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"As a life support engineer at NASA Ames Research Center, it's Michael Flynn's job to keep astronauts alive in space, making sure they have the basic necessities like clean water to survive. But launching clean water into space is cost-prohibitive, so for years, Flynn and his team have been working on new ways to recycle waste water into safe, drinking water. SmartPlanet visits Flynn's lab and looks at how he's doing it through a process known as "forward osmosis.""

"This is actually very similar to what happens when popcorn pops or when you try to microwave a marshmallow. Those air bubbles in the soap (or the popcorn kernels or the marshmallow) contain water. Water is also caught up in the matrix of the soap itself. The expanding effect is caused when the water is heated by the microwave. The water vaporizes, forming bubbles, and the heat causes trapped air to expand. Likewise, the heat causes the soap itself to soften and become pliable. This effect is actually a demonstration of Charles' Law. Charles' Law states that as the temperature of a gas increases, so does its volume. When the soap is heated, the molecules of air in the soap move quickly, causing them to move far away from each other. This causes the soap to puff up and expand to an enormous size. Other brands of soap without whipped air tend to heat up and melt in the microwave."

Toward the end of his EPA career, Hudnell led a nine-agency effort to address fresh-water algal blooms, he said. The Interagency Symposium on Cyanobacteria Harmful Algal Blooms printed an 885-page report, now hosted at EPA.gov. The report linked algae growth to an increase in nutrient pollution and temperatures and the decline of algae-eating organisms.

In 2007, "that's when I decided, 'The agency's not going to do anything about this,' and I decided I could do better without the agency," he said. "At the time, I decided the best thing out there was the solar-powered circulators."

Circulation technology, he believes, is the most promising idea among the "in-lake" approaches. By cycling water up from the depths, he said, many municipalities have managed to kill off algae blooms, even in heavily affected sewage ponds.

The tactic may work by confusing the algae about its depth in the water, Hudnell said, or by making them more vulnerable to algae-attacking viruses. In either case, he said, he has seen results.

NASA is studying Ceres -- a protoplanet. We are interested in Ceres simply because it is FULL of water. Scientists think that bodies like Ceres could be the source of water on earth. Collisions of two or three of these bodies could have brought all of our water.

This video might be great for teaching polarity and dissolving. We're going to show you how to make water-proof sand! It's fun, easy and awesome!

When you combine sand with a water-resistant chemical you create a hydrophobic substance that can clean up oil spills, give you awesome visuals, and quite possibly hours of fun.

Want to make a glass of water freeze instantly on command? What is this supernatural power and who can use it? Discover the secrets to Ice-bending ... in real life.

Looking at water and ice with infrared light helps us understand how light and heat are related.

Pour a glass of water and watch it turn to ice instantly! This step-by-step tutorial will show you everything you need to know about Instant Ice.

Huw James took a trek up Mount Etna and decided to show us what actually happens when a volcano erupts!

With a little bit of help from Dr Suze Kundu and using a simple demonstration heating a glass beaker of wax, stone, sand and water we can see what happens when a volcano erupts.

We can actually tell a lot about a volcano looking at the lava that comes out. If the lava is quite dense and thick we know it contains a lot of the compound silica. If it is less dense it has less silica and spreads out a lot more.

Thick lava will generally erupt from one vent and follow one flow down the side of the volcano. Thinner lava, lava that is less dense, generally erupts from the surrounding magma chambers and flows in many different channels.

Hank explains the extremely complex series of reactions whereby plants feed themselves on sunlight, carbon dioxide and water, and also create some by products we're pretty fond of as well.

Discover the hormones that dictate whether a plant grows downwards with gravity, towards water and nutrients, or upwards towards light.
For more films like this visit www.twig-world.com

Discover the hormones that dictate whether a plant grows downwards with gravity, towards water and nutrients, or upwards towards light.
For more films like this visit www.twig-world.com

Photosynthesis Animation for Kids
This introductory, animated video explains the process of photosynthesis by which plants take in sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to produce their foodand Oxygen. Suitable for learners/kids new to the concept.

Now, in a newly released view of Europa's cracked surface, ruddy veins of hydrated salts mixed with chemicals such as magnesium sulfate or sulfuric acid break up bluish slabs of pure water ice. Compiled from data collected by NASA's Galileo spacecraft, this image release only amplifies our fascination for the moon.

ere's a crack in California. It stretches for 800 miles, from the Salton Sea in the south, to Cape Mendocino in the north. It runs through vineyards and subway stations, power lines and water mains. Millions live and work alongside the crack, many passing over it (966 roads cross the line) every day. For most, it warrants hardly a thought. Yet in an instant, that crack, the San Andreas fault, could ruin lives and cripple the national economy.

Could a liquid water ocean beneath the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa have the ingredients to support life? Here's how NASA's mission to Europa would find out.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) officials want to know who dumped pet goldfish into the state's Teller Lake #5. The lake is now overrun with the fish, which number upwards of 3,000, according to ABC News.

Being non-native, the fish present a threat to other life in the lake.

"Goldfish are not a native species and are very harmful to the local aquatic ecosystem," said Kristin Cannon, district wildlife manager for Boulder, Colo., in a press release. "We strongly encourage the public not to dump their unwanted pet fish in our waters. It is bad for our environment as well as illegal."

The first color pictures from the NASA space probe expedition to Mars have now been published. They look like -- well, they look like pictures of a lifeless, distant planet. They show blank, empty landscapes. They show craters and boulders. They show red sand. Death Valley, the most desolate of American deserts, at least contains strange cacti, vicious scorpions, the odd oasis. Mars has far less than that. Not only does the planet have no life, it has no air, no water, no warmth. The temperature on the Martian surface hardly rises much above zero degrees Fahrenheit, and can drop several hundred degrees below that.