There is no shortage of water on Planet Earth. We’re literally two-thirds covered in the stuff.

There is, however, an acute shortage of fresh, drinkable water in many places. Up til now, desalinization of sea water has been a prohibitively expensive and complex technological exercise. But that may be about to change . . .

. . . thanks to Man’s new best friend “Graphene.”

Graphene is basically a chicken wire-like lattice of plain old Carbon atoms. It’s a substance that is proving to have amazing properties and a myriad of applications.

According to this report, one of them might be filtering sea water. A Graphene water filter promises to be anywhere from 100 to 1000 times more efficient than the current state-of-the-art reverse osmosis plants currently in wide use by the Saudis. (The desert oil emiriates of the Middle East demonstrate that desalinization isn’t a problem if you have unlimited funds.)

But drought happens. Always has. Always will. So for the rest of the world, this technological breakthrough holds out the promise of a radically improved quality of life for billions.