Posted on 05/29/2015 4:47:31 PM PDT by rickmichaels
That glass of water in your hand is dinosaur pee, apparently.
Not like it's unfiltered, but a science YouTube video posted this week raises the interesting tidbit that, since dinosaurs were around for 186 million years and water molecules are everlasting, it's a foregone conclusion that every drop of water on the planet passed through the prehistoric species once upon a time.
"While most of the water molecules in your 8 ounce glass have never been drunk by another human, almost every single molecule has been drunk by a dinosaur," the video by CuriousMinds says.
"So drink up and enjoy your dinosaur pee."
It's not the first time this theory has come about.
Charles Fishman, the author of The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, told Marketplace Morning Report that, "All the water on earth has been through a dinosaur kidney. Every bottle of Evian you drink from is Tyrannosaurus Rex pee.
"All the water on earth has been here for 4.5 billion years. It's all toilet-to-tap at some level."
Figures that the author's name is Fishman.
Forget the dinosaurs, a friend who works in waste treatment once pointed out that by the time the water in the Mississippi reaches New Orleans it has passed through half the people in the Midwest.
conservation of water
water can neither be created nor destroyed?
If that is so, how can there be acid rain?
What a fun factoid to have at your command when you want to freak out an envirowhacko.
This and other nutty "science" stories I'm running across these days, make me wonder if schools even teach fundamental science like the Water Cycle these days -- assuming the teachers were taught it themselves.
Back of the envelope calculation using the numbers from the Wikipedia articles on water cycle and biomass (ecology)
The turnover time is the time to run all the water in the physical water cycle through the biological water cycle.
Notation as in Fortran: 1E6 = 106 = 1 million
Total volume of water on earth = 1386E6 km3 = 1.4E24 grams
Annual biomass production = 1E11 tonnes carbon/year = 1.5E17 grams water/year
assuming biomass is CH2O, that is, biomass is cellulose but ignoring the one water molecule released per glucose when glucose is polymerized to cellulose. This factor isn't important given how rough the estimate of annual biomass production is likely to be.
So the turnover time for water is (1.4E24 grams water)/(1.2E17 grams water/year) = 1E7 years = 10 million years
So 6 or 7 turnovers since the last dinosaur peed in the drinking water (K-T extinction 66 million years ago)
</nerd>
Charles Fishman is sadly misinformed.
LOL!
>> Enjoy water? You’re drinking dinosaur pee
Good to know we’re not excluding the value of preschool theories from FR.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.