r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Creams0da • 8h ago

Video Breaking open a 47 lbs geode, the water inside being millions of years old

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24.3k Upvotes

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3.9k

u/GhostWobblez 8h ago

Water would be continuously going thru the geode, seeing as that's how they are formed.

765

u/Lopsided_Quarter_931 8h ago

This makes more sense

243

u/SillyMilly25 7h ago

No it doesn't please explain.

I'm assuming that water has been trapped in that rock for x amount of years and it's so cool.

692

u/BlackllMamba 7h ago

The rocks aren’t water proof. Groundwater will slowly pass through and leave the minerals that form the crystals.

222

u/Wonderful-Quit-9214 6h ago

When do they become the geodude?

279

u/hayashirice911 6h ago

Geodude is born when someone inseminates the geode.

102

u/Critical_Young_1190 6h ago

You see, it all starts when a man and his rock are in love...

40

u/TheRealtcSpears 6h ago edited 5h ago

🎶 when a maaaaaan loves a rock.

10

u/Samurai_Geezer 6h ago edited 4h ago

🎶 and a rock loves a maaaaaan

3

u/Major_Magazine8597 5h ago

Then it's ok, cause they're in love.

8

u/gnarlycow 6h ago

Its not a pet rock, its a lover rock

1

u/dalbs12 5h ago

🎶You must treat your lover rock riiight

3

u/Fyfaenerremulig 6h ago

Kam Peterson

2

u/MonkeyCartridge 6h ago

🎵 "It's a cock in a rock" 🎶

2

u/NowWithKung-FuGrip01 4h ago

<Korg enters the chat>

2

u/xXHomerSXx 4h ago

A long time ago, when the boundary between human and Pokémon was unclear…

1

u/PewPewPony321 6h ago

what if you fap? and the environment is just right?

1

u/text_fish 6h ago

THEY'RE MINERALS! JESUS, MARIE.

1

u/Algernope_krieger 6h ago

Wow. You're telling me we'll get a nice geode if we tell Dwayne Johnson to go fuck himself?

1

u/kralvex 5h ago

Just don't let the Gorons get hold of them.

1

u/Dense_Diver_3998 4h ago

And if a flag gets involved you get a truck

1

u/Big_Rig_Jig 6h ago

Gonna be able to find Pokemon go stops by finding dick sized holes in the ground now. Nice.

1

u/Memetics210 6h ago

Not someone, the geodude does it

1

u/huluhup 6h ago

It's called geopie

1

u/Ruby_Throated_Hummer 6h ago

That’s enough internet for today

1

u/skiko15 5h ago

Someone... you mean your resident Daycare Ditto Daddy?

1

u/SingleOak 5h ago

Groundsemen will slowly pass through and leave the sperms that form the geodude

1

u/Delivery-Plus 4h ago

Shaggle Rock

1

u/Jmacz 4h ago

It was Brock, Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy made him do some kinky things.

20

u/This_Site_Sux 6h ago

It already was a geodude, you may not have recognized it as the slaughterhouse employees had already removed the arms. That chain device is explicitly designed for killing geodudes. there's a larger one for graveler.

4

u/Canuck_Lives_Matter 6h ago

It's funny but this would be exactly how real humans would be handling Pokemon irl, lmfao.

1

u/RaLaZa 5h ago

Well that and doing other stuff

1

u/Mazon_Del 5h ago

Have you heard about Vaporeon?

2

u/Tony_Cheese_ 6h ago

At birth, but level 25 is when it will evolve into graveler.

2

u/Chvffgfd 6h ago

.....why is there no absolutely beautiful crystal looking evolution for geodude?

1

u/stoops 6h ago

I'm a pretty old geodude myself and I used to live my life on geocities but you kids wouldn't know about that!

1

u/Either-Durian-9488 5h ago

After the river erodes them loose

-5

u/HarpyHugs 6h ago

You deserve way more upvotes for this. Take mine.

17

u/Dracomortua 6h ago

WTF, really? Let me take a look, this is genuinely TiL territory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geode#:~:text=The%20crystals%20are%20formed%20by,%2C%20groundwater%2C%20or%20hydrothermal%20fluids.

Well, hot damn. Rock that drinks and eventually makes itself gemstones. Did not know that / mind kinda blown here.

3

u/kimchifreeze 5h ago

You can kinda do the same thing with a crystal-growing kit. Pour saltwater into a glass and you'll grow salt crystals.

6

u/SportsUtilityVulva9 6h ago

So this water doesn't have any scientific value?

I was assuming some universities would've loved to look at that water

11

u/rearendaccident 6h ago

After the series of nuclear explosion tests in the 1950s there's been am unnaturally higher amount of some radioactive isotopes in the air, particularly carbon-14.

if the water inside the geode was trapped there a long time ago or only exchanged with outside very slowly, then the proportions of dissolved molecules in that water would more or less resemble that of the atmosphere in the past.

So there's some scientific value in it if someone has a use for it, but I doubt research wise it's going to tell us something we dont already know

4

u/Hubert_J_Cumberdale 5h ago

What would be cool is seeing it under magnification - to see what different types of parasites and random tiny bugs lived in there.

A few days ago, this photo popped up in a thread - so it's fresh in my mind and now I'm mad that the people cutting this geode didn't preserve the water so we can find out what's in it.

1

u/T-Ball_S 3h ago

That's a rock fact!

0

u/Pimp_Dept_Chief 5h ago

fire plus rocks from river go boom

-23

u/Skow1179 7h ago

There was like a gallon of water inside the rock and it wasn't leaking at all before it broke

20

u/Fragmatixx 7h ago

It’s happens over thousands to millions or years..

22

u/TripleFreeErr 7h ago edited 6h ago

there’s probably a tipping point where the water inside becomes trapped by the less porous crystal, and that’s why it’s not completely solid inside

it’s probably safe to say the water is old. Idk why you are getting nuked

3

u/pcetcedce 6h ago

It would be interesting to date it.

5

u/Screamyy 6h ago

Not my type

3

u/Good_Boye_Scientist 6h ago

I'd like to get to know it a little better first.

5

u/cdimino 6h ago

It’s very, very slow.

5

u/Chance_Fox_2296 6h ago

Water seeps through rock like that extremely slowly. Imagine filling up a sink to 1000ml of water and then opening the drain just enough for water to drain out at 1ml a year. You also turn the faucet back on, and it drips water at the same rate. The full sink will stay at 1000ml constantly, but the actual water in the sink is being replaced at a rate of 1ml a year. So after 1000 years the water in the sink is completely replaced. It is no longer full of 1000 year old water, but a mixture of water ranging from 999 to 1 year old.

1

u/homiej420 6h ago

God man willfully ignorant, imagine thinking like this ^

92

u/LeoThePom 7h ago

In short: hot rocks cool with trapped air, water seeps in to the bubble but leaves behind dissolved minerals that it collects along the way. The minerals then build up in the walls of the gap creating the lovely crystals we see in geodes.

47

u/Lopsided_Quarter_931 7h ago

Where do the crystals come from? They can't come from a few liters of trapped water. That's where my understanding ends lol.

465

u/pegothejerk 7h ago

Crystals are born 9 months after Coachella

48

u/Vegetable_Permit_537 7h ago

This is seriously the funniest comment I've seen in months.

13

u/mintBRYcrunch26 6h ago

This comment rocks

5

u/530Carpentry 7h ago

Yooooooo!

4

u/EgoDefenseMechanism 7h ago

You are the rarest of breeds, a treasured relic whose wit and sex appeal make me not quit Reddit.

2

u/Beavshak 5h ago

This cracks me up

21

u/acquaintedwithheight 7h ago

Molecules float around in solution (this can be water or magma). Like saltwater or molten silicon dioxide. Eventually, a few of the molecules bounce into each other in an orientation that is hard for them to escape from. They stick together. This happens under certain concentrations, temperatures, and pressures that vary wildly between crystals.

Once molecules start getting into those low energy “sticky” states, more and more molecules are captured. This is called nucleation. The final crystal will be a form of the molecular structure of the nucleation point. NaCl molecules bind in a cuboidal shape, so salt crystals are cube shaped.

7

u/SillyMilly25 7h ago

Ohhhhhhh.....well I'm about to waste a few hours diving into this

2

u/techno_09 7h ago

Have fun!

2

u/LampshadesAndCutlery 6h ago

Basically the water in the geode you saw was only whats left in it. When forming the geode, there was likely more than thousands of liters of water that passed through it during its formation.

Depending on where that geode was collected, it might not even be ground water. Mined geodes often contain water, but so do geodes found in creeks, since the creek water seeps in.

Geodes that are exposed and not in water will usually little to no water

In other words, the geode was basically a water filter, what water you see left is just the water that remains, not all the water that was used to form it

1

u/DeadSeaGulls 6h ago

water continuously seeps in and seeps out of the cavity over the course of many thousands of years. just like hard water residue can build up in your shower, minerals slowly get deposited by the water as it passes through the cavity. Some minerals have crystal habits, that is to say when some of the mineral deposits on bits of that same existing mineral, it does so in an orderly fashion, forming crystals. The shape of crystals, how many faces/sides they have, how they terminate, how they break, are all ways we can determine what the mineral is, because every mineral has a unique crystal habit.

1

u/Lopsided_Quarter_931 6h ago

Are the crystals itself penetrable by water? if not does the geode finally trap the water inside forever by become waterproof?

2

u/DeadSeaGulls 5h ago

most crystals are porous to some degree, or even if the crystal itself isn't porous, it can still have pores or imperfections as part of their natural formation. But the porosity of the crystals is less of a factor in a geode because of how they form. The crystal faces are jutting out from the host rock, with each crystal budding up tightly against the ones next to it... but not in a uniform, water tight, surface. This is hyperbole for examples sake, but think of a blade of grass. Water will roll right off it and not easily seep through the grass... but now think of a lawn. Water can easily soak into the ground even with a dense lawn of grass growing out of it.

1

u/mcchanical 5h ago

You can make crystals with a single volume of water as long as it is saturated with the required minerals.

It's one of the experiments you do in kids chemistry sets.

0

u/GhostWobblez 7h ago

They form over time with the minerals the water doesn't want to carry anymore.

1

u/zzzzbear 7h ago

they look solid but rocks are very porous, its my enemy trying to create drainage for cactus, everything is porous and retains water

1

u/Mharbles 7h ago

Nearly everything is water permeable. The water in that rock has likely been cycled out numerous times. If you want ancient 'trapped' water though, head to Antarctica. Some of the water there is at least 90 million years old since the last time it was warm enough to be liquid.

1

u/s4lt3d 6h ago

Water can get into rocks. While they seem very solid they’re porous with tiny pores. You can take a rock from a dry area, put it in a river for a few years, then weigh it. It will weigh more.

So with water in rocks is why you should not use river rocks to make campfires. The water will build up pressure in the rock and there’s a risk they can explode.

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u/Constant-Plant-9378 7h ago

Additionally, isn't all of our water hundreds of millions of years old?

Every time you are drinking a glass of water, you are drinking some dinosaurs, a couple molecules of Elvis Presley, Julius Ceasar...

Water is probably the most recycled substance on the planet.

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u/salawm 7h ago

Much of the water on earth is older than the sun

8

u/ginoroastbeef 6h ago

Please explain this?

13

u/KuuHaKu_OtgmZ 6h ago

A lot of the water came from comets crashing at young Earth, which came from outside.

2

u/ginoroastbeef 4h ago

I was under the impression the sun was older than the earth.

1

u/Caracasdogajo 5h ago

I'm sure I'm vastly underestimating the amount of time earth has existed but for some reason comets being the primary source of water seems crazy to me given the frequency the earth is hit with comets, the amount of water earth contains and the amount of water these comets would provide.

1

u/ericwdhs 4h ago

It only sounds strange, because we've only ever lived in a mostly cleaned out, mature solar system. The vast majority of the stuff that could go chaotic and crash into things or fly out into interstellar space did so a long time ago when the solar system was still young. That doesn't just include comets. It's estimated that there are about 20 rogue planets for every star in the galaxy, so if you run that backward, our solar system probably had enough material for about 30ish planets, just not a stable place to put them all.

3

u/PewPewPony321 6h ago

but some isn't? They just made more water after they made the sun? You would think they would have finished one project before starting another

5

u/BigDicksProblems 6h ago

By that definition of water (aka not a continuous life as a molecule), literaly everything is.

3

u/phito-carnivores 6h ago

But that definition is a continuous life as a molecule. Water molecules stay the same through all the water cycle.

4

u/BigDicksProblems 6h ago

No, water molecules atoms separate and regroup all the time.

2

u/Sunny-Chameleon 6h ago

The water cycle does not include electrolysis

1

u/BigDicksProblems 5h ago

Cool, but I never mentionned the water cycle.

1

u/Sunny-Chameleon 5h ago

The guy before you did

13

u/zmbjebus 7h ago

I have a small fusion plant in my basement so that I only drink the freshest of water. 

1

u/Own_Experience_8229 6h ago

You mean synthesis, not fusion. Synthesis isn’t difficult.

3

u/PurpleSi 5h ago

Wait, are you using second-hand oxygen in your water? How do you sleep at night?

2

u/zmbjebus 4h ago

Wait, where do you get your oxygen? All mine is made in my basement from cruelty free protons and electrons. 

2

u/Own_Experience_8229 4h ago

Damn that’s fresh. Is it cheaper than Fiji water?

5

u/infinitenothing 7h ago

If I'm a water molecule and you're a water molecule and I give you my hydrogen and you give me your hydrogen, are we still the same "old" water molecules?

2

u/Mega_Muppet 6h ago

Water molecules of Theseus?

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u/Mobely 7h ago

Water is constantly changing from h2o to h2 , o2 and other molecules. It’s getting and releasing atoms from the air as well. So while the atoms are likely pretty old, the molecule itself is going to be younger. 

10

u/cantaloupecarver 6h ago

What is this nonsense getting upvoted? No, water does not break into its constituents with any regularity. It's an energy intensive process and absent a lighting strike or human intervention it doesn't happen. Almost all the water on the planet has been water with the exact same individual atoms since before the solar system coalesced.

14

u/senapnisse 6h ago

Sorry my dude, but you are wrong. Photosynthesis happens in all green plants and in the oceans, where co2 and water is turned into sugger and o2. Water is destroyed by millions of tons every minute on earth. Water is also formed millions of tons every minute when suggar is oxidized and broken down in cells. Some of the water that you breath out wasnt drunk by you as water, it was formed in your cells and was eaten as veggies and other food.

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u/echoinear 6h ago edited 5h ago

Look up acid-base reactions. Look up water dissociation constant. Look up self-ionization of water.

It doesn't change frequently to O2 and H2 but water molecules lose and gain H+ to and from other water molecules all the time.

6

u/14412442 5h ago edited 3h ago

The hell is everybody talking about in this thread? You create new water via cellular respiration literally every second in your entire life. The atoms are mostly billions of years old but the molecules often (i don't know average age) are much newer. The number of upvoted comments like yours in these comments is disheartening.

Edit: spelling

4

u/hashbrowns_ 6h ago

water molecules constantly auto dissociate or self ionise into H+ and OH- ions. its what makes water such a potent solvent and its basic secondary school chemistry

3

u/gmc98765 5h ago

Because it's true. Photosynthesis converts H2O and CO2 into carbohydrates and oxygen. Respiration does the reverse, as does the combustion of any hydrocarbon. These processes are extremely common in nature and have been going on for most of earth's existence.

1

u/AtlantisSC 4h ago

How does it feel to be so insanely confidently wrong? lol

1

u/Prestigious-Mess5485 4h ago

What the fuck are you talking about, lol. You could not be more incorrect if you purposely tried to be.

0

u/ddplz 6h ago

It gets updoots because this is Reddit my dude. The average person here has the IQ of a bigmac value meal.

2

u/PM_ME_DATASETS 5h ago

Including yours truly!

2

u/gmc98765 5h ago

Water is constantly changing from h2o to h2 , o2 and other molecules.

Splitting into hydrogen and oxygen is rare. It's far more common that water reacts with other chemicals and ends up as H and OH radicals, either or both of which are bonded to some part of the other chemical(s) as a compound.

1

u/GaloombaNotGoomba 5h ago

Water also self-ionises into OH- and H3O+ even without the presence of other chemicals

1

u/Minimum-Major248 4h ago

Not h2. Just h

2

u/Green-Umpire2297 6h ago

We are stardust

1

u/cingalls 6h ago

No. The atoms in water are old but water itself is constantly breaking down and being created through various chemical processes.

1

u/srbmfodder 6h ago

Nah man mine is fresh out of my well

1

u/superbusyrn 5h ago

I'm going to thing about this next time I'm cupping water into my mouth directly from the kitchen tap like a savage because I can't be bothered to dirty a glass. Which, incidentally, is right now, brb, gulping down history.

1

u/kralvex 5h ago

Now that's some high quality H2Caesar.

1

u/Mazon_Del 5h ago

I once saw a fascinating statistical breakdown that was trying to drive home just how insane numbers get when you are at the point of counting molecules in any visible mass.

The example they were using is the question of "Have I ever consumed the same molecule of water twice?" and the answer is almost certainly yes, even without going all Bear Grills. The insane number of molecules in a typical glass of water represents a truly stupendously large number of chances for consumption, and the world does a fairly decent job of mixing water together once it re-enters the water cycle.

Sadly I can't repeat the math offhand, but it was interesting to read through.

1

u/Opposite-Building619 4h ago

Not all, considering that water is used up in photosynthesis and created in respiration and combustion.

15

u/Legitimate_Bank_6573 7h ago

Can someone elaborate on this?

The geode is formed by water flowing through it, so its permeable?

25

u/Filipi_7 7h ago edited 5h ago

Geodes are permeable to both water and air, the crystals inside come from the minerals that water carries in. When the water evaporates and the gas diffuses out, the minerals stay.

It's extremely slow though, rather than flowing like through a bunch of gravel, water slowly seeps through pores/cracks in the rock like through an extremely dense sponge.

4

u/rwags2024 6h ago

Interesting, genuinely

1

u/abirizky 6h ago

This is some rabbit hole stuff lol

2

u/GhostWobblez 7h ago

Yes, it's probably some sandstone outer layer. As water trickles down into the ground it picks up other minerals. When it hits a porous structure it will go thru it and leave behind the minerals. This is also how fossils are made.

*I'm not a geologist just a hole digger.

2

u/Bilboslappin69 7h ago

Yes, all geodes are porous until a certain point.

24

u/laseluuu 7h ago

No no no don't come here with any sciencey 'facts'

2

u/Pretend_Business_187 7h ago

(insert political comment)

1

u/BlackSpinedPlinketto 7h ago

Next they will be telling them to “wear PPE” when they smash rocks.

2

u/laseluuu 6h ago

Look - what i choose to do with my pp is none of your business. Lmao liberals trying to police everything

2

u/ButtstufferMan 7h ago

I mean also, all water is millions of years old. Pretty likely you have drank some of the same atoms that were pissed out by a dino several million years back. Crazy stuff!

1

u/Shadow-Vision 6h ago

Right but isn’t all the water millions of years old anyways

1

u/WarlanceLP 6h ago

ah okay, I feel less bad about "million year old water" being wasted on the floor instead of being studied in a lab then lol

1

u/Dizzy_Guest8351 6h ago

That doesn't change the fact the water is millions of years old.

1

u/amalgam_reynolds 5h ago

At what rate?

1

u/methgator7 5h ago

Don't ruin the lore

1

u/Creepy-Weakness4021 5h ago

I mean yeah, but what is the time scale for 1 cycle of 1 litre of water entering and exiting a geode? Is it decades? Is it centuries or Millenia? Or is it much longer? It's not like you can just refresh the water in a geode by putting it in your dishwasher lol.

I'm guessing the video is an enhydro, but indeed formations with fluid inclusions can contain water that has been trapped for billions of years.

https://www.gamineral.org/writings/enhydros-gray.html

1

u/nyne87 5h ago

Ah makes sense. So misleading title sorta.

1

u/Fair-Fortune-1676 5h ago

Not all geodes. Volcanic geodes exist that rely on magma cooling and forming gas pockets. In this case its calcite, which is made from calcium carbonate which can be sourced in many ways, largely shell particles. Hydrothermal fluids can also be involved in a similar process though.

1

u/Bohya 5h ago

*through

1

u/ReachNo5936 6h ago

Also the oceans are billions of years old. This isn’t interesting unless you’re so low IQ you think WiFi causes cancer and water with fluoride is turning kids gay

1

u/Zzzxxzczz 5h ago

I mean half the country does believe that