Toxic Oceans and Waste Plastic

Photo courtesy: GERALDSIMON00
According to the World Economic Forum, plastic equivalent to the contents of one garbage truck is dumped into our oceans every minute and it will double by 2030 and quadruple by 2050 if we continue on this path. 

Abstract: Causing the death of over 100,000 marine mammals and millions of fishes and birds annually, plastic waste dumped into the ocean has emerged as the biggest waste problem of planet Earth. While over 50 per cent of the ocean area is free of any national jurisdiction, increased ocean plastic is moving the world towards a global catastrophe.


Term Power

What is ...

Named after the ancient Indian mathematician and astronomer, Aryabhata was India’s first satellite launched into space by ISRO on April 19, 1975.

Antrix Corporation Limited is the commercial and marketing arm of ISRO. The office is based in Bengaluru and the organisation is a wholly owned government of India company.

The Mangala Valles, with Mangala the Hindu name for Mars, is a complex system of criss-crossing channels on Mars whose geological characteristics are very similar to channels carved out by flooding.

Doppler effect is the supposed increase or decrease in the frequency or wavelength of light, sound or other form of waves for an observer, while the actual frequency or wavelength remains the same, provided that at least the observer or the source is in motion.

The Oort Cloud is a giant shell of icy bodies at the very edge of the Solar System beyond the Kuiper belt made up of trillions of cold and icy objects.

Interstellar is the term used to denote anything conducted or existing between two or more stars. For example, interstellar travel is a term used to denote travel between planetary systems and stars.

Mangalyaan is ISRO’s successful Mars Orbiter Mission involving placing a space probe successfully in orbit around Mars since September 24, 2014.

Bhuvan is a software application which allows users to explore a 2D/3D representation of the surface of the Earth.

The zenith is the point on the celestial sphere directly above an observer 90 degrees above the celestial horizon.

The spectrometer is an instrument coupled to a telescope that records the spectra of a celestial object that can help in determining the properties of a distant celestial object.

The halo is the outer region of a galaxy, and can be composed of globular clusters, a few stray stars and supposedly also dark matter.

An event occurring when the Sun appears to reach its furthest north or south point relative to the celestial equator is known as Solstice. The celestial equator is a projection of the terrestrial equator out into space.

Collecting and interpreting information about the environment and the surface of the earth from a distance. The data is generated either by detecting the reflection of sunlight from an object or emitting a signal towards an object and detecting the reflection.

Geoprocessing is a GIS operation used to manipulate spatial data, which identifies the geographic location and boundaries on Earth. Geoprocessing operations include data conversion, topology processing and feature analysis.