Facility would require more power than entire state uses and suck up vast amount of water in drought-stricken area
A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies.
The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/13/2026 - 06:30
05/13/2026 - 03:00
Matter Industries founder Adam Root has developed a filter to trap microfibres at home and on an industrial scale. But is it just a drop in the ocean?
The dinky device slots seamlessly into the modest space above my washing machine. A pipe snakes down from it, drawing in wastewater from my clothes washes. At the end of each wash cycle, the machine makes a polite whirring noise: that’s the sound of the groundbreaking bit of technology working, according to its inventor, Adam Root. That invention is a microplastics filter.
“The most common thing we hear [from customers] is: ‘I cannot believe how much material is coming out of the washing machine,’” says Root. “Somebody sent me [photos of] dinner-platefuls.”
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05/13/2026 - 02:00
The naturalist is venerated as a cuddly Paddington Bear, but he’s more than that. Don’t let the superficial backslaps obscure the political critique he makes
The excesses the capitalist system has brought us have got to be curbed somehow. Ordinary people worldwide are beginning to realise that greed does not actually lead to joy. Our economic system has been based on the profit principle: you have to come out at the end of the year having made a profit, and the bigger profit you have made, the better it is. In the short term that works, but it ends with disaster.
At this point, I should make a confession. The above sentiments are not mine at all. In fact, they were pilfered, purloined, shoplifted from a far more erudite radical thinker than myself. So, quiz time: which incendiary leftwing firebrand spoke these words? Zack Polanski? Antonio Gramsci? Ash Sarkar? At the very least, you would probably assume that, in the current climate, anyone daring to utter these dangerous fringe sentiments would be cast to the margins of our cultural life, only occasionally being let out for the purposes of getting shouted at on the Jeremy Vine show.
Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist
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05/12/2026 - 20:57
The treasurer has shown economic reforms should not be left to the too-hard basket, and instead be pursued with a sense of urgency
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Finally, a budget of economic reform. It has been too long coming. At this stage of the economic cycle, the budget should be in surplus. It should not be adding tens of billions of dollars every year to the mountain of public debt. Sixteen years after the release of the tax review commissioned by the Rudd government, our tax system should be supporting much better budget outcomes. It should be underwriting much stronger productivity growth. It should be delivering a much better deal for young Australian workers. And it should be delivering to Australians a much bigger share of the resource rents being extracted by the foreign multinationals exploiting our finite natural resources.
So, this budget doesn’t fix everything.
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05/12/2026 - 07:00
Ethylene oxide (EtO) is about 60 times more carcinogenic than believed in 2006, research finds
A new Trump administration plan to rescind 2024 regulations for toxic ethylene oxide (EtO) pollution more broadly aims to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to strengthen public health protections around hazardous emissions and could result in more of the toxin being released into the air.
Recent research has found EtO is about 60 times more carcinogenic than thought when the last regulations were developed in 2006. In 2024, the Biden EPA passed a rule that strengthened the regulations to reflect the updated science, and required the nation’s EtO emitters to collectively cut their emissions by about 90%.
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05/11/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 12 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00200-6
Deep differences: expanding the marine social sciences and humanities into the deep ocean
05/10/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 11 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00202-4
Offshore wind farms reshape ocean stratification and productivity differently in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea
05/08/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 09 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00206-0
A persistent gap remains in climate governance: ocean dynamics, despite shaping the pace and expression of climate risk, are still weakly integrated into its core mechanisms. COP30 brought this limitation into focus. Its final decision text omitted the ocean entirely, even as record ocean heat content, intensifying marine heatwaves and accelerating sea-level rise defined the physical reality of 2024–2025. This omission is striking given that COP30 simultaneously delivered the strongest ocean-related initiatives ever presented at a UN climate conference. This reflects not a lack of ambition, but a structural weakness: the UNFCCC system lacks the mechanisms needed to integrate ocean science into core decision-making, including standardized indicators, systematic reporting and institutional continuity. Addressing this requires embedding ocean indicators into reporting and Global Stocktake processes, strengthening coordination across climate and ocean policy, and anchoring emerging initiatives within the UNFCCC framework.
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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