Worldwide, some 700 million people don't have access to clean water. According to the United Nations, this figure will rise to roughly 1.8 billion within the next 10 years. To prepare for a growing population and the imminent shortage of fresh, potable water, scientists have found efficient means of warding off this epidemic by drinking…seawater. The process is called desalination, and it's a technology that, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, could be key to ensuring a better future for the human race.

Desalination is surprisingly simple. Through the process of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO), desalination filters salt from seawater to produce fresh, drinkable water. By applying pressure, saline water is forced through a semipermeable membrane–basically very thin plastic sheets with tiny holes in it. In reverse osmosis, the membrane pores are incredibly small, only about 200 nanometers thick, allowing water molecules to squeeze past, but not salt. To put in perspective–a human hair is around 75,000 nanometers in diameter.