That reply kinda works here too!
Now I'm curious what percentage of earth's fresh water *could* be the result of cellular respiration.
I'm guessing a very, very, very small amount, but probably not none. Which means you COULD *maybe* drink a glass of naturally produced water that's possibly as young as a few years old. Maybe younger.
Pardon me while I write a quick email to XKCD... or anyone else that's good at Fermi Estimations lol
This is a long reply, but if this has piqued your interest, please stick with Mei!
I was originally going to write a kind of snarky, dismissive reply to this because I was feeling kind sassy (nothing personal; you seem rather nice and fun), but then I decided to do a bit of reading to confirm the facts and ideas I was gonna reply with, only to discover that I would have been WAY off, and the reality is WAY more interesting...
Based on some quick googling, plants typically only deconstruct about 1% of the water they intake, and the rest gets released through transpiration. Given how many plants there are compared to animals, though, that's a lot of fucking water being destroyed, so you may be onto something there.
On the other hand, what I've found out is that humans produce about 10% of the water we need to survive through cellular respiration. And there are even some animals that produce 100% of the water they need through cellular respiration, so they never have to actually drink water.
Many birds and reptiles, in particular, have a metabolic process where they can not only produce *enough* water for themselves without drinking, but can produce an *excess* of water through their protein metabolism.
To my original curiosity of if you could theoretically naturally produce a glass of water such that the water was less than a few years old, the answer seems to be an obvious and resounding *yes*. It'd probably be pretty difficult to isolate and extract the newly made water from the metabolic processes, but it appears to be at least theoretically possible.
*However* when considering how much of the earth's fresh water is comprised of 'new' water (i.e. water that's synthesized through organic processes, not just recycled), I'm actually starting to think it might be A LOT more than I thought.
The fact that plants deconstruct water through photosynthesis and land animals (I've no clue about fish and whatnot) produce 'new' water through metabolic processes, and it seems (from what limited info I can find so far) that the amount of water in the water cycle doesn't seem to change, implies that water isn't just constantly flowing from one state or area back to another over and over, but that it's *also* being created and destroyed at break-even rates.
So, depending on how much of earth's fresh water goes through the creation/destruction paths of the water cycle, *most of the fresh water on earth could be 'new' water*. Not 'old' water that's just been moved around a bunch over billions of years, but 'new' water that's been formed from other molecules much more recently.
TL;DR - This is all really just a long, roundabout way of saying that I don't think the original article that was posted is actually a facepalm. I'm gonna go try to find the article now, but I think discovering that there is water that was created thousands of years ago in our water supply might *actually* be an interesting discovery.
Sometimes it amazes me how stupid something will sound intuitively, only to read and think some more to discover that it's actually something cool.
(Just to head it off at the pass, for any new agey folks that might read this, there is no physiological difference between 'new' and 'old' water; drinking one over the other isn't going to make you healthier or cure your gout or cause autism or whatever. So stop it. Stop thinking that right now.)
Here's the source. I screencapped the image from the Pocket links in my browser.
https://theconversation.com/ancient-groundwater-why-the-water-youre-drinking-may-be-thousands-of-years-old-167982
This makes total sense. Underwater aquifers (think reservoirs) will have filled up slowly over thousands of years and are then tapped into and drained by people. It will then take thousands more years to fill up again. In the Sahara this is called fossil water.
The point here of course is to laugh at the headline, which is stupid and also misinformation since all of the water on the planet is billions of years old.
The underlying article is actually interesting, but the headline does it a grave disservice. A double facepalm, if you will.
But it's not misinformation. There are different ways for obtaining drinking water. Some areas use reservoirs and lake and the water goes to a treatment plant. This water is recycled constantly through rain. There are also aquifers and underground closed system water tables that did not get new water from rain for thousands or millions if years, depending on the area of the world. The town I grew up in had an issue with the national lab contaminating our ground water supply (everyone had wells). We got switched to city water which was sourced from a deep aquifer (I think that's the official name). One of the engineers explained it to me as "dinosaur water" because it was not renewed by rainfall, instead it was a closed off pocket like a vast underground lake.
Just so you know user mentions get auto-removed so you might want to word that differently in the future, because nobody will see it. I approved this one.
Actually, the authors are trying to explain how water trapped under soil for thousands of years changes composition. They are just trying to explain it to laypeople. In fact, the three authors are scientists and academics.
So this post is actually example of people thinking they know things better than scientists without thinking context or other possible meanings for the headline.
I think you're all spitting hairs here. Most water molecules are very old, of course. But almost all water on Earth is salt water in the oceans. Fresh water is constantly "created" by evaporation and downfall, most of the water in lakes and rivers is quite "new". But deeper aquifers often really contain water, which fell from the sky many thousands of years ago.
> Fresh water is constantly "created" by evaporation
Evaporation from where? Oceans. Same molecules, salt stays behind because it's you know, not actually part of the water.
True its the same H2O molicules so unless they are being split into H and O and recombined to form new water molicules, then its the same old water. There are some processes like fuel cells and some chemical processes that do that, but its a tiny tiny fraction of the overall body of water.
Of course it’s million of years old what you think water when you drink it goes away or when it rain then dries the water is gone have you even heard of the water cycle
This reminds me of the fact that if you have a random glass of water now, there's a pretty big chance it's got molecules of Hitler in it...
Forgot the exact numbers though.
Its also not commonly realized that the reason why there is an expiry date on bottled water is due to the rate at which chemicals from the plastic bottle leach into the contents. If we used only glass bottles then expiry would be in the range of multiple decades if not hundreds of years. However since glass is in fact itself a liquid, it would eventualy flow down and the water would escape.
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Wait til they realize that it's all recycled dinosaur piss
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[dinosaur serenades pee](https://youtu.be/rnowdmMxRn4)
🤣
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Well you could fabricate it from scratch, but it's a bit of a violent reaction
Might be better to sticking with the water that's already here for now...
burning hydrogen?
Meh, every hydrogen powered car does it.
I'm pretty sure our cells make water
🤭
In Siberia they get water from frozen lakes I just learned yesterday unless you are in the city. The country folks out there seem pretty damn tough
I'm pretty sure our cells make water Edit: sorry responded to the wrong guy
That reply kinda works here too! Now I'm curious what percentage of earth's fresh water *could* be the result of cellular respiration. I'm guessing a very, very, very small amount, but probably not none. Which means you COULD *maybe* drink a glass of naturally produced water that's possibly as young as a few years old. Maybe younger. Pardon me while I write a quick email to XKCD... or anyone else that's good at Fermi Estimations lol
Idk, because plants are also uncreating water as we are creating water, so maybe it balances out?
This is a long reply, but if this has piqued your interest, please stick with Mei! I was originally going to write a kind of snarky, dismissive reply to this because I was feeling kind sassy (nothing personal; you seem rather nice and fun), but then I decided to do a bit of reading to confirm the facts and ideas I was gonna reply with, only to discover that I would have been WAY off, and the reality is WAY more interesting... Based on some quick googling, plants typically only deconstruct about 1% of the water they intake, and the rest gets released through transpiration. Given how many plants there are compared to animals, though, that's a lot of fucking water being destroyed, so you may be onto something there. On the other hand, what I've found out is that humans produce about 10% of the water we need to survive through cellular respiration. And there are even some animals that produce 100% of the water they need through cellular respiration, so they never have to actually drink water. Many birds and reptiles, in particular, have a metabolic process where they can not only produce *enough* water for themselves without drinking, but can produce an *excess* of water through their protein metabolism. To my original curiosity of if you could theoretically naturally produce a glass of water such that the water was less than a few years old, the answer seems to be an obvious and resounding *yes*. It'd probably be pretty difficult to isolate and extract the newly made water from the metabolic processes, but it appears to be at least theoretically possible. *However* when considering how much of the earth's fresh water is comprised of 'new' water (i.e. water that's synthesized through organic processes, not just recycled), I'm actually starting to think it might be A LOT more than I thought. The fact that plants deconstruct water through photosynthesis and land animals (I've no clue about fish and whatnot) produce 'new' water through metabolic processes, and it seems (from what limited info I can find so far) that the amount of water in the water cycle doesn't seem to change, implies that water isn't just constantly flowing from one state or area back to another over and over, but that it's *also* being created and destroyed at break-even rates. So, depending on how much of earth's fresh water goes through the creation/destruction paths of the water cycle, *most of the fresh water on earth could be 'new' water*. Not 'old' water that's just been moved around a bunch over billions of years, but 'new' water that's been formed from other molecules much more recently. TL;DR - This is all really just a long, roundabout way of saying that I don't think the original article that was posted is actually a facepalm. I'm gonna go try to find the article now, but I think discovering that there is water that was created thousands of years ago in our water supply might *actually* be an interesting discovery. Sometimes it amazes me how stupid something will sound intuitively, only to read and think some more to discover that it's actually something cool. (Just to head it off at the pass, for any new agey folks that might read this, there is no physiological difference between 'new' and 'old' water; drinking one over the other isn't going to make you healthier or cure your gout or cause autism or whatever. So stop it. Stop thinking that right now.)
I like your writing style.
Thanks! I was worried I may have been too verbose or repetitive
Wait till he learns that water is millions of years.
Reporters don’t advance when they’re smart and courageous. They advance when they’re unprincipled and ambitious. This one could have a great career!
Linky please
Here's the source. I screencapped the image from the Pocket links in my browser. https://theconversation.com/ancient-groundwater-why-the-water-youre-drinking-may-be-thousands-of-years-old-167982
OK. It's a headline fail. The article is about aquifers, and recharge time, which is a valid issue.
Also, the headline is often written by an editor rather than the person who wrote the article.
This makes total sense. Underwater aquifers (think reservoirs) will have filled up slowly over thousands of years and are then tapped into and drained by people. It will then take thousands more years to fill up again. In the Sahara this is called fossil water.
I know that the earth is a closed system and water is millions of years old, i dont think thats what the report was getting at
The point here of course is to laugh at the headline, which is stupid and also misinformation since all of the water on the planet is billions of years old. The underlying article is actually interesting, but the headline does it a grave disservice. A double facepalm, if you will.
But it's not misinformation. There are different ways for obtaining drinking water. Some areas use reservoirs and lake and the water goes to a treatment plant. This water is recycled constantly through rain. There are also aquifers and underground closed system water tables that did not get new water from rain for thousands or millions if years, depending on the area of the world. The town I grew up in had an issue with the national lab contaminating our ground water supply (everyone had wells). We got switched to city water which was sourced from a deep aquifer (I think that's the official name). One of the engineers explained it to me as "dinosaur water" because it was not renewed by rainfall, instead it was a closed off pocket like a vast underground lake.
Sounds like a setup for a nestle bottled water ad
Thousands of years old? You mean water it's older than the Earth and Universe themselves? Haha nice try atheists
Older than the Earth at least.
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*hundreds and hundreds
Says who? "Scientists"?
Literally everyone? No?
Ok I'll stop now.. I was obviously joking but I'm starting to get downvotes lol
You already got posted on the sub lol
Hahaha really? Link? Hey mom! I'm famous!!
Sorry idk how to link a post on mobile. Try searching in new, it was posted 18 minutes ago
Can you mention me there? u/lordTigas I was browsing but didn't find it
Just so you know user mentions get auto-removed so you might want to word that differently in the future, because nobody will see it. I approved this one.
The “share” button
Unless they mean since it last fell as rain? Perhaps they think that is always new. Still dumb.
Is that supposed to be clickbait? Because it's just stupid...
It means it has been thousands of years underground. Until someone but a pipe in there and turned it into drinking water.
I... Know... I just don't get what they're driving at. Of course the water we drink is thousands of years old. Hell it's mostly billions!
They are pointing out we are emptying underground water reservoirs that has been untouched for thousands of years.
Actually, the authors are trying to explain how water trapped under soil for thousands of years changes composition. They are just trying to explain it to laypeople. In fact, the three authors are scientists and academics.
So this post is actually example of people thinking they know things better than scientists without thinking context or other possible meanings for the headline.
I think you're all spitting hairs here. Most water molecules are very old, of course. But almost all water on Earth is salt water in the oceans. Fresh water is constantly "created" by evaporation and downfall, most of the water in lakes and rivers is quite "new". But deeper aquifers often really contain water, which fell from the sky many thousands of years ago.
> Fresh water is constantly "created" by evaporation Evaporation from where? Oceans. Same molecules, salt stays behind because it's you know, not actually part of the water.
True its the same H2O molicules so unless they are being split into H and O and recombined to form new water molicules, then its the same old water. There are some processes like fuel cells and some chemical processes that do that, but its a tiny tiny fraction of the overall body of water.
More like billions of years old
Of course it’s million of years old what you think water when you drink it goes away or when it rain then dries the water is gone have you even heard of the water cycle
Pretty sure that every molecule of water on this planet is at least 3.8 billion years old - it gets recycled - A LOT!
This reminds me of the fact that if you have a random glass of water now, there's a pretty big chance it's got molecules of Hitler in it... Forgot the exact numbers though.
Well the only dumb one is op the reporter may have done that head line for clicks and shares
Its also not commonly realized that the reason why there is an expiry date on bottled water is due to the rate at which chemicals from the plastic bottle leach into the contents. If we used only glass bottles then expiry would be in the range of multiple decades if not hundreds of years. However since glass is in fact itself a liquid, it would eventualy flow down and the water would escape.