An earthquake, a "habitable" planet and the longest glass-bottomed bridge... What's more?!

An earthquake, a "habitable" planet and the longest glass-bottomed bridge... What's more?!

On 24th August 2016, Italy suffered one of the biggest natural disasters of its history. Since L’Aquila earthquake in 2009 when 308 people were killed, Italy hadn’t suffered a calamity like this one: Nearly three hundred people got killed and more than four hundred people wounded. However, could this disaster have been less damaging? 

After Aquila’s disaster, in Italy new rules concerning building construction were established in order to gave money so as to build these new buildings in order to resist natural disasters, like this earthquake. So Europe gave money in order to build this new buildings. Nevertheless, this money never arrived, and in 2015 a study revealed that only a 14% of the buildings of the most vulnerable part of the country were conditioned by the Standards of Seismic Safety. Moreover, the villages and cities that were completely destroyed with the last earthquake, continue in the same way: absolutely destroyed. It’s for these reasons that the 6.2-magnitude quake that suffered the centre of Italy, ruining Amatrice, Accumoli and Pescara del Tronto; has been so damaging.

But nevertheless in a paradoxical way, science has made a lot of efforts trying to find a “habitable” planet, similar to the Earth where we would be able to live in some million years, and China making the longest glass-bottomed bridge, without thinking in their own planet problems. With all that I’m not saying that is bad to invest in astronomy or in making bridges of glass. However I reckon that there are more important problems like preventing an earthquake, helping the Syrian refugees, solving world famine problem…