplanets — were being detected in the early 1990s, but not directly. In 2000, astronomers detected a handful by looking for a star’s “wobble,” or a star’s slight dimming as the exoplanet passed in front of it. Today we know of 400 exoplanets. In 2008, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and the infrared Keck and Gemini observatories in Hawaii announced that they had “seen” exoplanets orbiting distant stars. The two observatories had taken images of these alien worlds.

The Keck observation was the infrared detection of three exoplanets orbiting a star called HR8799, 150 light-years from Earth. Hubble spotted one massive exoplanet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light-years from Earth. These finds pose a profound question: How long will it be until we spot an Earth-like world with an extraterrestrial civilization looking back at us?
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10 Superhuman Real Life Superpowers

10.Human Magnets

human-magnet

You will find many individuals on the planet that claim to get the amazing property to develop a magnetic field that causes metal to stick for their skin, which will be remarkable if this were truly true. Obviously, their forces aren’t limited to steel, in addition they get plastic to stick too and they don’t trigger any sort of troubles with electronic device.

Turns away they’re maybe not truly magnetic, but rather have amazingly tacky epidermis, which can be just total, however, it will be nice to help you instead of placing it in your pocket to stick your telephone to your own torso, I guess.

9.Super Memory

daniel tammet

Daniel Tammet recalls pi to over twenty  two thousand digits, can talk five languages and continues to be studied extensively by neurobiologists because he is able to clarify precisely how he does it. Do n’t get your hopes up though, he can do all this because he has synaesthesia, where he experiences shapes, textures and colors when he thinks of numbers and phrases.

In a single case he then appeared in a interview talking the terminology and was able to understand audio Icelandic in a week.

8.Mr Eat-all

Michel Lotito

Have you ever ever not been so full that you just wanted to consume a Cessna plane that was whole? How about a coffin? Possibly a computer? You’re a regular person if you answered no to most of these questions, but you’re also not a person using an real super strength. Michel Lotito, also known as Mr Eat-all, had the power to consume and, moreover, shit out anything you can think of without the damage, including poisonous substances.

If the typical person consumed any of those items subsequently they’d be left with serious problems, but maybe not Mr Eat-all, although with that mentioned so his strength wasn’t just best he did also perish at the age of 57.

7.Tame Wild Animals

Kevin Richardson

Richardson gets the ability to tame just about any animal, it seems, as long as they are reared by him from infancy, that might not seem spectacular initially, but a pride of lions tries and join without any taming approaches that are conventional and see how well that goes for you.

Taming big cats isn’t sunshine and all puppy dogs, there’s quite a serious problem with having a pride of lions treat you as one of their very own, for instance they’ll also perform with battle with you, which, as you are able to imagine, is quite painful.

6.Strongest Man in History

Louis Cyr

Louis Cyr proved to be a strong man that is classical, except with one important variation, he was much better than everybody else by a long shot. Doing a back lift he managed to raise just under two tonnes, he also wrestled a guy around 2 feet taller than him and won.

His record breaking efforts have not yet been overtaken by anybody including these who’ve obtained steroids, even today.

5.The Human Computer

Shakuntala Devi

Shakuntala Devi was an Indian social worker with some psychological abilities that are quite amazing, Some may call her a genius in mental calculating; I, however, might call her a machine from the future that was destroyed in the search for Sarah Connor.

Shakuntala had the ability in blistering speed to perform mental calculations, for instance she was able to compute the cube root of sixty one million, six-hundred and twenty-nine-thousand, eight hundred and seventy five before the person checking her answers could write her answer down.

4.Godhand

Mas Oyama

Mas Oyama was an amazing example of what the human body could be capable of, he created his own full contact karate and has a black belt in two different disciplines than just his own. Oyama was of exactly what the body could possibly be competent of an incredible exampl, he produced his own full contact karate and has a blackbelt in two disciplines that were different than just his own.

He showed his strength and endurance by killing fully grown bulls with one blow and participating in three different hundred-man fighting competitions in a row, He showed endurance and his strength by killing fully bulls that were grown with one blow and participating in three distinct hundred-man fighting competitions in a row, In which he fought 100 trained karate experts a day off for three days.

3.Iceman

Ice man WimHof

WimHof does possess a whimsical name, he also has got the ability to withstand insanely low temps that would kill many people were they exposed for how long to them that he sets through himself.

Ice man ran a marathon in –20 °C (-4 °F) weather in only a pair of short pants, he also tried to scale Mount Everest in precisely the same attire, but couldn’t ensure it is all the way up because of a foot injury. He also holds the world record for the greatest quantity of time spent submerged in ice.

2. Ultra Endurance

Dean Karnazes

Humans have the capacity to be the very best marathon runners in nature, however, Dean Karnazes is not worse than the normal person can ever expect to be.
Karnazes has run a 350 mile (or 560 kilometer) marathon in 80 hrs without any sleep, he also ran a marathon a day for 50 consecutive days.
 His ability to to perform arrives to having outstanding muscles that simply don’t exhaust the same manner many people’s muscles do, therefore it’s not merely a matter of easy training.

1. Super Reflexes

Modern day samurai, ISO Mach ii

Modern day samurai, ISO mach ii, contemporary samurai, has an amazingly response that is speedy to the world around him when he holds his sword. ISO has appeared on television to execute his most impressive accomplishment, cutting a BB gun pellet, Which should not be possible if counting on on sight and sound alone.
It seems he has an incredibly complex sense of intuition, Which will be a way of saying ‘we do know how it’s possible for him to do this.’
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10 Islands that may disappear

The rise of the ocean level could function as the biggest menace to the entire world in the days in the future. If global temperatures continue to go unabated sea  levels all over the world could increase by as much as five yards incoming generations, that may seriously impact low lying islands and states. Sea levels have increased 6 to 8 ins in the previous 100 years. Also, it’s been discovered that Antarctic is now shedding around 159 billion tonnes of ice every year for the island countries currently living at sea level, which presents a problem that is new.

Let’s check out 10 such islands which is impacted by climate change crisis.

Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a sovereign nation composed of a substantial number of islands in Oceania lying to the east of Northwest and Papua New Guinea of Vanuatu.

As a result of debilitating aftereffects of climate change the Low Lying lands of the Solomon Islands are severely affected with decreased property area and crops failing.

Maldives

Maldives

Maldives is just another island that might be shortly lost to rising ocean levels. With the average floor level altitude of 1.5 metres above sea level, Maldives is our planet’s cheapest state.  And because of the geographic location it’s due to inundation from climate change, the most state.

President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed stated that “If carbon emissions continue at the speed they’re rising nowadays, my state will likely be submerged in seven years.”

Republic of Cape Verde

Republic of Cabo Verde

Republic of Cabo Verde is an island nation spanning an archipelago of 10 islands in the Atlantic Ocean that is central. Cape Verde is exceptionally exposed to climate change and sea level increase as it detrimentally affects the environment, market and society.

Palau

Palau

Palau, formally the Republic of Palau, is an island region situated in the western  Pacific Sea. The citizenry of around 21,000 is spread across 250 islands developing the developed chain of the Caroline Islands. As global warming causes sea levels to inch up, Palau is facing severe floods which makes inhabitants live under constant fear of their homes being washed away.

Fiji

Fiji

Fiji covers a complete part of some 194,000 square kilometres (75,000 sq mi) that around 10% island. The nation includes much more than 500 islets, amounting to some total property area of circa 18, 300 square kilometers, and an archipelago of more than 332 countries, that 110 are forever inhabited.

Based on 4th examination report of IPCC, Fiji is currently experiencing coastal erosion because of which human arrangement and water resources have reached an increased threat because of sea level rise.

Torres Strait Islands

Torres Strait Islands

Torres Strait Islands are a small grouping of at the least 274 tiny islands which lie in Torres Strait. Climate change triggers some serious issues within this island, like floods damage erosion, coral bleaching etc.

Seychelles

Seychelles

Seychelles includes 115 granite and coral islands in the western Indian Ocean, having a population of 87,122. A rise of just three feet would submerge the Maldives and make them uninhabitable. Also it has witnessed the world`s worst coral die-off.

Tegua

Tegua

The United Nations reported the approximately 100 residents of Tegua, part of the Torres Strait Islands positioned in the Pacific, the primary climate change refugees in 2005.

The sea-level also increased, triggering in regards to a quarter of the flooding, although a lot of the flooding was because the island sunk almost five inches between 1997 and 2009.

Micronesia

MICRONESIA

Micronesia is just a subregion of Oceania and contains thousands of tiny countries while in the western Pacific Ocean. There are four primarily archipelagos along with a number of other outlying destinations.

The sea water is regularly killing off food plants. Scientists warn that a one meter rise that is tiny would produce the area uninhabitable.

Kiribati islands

Kiribati

Kiribati is definitely an island country within the tropical Pacific Sea that is main. The country consists of 32 atolls and one raised coral island, Banaba. It’s a populace 697, of 102.

Due to the increasing sea level, nearly all of it territory disappeared under the ocean which caused most of its population to move to another island, Tarawam.

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