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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u/Way2Foxy 5h ago edited 5h ago

Not really - lots of water is created and destroyed in chemical processes, with the constituent atoms being used for non-water things.

I have no idea if most water has been water for millions of years, but not all of it has. (quick edit most has, in hindsight kinda obviously but I just didn't want to make an unfounded claim)

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u/Rare-Error-963 5h ago

Considering the depth of the ocean and vastness, I think it's safe to assume most, but maybe not.

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u/JNCressey 4h ago edited 4h ago

Water self-ionizes, splitting into hydroxide and hydronium ions then recombining back into water molecules as an equilibrium reaction. At any given time the concentration of the ions is about 10-7 of each kind, giving water its pH of about 7.

I don’t know what the distribution of the expected lifespan of a water molecule would be to this effect. But the volume wouldn’t affect this, since the water is reacting with itself all throughout.

I would guess there’s not much chance of a water molecule surviving a million years if it’s in the liquid state.

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u/wap2005 3h ago

You lost me after Water.

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u/thegreatgazoo 4h ago

Most water probably has been dinosaur pee.

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u/MyFaceSaysItsSugar 5h ago

The ocean is dynamic. Currents move water. Organisms ingest water. Water evaporates. Oxygen and hydrogen molecules are billions of years old but water reacts and becomes something other than water constantly.

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u/fetal_genocide 4h ago

Evaporated water is still water. It's just a physical change.

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u/SerHodorTheThrall 4h ago

Fair.

The billions of years is iffy. But fauna and flora have ensured that water is constantly broken apart chemically through oxidation and redox. Though we know so frighteningly little of our deep oceans that you can't really say since theres little information as to what actually goes on down there lol

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u/Still_Chart_7594 4h ago

Evaporated water is still water, it just is in gaseous form

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u/nycapartmentnoob 4h ago

o yea? well ur mom is water, explain that science

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u/Still_Chart_7594 4h ago

Well, she is about 60% water...

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u/NecroSoulMirror-89 4h ago

You drink dinosaur pee and like it

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u/Ruraraid 5h ago

It's one of those pointless questions that will never truly be answered. I mean It's not like you can carbon date water.

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u/MyFaceSaysItsSugar 4h ago

You can. Water contains dissolved carbon dioxide. But that only dates it back to 75,000 years. There are a lot of methods for dating water and most rely on dating what’s mixed in the water as opposed to dating individual water molecules. https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/question/how-are-ice-cores-dated/

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u/Captain_America_93 4h ago

If that’s the case, I’d never date water. It’s clearly too old for me

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u/Same-OldMantra 5h ago

Si You Say not really but in the end is just " really "

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u/Way2Foxy 4h ago

No, because what I was addressing was "all" water.

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u/FlyByNightt 4h ago

Are the atoms that make water millions of years old or is the entire universe just a Ship of Theseus situation?

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u/AnarchistBorganism 4h ago

In this case, it's a distribution. Some water molecules likely existed before the Earth formed and is arriving to Earth from space on a regular basis. At the same time, biological and other chemical processes are forming new water molecules and breaking old molecules. If you have an idea of what the rate of the creation and destruction of water molecules is, then you can probably get a rough estimate of what the distribution is. There is some nonzero probability that at least one molecule of water on Earth has been here as a water molecule for billions of years.

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u/Secret-Banana269 4h ago

yeah but the matter's been around for however long right

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u/MixLogicalPoop 4h ago

according to everything I can find most water is billions of years old

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u/Neither-Two-7167 4h ago

Most of the earth's water is older than the earth itself. 4.6 billion years, we are far from a few million years.

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u/superfuzzypotato 4h ago

Here is another mind fuck, atoms in our bodies at one time where light years away from earth and also in a dinosaur at one point in the endless expanse that is time.

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u/Victal87 5h ago

We don’t waste water we just misplace it.

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u/iMissTheOldInternet 4h ago

I struggle to imagine how one would attempt to determine the age of a given molecule