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> a fascinating world with a salty, subsurface ocean of liquid water—possibly twice as much as in all of Earth’s oceans combined. If we brought water back a co
by dmix 3y ago
> a fascinating world with a salty, subsurface ocean of liquid water—possibly twice as much as in all of Earth’s oceans combined.
If we brought water back a container of water from Europa would this be the largest amount of new water entering the earth since planets struck it billions of years ago?
I briefly googled it (I dont know much about this stuff tbh):
> The water on our Earth today is the same water that’s been here for nearly 5 billion years. So far, we haven’t managed to create any new water, and just a tiny fraction of our water has managed to escape out into space. The only thing that changes is the form that water takes as it travels through the water cycle.
Anyway interesting thought experiment.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoComets do fall from time to time, and Earth collects 5000 tons of debri from space each year. So I imagine Earth does gain a few tons of water from time to time.
- dmix 3y agoOh good point, I didn't think about Comets.
- jstanley 3y ago> Earth collects 5000 tons of debri from space each year That is a lot more than I would have guessed. I had thought that we were very slowly leaking precious resources by sending rockets into space, but I guess we're actually still gaining resources on average. (At least, I don't think we're sending 5000 tons beyond the atmosphere every year).
- hollerith 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mass#Variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mass#Variation
- tracedddd 3y agoDon’t commercial hydrogen fuel cells create water as a byproduct?
- tantalor 3y agoYeah, but you make hydrogen fuel out of water, so you're kinda just playing accounting games with the water.
- laurencerowe 3y agoHydrogen is mostly made by steam reforming methane, with half the hydrogen coming from the water and half from the methane. But then the fossil methane was made by bacteria decomposing carbohydrates and the carbohydrates were made by plants photosynthesising water and carbon dioxide. So it all comes from water in the end, but some of it has not been water for hundreds of millions of years!
- tredre3 3y ago> The water on our Earth today is the same water that’s been here for nearly 5 billion years. We create tons of water as a byproduct of many industrial processes, that's "new" water. Of course in the grand scheme of things the quantities are inconsequential, so the statement is probably still generally true...
- frogulis 3y agoIs it truer to say "the hydrogen and oxygen on our Earth today are the same [...] 5 billion years"?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ghayes 3y agoIf those hydrogen and oxygen atoms had not previously been bonded into H2O, you would have to say this is “new” water, right?
- namirez 3y agoExcept water is H2O where the oxygen comes from plants and plants get it from water and the hydrogen comes from hydrocarbon fuels where the hydrogen comes from water again. So technically you can never create new water on Earth but you can bring in more from the space.
- buffington 3y ago
- bilsbie 3y agoHydrolox rockets have been making millions of gallons of new water on earth. Even burning gasoline creates some new water.
- oh_come_on 3y agoBurning gasoline releases more h2o than co2 - think about that for scale
- coderenegade 3y agoIn fact all fossil fuels! When you split the carbon parts from the hydrocarbon, most of hydrogen parts end up as water. For every tonne of CO2 that's ever been emitted, there's a corresponding mass of water for which the hydrogen part was previously sequestered.
- jychang 3y agoEvery once in a while, I get reminded that people don’t necessarily have a scientific background. 1. Water molecules are not indivisible, of course. Many biological processes will rip apart hydrogen and oxygen, or combine them back together, and have been doing so for billions of years. Industrial processes do the same. So there’s plenty of “new water” from oxygen in the air, etc. 2. New water/oxygen/hydrogen land on earth fairly regularly due to comets, which are usually slushy balls of ice.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kcarter80 3y agoAs a percentage of total water on earth, how many of the H2O molecules do you speculate came from comets or industrial processes? Same question for the biological processes you mention.
- ramraj07 3y agoDefinitely more than a glass of water which was the original question anyway.
- foota 3y agoI'm not a scientist; but water is used in photosynthesis, which is probably the main chemical reaction it undergoes. [1] says that the C3 cycle consumes 120 GT of CO2 per year, that's 2.7267×10^15 mols of CO2. C3 carbon fixation consumes one mol of H2O per mol of CO2, so that's 2.7267×10^15 mols of H2O. That's 5 * 10^13 liters. The USGS says there's ~1.4 billion cubic kilometers of water on earth (who chose that unit?), compared to 50 cubic kilometers for the C3 fixation. That's a lot of glasses, but not many oceans. Perhaps a bigger factor might be from back and forth reactions in the oceans and atmosphere, but I'm not sure how to estimate those (e.g., water converting between different acids or getting hit by light in the atmosphere). [1]: https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Biochemistry/Fundamentals_of_Biochemistry_(Jakubowski_and_Flatt)/02%3A_Unit_II-_Bioenergetics_and_Metabolism/20%3A_Photosynthesis_and_Carbohydrate_Synthesis_in_Plants/20.04%3A_CO_uptake_-_Calvin_Cycle_and_C3_organisms https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Biochemistry/Fundamen...
- keepamovin 3y agoNo, water is brought to earth by meteors and comets.
- BurningFrog 3y agoThis is why I roll my eyes at alarmist talk of various processes "consuming X zillion gallons of water". Water is much stronger than that. It just passes through our processes and will outlast us all.
- postmodest 3y agoYour sort of responses to climate alarms are always the most disingenuous. We are consuming water from places where it has been relatively static, at rates far beyond its natural replenishment rate. THAT'S the issue. Yes, this is a closed system, and the human circulatory system is a closed system. But it's bad if you drain the blood from your brain faster than it is replenished.
- wddkcs 3y agoIt's only bad if there aren't undiscovered sources and/or processes we can use in the future to produce more water. It's technological optimism, not disingenuousness.
- redundantly 3y agoSaying there might be fixes for this in the future is also disingenuous. It's like saying military burn pits are okay because there may be medical advancements in the future that can be used to treat afflicted soldiers.
- wddkcs 3y agoArguing against optimism is arguing against the history of science. We have cures to diseases that were declared unavoidable divine judgements, we have achieved feats of engineering that would be unimaginable a century ago. I am not arguing for the deapoilation of the planet. We should preserve our resources as best we can. But future growth requires the usage of what resources we do have, in to achieve outcomes and efficiencies far better than we can imagine. I do agree though, if science wasn't verifiable, it would sound like a pyramid scheme.
- pests 3y agoGreat video I just happened to finish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjDnh7zfO98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjDnh7zfO98 "Where did Earth's water come from?"
- nojvek 3y agoIt depends on your definition of creating new water. When we extract crude oil from ground, hydrogen is made as byproduct. Similar with other industrial processes. That hydrogen released in atmosphere burns with oxygen to make water. So one could say that is new water. The sun is a big hydrogen ball, and some of the big sun flares may bring new hydrogen atoms to Earth. Which then end up oxidized into water, hence new water. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/Solar_Flare_Surprise.html#:~:text=%22We've%20detected%20a%20stream,says%20Richard%20Mewaldt%20of%20Caltech https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/Solar_Flare_S....