Something Salty

[TommyNeutron]

Hello i am new to this forum. This will be my first post. Science is my favorite.I hope to learn a bunch here. That was my short intro.

 

So I duno why i started researching it, but i ended up with a ton of tabs open on my internet browser and figured just as usual i end up with more questions then answers.

So instead of delving deeper or going ahead i want to ask a question and see where it takes me. Its great thing to get different perspectives on a subject.

 

I wanted to know why our oceans were so salty after reading the south pole ice caps are 70% of earths fresh water.

I found out salt comes from rocks and its stripped off by the rain, because the rain is slightly acidic from the carbon that is in the atmosphere during the rain formation.

 

I wana know more but like i said i have more questions then answers, and one question really dont cut the cake.

Today 71% of earth is covered in ocean, that means theres only 29% landmass on Earth.

NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center estimates that 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallon is in the earths ocean.

Google says 3.5 percent of our ocean is pure salt.

There is 4.5 ounces of salt in a gallon of ocean water witch means there is 9.91884375E19 lb of salt in our oceans.

 

So the internet says because of the inflows and outflows. out rivers and lakes are able to stay relatively low salt or no salt.

 

I try to picture the earth a long long time ago.

There are a lot of conflicting theorys with our history and science and religion.

Our history books say there was a big bang and a great flood and we have a moon that effects our planets spin, wobble, gravity and who knows what else.

 

What will happen in the future as more salt is deposited into our oceans, will our oceans become over saturated with salt?

Will this impact sea, air and land life?

 

I dont know if i even asked a question but i found this all very interesting and would love to read your expressions of thought on anything related to this subject.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ihcisphysicist]

I don't think we need to worry about the balance of salt any time soon or for at least thousands of zillion years because all the salt that is being dumped in the ocean comes from earth itself so at no point it will be toxic for earth or its inhabitants. Secondly, the more salt is passed down in on the ocean the cycle but continues and some more of it is trapped under the earth's crust away from water bodies or water line.

[dimreepr]

I don't think we need to worry about the balance of salt any time soon or for at least thousands of zillion years because all the salt that is being dumped in the ocean comes from earth itself so at no point it will be toxic for earth or its inhabitants. Secondly, the more salt is passed down in on the ocean the cycle but continues and some more of it is trapped under the earth's crust away from water bodies or water line.

 

 

What about the Dead Sea?

 

The sea is called "dead" because its high salinity prevents macroscopic aquatic organisms, such as fish and aquatic plants, from living in it, though minuscule quantities of bacteria and microbial fungi are present.

 

[Ihcisphysicist]

 

 

What about the Dead Sea?

 

What about it, can't there be some freak occurrences or simply accumulation/ over lodge of salt in any region other than the places where we are accustomed with.

[michel123456]

The rivers carry salt in the oceans? Are the rivers salty?

[Strange]

The rivers carry salt in the oceans? Are the rivers salty?

 

I think they only have minute amounts of ions dissolved from rocks. Over millions of years this has been concentrated in the oceans (as it has nowhere else to go).

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/whysalty.html

[michel123456]

Well one cannot consider at the same time that salinity is increasing and that salinity is stable. These are two mutually exclusive.

Most of the sites I have read are proposing that salinity has increased over the times. The problem to that point is that it gives a clock that provides arguments to the young earth creationists.

I found this site which is so trouble to me which side is supporting but nevertheless with interesting stuff

Where I read

Theoretically, in a closed system, measuring the salt content of a body of water would work to calculate an approximate age. Imagine an initially fresh body of water in which salt is continuously added. If a somewhat constant rate of accumulation of the salt is known, and the present amount of salt in the water is known, then a simple algebraic calculation would render the age of that particular body of water. This is exactly what many people have tried to do over the years.

Edmund Halley first addressed the method of testing the ocean's salinity in 1715. Halley, an astronomer, was the first real proponent of using the salt clock to calculate the age of the Earth. He was the first to observe that oceans and certain lakes were fed by streams and were therefore constantly receiving more salt. Halley could not test his theories, however, because he needed to know the salt content of the oceans earlier in time to calculate a rate of accumulation (Dalrymple, 2004, p 39). In 1876, T. Mellard Reade looked into this process and renamed it chemical denudation. Reade came up with a calculation that it would take 25 million years for the sulfates of calcium and magnesium to reach their present concentrations in the oceans. Others tried the method, yielding similar dates. John Joly calculated an age of 99.4 million years in 1899. Ten years later, Joly revised his equations and calculated the age to be between 80 and 150 million years old. George F. Becker found the age of the Earth to be between 50 and 70 million years old when he used the salt clock method in 1910 (40-41).

The dates calculated by all who attempted this method were wrong because of several fundamental flaws in the system. First of all, to use the salt clock as an actually clock, you must assume that the starting point would be 0% salinity. This, of course, could never be known because no one was around to measure the salinity of the oceans right when they formed. Also, people assumed that the ocean is an eternal reservoir, and when the salt is dumped in the ocean, it stays there permanently. This assumption is false as it has been later proved that elements of the ocean are being constantly recycled and leave the water. As plate tectonics shapes our Earth, sea beds rise and evaporate, leaving large salt deposits. Oceanic plates subduct and melt into the Earth which causes volcanoes to erupt which spew material containing salt that becomes incorporated into the land, which then starts the process all over again.

 

And exactly after these statements, I read the following

The Earth, including the salt in the ocean, is in a constant state of flux, on a very large cycle. In fact, the amount of salt lost from the ocean and the amount it gains are about the same. This means that the salinity of the oceans does not gradually increase, or even change greatly, but is actually in a state of equilibrium. Another fundamental flaw in this system is that the rates of erosion, solution, rainfall, and runoff cannot be measured over large amounts of geologic time. They simply vary too much to yield any constant (41). Also, the fact that different elements tend to spend different amounts of time in the ocean adds to the confusion of the calculations.

 

Equilibrium sounds good to me. It means salinity is stable over time. It also means that the statement "Over millions of years this has been concentrated in the oceans (as it has nowhere else to go)" is inaccurate.

[Strange]

Equilibrium sounds good to me. It means salinity is stable over time. It also means that the statement "Over millions of years this has been concentrated in the oceans (as it has nowhere else to go)" is inaccurate.

 

I don't see that those have to be contradictory. It could have taken millions of years for enough salt to be washed into the oceans for them to reach equilibrium.

 

But maybe they started out salty and it is water on land that is unusual in not being salty (because it is distilled from the oceans).

[michel123456]

 

I don't see that those have to be contradictory. It could have taken millions of years for enough salt to be washed into the oceans for them to reach equilibrium.

 

But maybe they started out salty and it is water on land that is unusual in not being salty (because it is distilled from the oceans).

I like that.

[dimreepr]

What about it, can't there be some freak occurrences or simply accumulation/ over lodge of salt in any region other than the places where we are accustomed with.

 

 

The oceans have died before, salinity may cause the next because global warming will accelerate salinity through a warmer atmosphere, that will contain far more water, a double whammy; I can’t be bothered to explain further until you’re prepared too, at least, try to understand.

Edited June 22, 2016 by dimreepr

[John Cuthber]

Salt can get "recycled" from oceans to land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_flat

[dimreepr]

Salt can get "recycled" from oceans to land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_flat

 

 

Either way, no life.

[John Cuthber]

 

 

Either way, no life.

The lack of salt or water will kill you.

So?

[dimreepr]

The lack of salt or water will kill you.

So?

 

 

Given the thread, context.

[Ihcisphysicist]

 

 

Either way, no life.

But isn't that the whole point. I mean Science states that we are not the first consciousness to walk on land but as time elapsed and things started to change humankind arose right. So I see no problem if time that giveth us taketh us away too.

[dimreepr]

But isn't that the whole point. I mean Science states that we are not the first consciousness to walk on land but as time elapsed and things started to change humankind arose right. So I see no problem if time that giveth us taketh us away too.

 

 

No, of course not, given enough time everything dies, so what?