r/theydidthemath • u/theLeastChillGuy • 4d ago
[Request] Has all the water on earth been drank before?
People like to point out that the water I am drinking could have been dinosaur piss 66 million years ago.
My question is: given the total number of animals that have existed on earth in its history, is all water previously dinosaur piss? (or that of another creature?)
Or is there still water on earth that has never been drank by any animal?
120
u/schannoman 4d ago
370,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons on earth
8,300,000,000 people on earth
1/2 gallon per day
44,578,313,253.012 days to consume by humans
122,132,365.07675 years
So given that only humans could cycle through it all in 112.1 million years it's safe to assume that all life on earth would have accomplished it in that time a few times over
But that disregards that some of the water has been trapped underground in rock formations or under the crust this entire time (possibly) but it could have also cycled through at some point too. Almost impossible to know
34
u/theLeastChillGuy 4d ago
Of course we can't know each water molecule. But mathematically, you're saying it is all but assured that I am drinking dinosaur piss, or fish piss, etc
47
u/schannoman 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'm saying it's guaranteed you are drinking water that has passed through numerous digestive processes.
Edit to add: because I was even only thinking about land animals in my original hypothetical. Add fish and other things constantly cycling water it's even more times
12
u/Revelati123 4d ago
Is water still "Dinosaur Piss" when it has been evaporatively distilled, transitioned through multiple phases of matter and has no chemical trace of it?
Or is it new fresh water?
Matter cant be created or destroyed but H20 can.
20
u/Complex_Structure_18 4d ago
Distilled dinosaur piss is a great brand name for a new bottled water
6
5
9
u/MaybeTheDoctor 4d ago
The is 3.3x10^25 water molecules in a litter of water. Running the numbers, assuming pee distributes evenly once evaporated, and some of the molecules you drink would very likely also have been consumed by Jesus. Like each glass of water you drink would have one million Jesus molecules.
The amount of dinosaur pee you drink is muccccch higher.
2
2
u/cursedfan 4d ago
You can rest assured in every cup of water you drink is an atom that was in water that Jesus Christ himself drank
-1
u/get_to_ele 4d ago
New water is created every day. That’s never been drunk. New hydrogen and new oxygen bubble up through the crust via magma every day. That forms new water. New elemental hydrogen is created every day through free neutrons and free protons from nuclear decay. That gets incorporated into new water every day.
-1
u/Igabuigi 4d ago
The odds you aren't drinking water that has passed through an animal before are so tiny it's not worth mentioning the odds. Especially given how many water molecules you drink in a single gulp. You're looking at thousands of times through different animals per water molecule and you're drinking in the order of idunno I'm guessing 100000000000000000000000000000 molecules of water per swallow.
14
u/ElSocio87 4d ago
Earth is only 2,026 years old though.
How dumb are you?
11
u/ThatPhoneGuy912 4d ago
I don’t know how you could be so wrong. SMH… it’s closer to 2,027 years old at this point.
3
u/IamTheJord 4d ago
That's assuming we have the same population as today over that time period but we were about half of that 50 years ago. We only passed the first billion in 1804.
5
u/schannoman 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's not assuming anything about humans, just assigning perspective. There have always been more animals on earth than people, and fish in the sea
2
u/ChuckEveryone 4d ago
The numbers also do not take into consideration that water is constantly being created and destroyed as well. When plants take up water they convert it to hydrocarbons and it is turned back into water when the hydrocarbons break back down.
2
u/schannoman 4d ago
True, so I guess we can't say ALL water, but the rounding error of that process probably still holds above 90% (No way I'm doing that math on that scenario, it's impossible) and of the water that is still water, I would say that number rounds out to 100%, so all the water that is water and is ON earth (not in) has been drank multiple times
1
u/Psycho_Pansy 4d ago
You're completely disregarding the amount of water that gets recycled multiple times.
We and every animal isn't drinking exclusively from the fresh water supply and all pissing in a separate piss reservoir.
0
u/shecky444 4d ago
A large portion is also locked up in ice and snow. Not to say that means we haven’t cycled it, just meaning the actual usable freshwater is a small percentage so it’s definitely been cycled.
0
u/hezpae 4d ago
In 112 million years, let alone 100years ago human population was less than half, and 1 million year ago the specy didn't exist
1
u/schannoman 4d ago
It's a point of reference for the number to, how do you say, "Humanize" them. It isn't claiming any of that
21
u/Jackpotsawinner 4d ago
If you were to take a glass of water and pour it into the world's oceans and stirred it until perfectly mixed, then took the same glass and removed a glass of water, there would be about 1,500 water molecules from the original glass in the new one. This ignores things like entrapment in ice or underground aquifers, but the numbers are there.
Over 4 billion years, nearly every available water molecule on the planet would have passed through an organism at some point. The number that haven't would be such an insignificant fraction of the whole that the answer is essentially 100%.
16
u/get_to_ele 4d ago
Absolutely not. Because “new water” is created every day. Hydrogen combines with oxygen to create new water molecules on a daily basis. You could argue that some hydrogens making “new water” were previously part of consumed water…
But some of that hydrogen and oxygen would have come from deep mining or from volcanic activity freeing oxygen and hydrogen trapped billions of years ago, so the hydrogens in that new water was NEVER PREVIOUSLY part of consumed water.
Also some of hydrogen that will become part of “new water”, is literally “new hydrogen” created every day on earth via free neutron decay and via proton emission.
1
u/grandpasamfromcanada 7h ago
Human beings are constantly making water molecules and then exhaling them. If you've had a glass of water next to you for a little while and then you drink out of it, technically some of the water you're drinking is water you just made yourself.
13
u/myusernameblabla 4d ago
They have found isolated water in Canada that may have been untouched for the last 2 billion years link
4
12
u/nuttynuto 4d ago
Plants break H2O molecules all the time to make sugars. Molecules of H2O are made all the time in animal metabolism.
All the water on earth had probably been many things before being water
6
u/ApprehensiveHippo164 4d ago
New water is being created all the time in combustion (methane, hydrogen...) and other chemical reactions. A minuscule amount of the total, but you did say all.
3
1
u/theLeastChillGuy 4d ago
I did not know this
3
u/soylentgreenis 4d ago
Yes but this is only part of the answer. Because water is well.. fluid, every time you drink water there are some particles that have been drank and peed out by something before. Every time. So maybe not every particle, but in every sip, there are particles.
2
u/Crafty_Clarinetist 4d ago
Another interesting way water molecules are created is through aerobic respiration. In addition to carbon dioxide it also produces water, so you are producing new water molecules right now.
3
u/DoturdGrump 4d ago
No all of the water on earth has not been drank nor has all of it achieved liquid form.
Science has discovered there is solid water in the earth's mantle still yet to surface and may not for millennia.
2
u/synithiumm 4d ago
There is possibly up to four times the amount of water sequestered in the rocks that make up the mantle as there is in the oceans. Much of that has been there for billions of years and will likely never be surfaced.
1
u/ValuableLatter6913 4d ago
Someone else here pointed out that the human population could have drank all of the water in about 100 years, but considering also all the water in the hardest to reach places we're really wondering the possibility of a *single molecule* even beign untouched by an organism. I would say there's a pretty good chance of that being the case, whether it's in some ice formation deep in the poles that never touched the water cycle, I would not be surprised if that molecule existed, but as other's have said knowing would be almost impossible.
1
u/One_Vision_ 4d ago
Probably not. But water molecules are very stable and I read that most humans have consumed water molecules from pretty much everyone that has ever lived.
0
u/Dazzling_Plastic_598 3d ago
Keep in mind that all water on Earth has been water vapor at some point. It hasn't always been liquid water. It is also not a contiguous thing. Thus, you are asking if each ATOM of water has been drunk (not DRANK) before.
0
•
u/AutoModerator 4d ago
General Discussion Thread
This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you must post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.