The Water you drink was already drunk at least 4 times
Scientists claim that every glass of water contains almost 100% Jurassic pee.
The non-renewable resources are being consumed at a rapid rate. This is an international issue and a lot of emphases is being given these days to shift our energy needs to the renewable forms. Similarly, the problem of clean, drinking water is another huge worry for the mankind. Water has been on this planet ever since but the amount of consumable water is going down considerably which can cause a catastrophe in near future. According to a research, the natural system is preserving water for billions of years and some of the water molecules on Earth are probably older than the Sun. Dr. Conel Alexander, who is a scientist at the Carnegie Institute for Science and the co-author of this study, said,
“Our findings show that a significant fraction of our solar system’s water, the most-fundamental ingredient to fostering life, is older than the sun which indicates that abundant, organic-rich interstellar ices should probably be found in all young planetary systems.”
This announcement clearly indicates that the water on Earth did come from the interstellar space. This strengthens the belief of the scientists that life do exist in other parts of the universe. For sake of determining the age of the Earth’s water, the researchers focused on the ratio of hydrogen to deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen with an extra neutron in it. The ratio of deuterium is pretty high in case of Interstellar ice as it is formed in extremely cold temperatures. Despite the complications, the scientists remained adamant and worked their way to a conclusion according to which nearly 50% of our solar system’s water was present in the ancient cloud that spawned the Sun.
Once we know that the water we get today in our homes, offices, and other places is as old as our solar system, the only possible way is recycling and filtering of the water molecules. The natural system is doing this effectively and efficiently for billions of years but the latest human interventions are hindering the process to greater extents. This means that the water we drink has been excreted by the previous humans or other species like dinosaurs, many times. A formula has been designed to estimate the number of times the water has been drunk before. It needs a lot of guesswork but it does give you a general idea about the times the water has been recycled. The formula is given below:
Piss ratio = (total water pissed)/ (total water) = (total vertebrate biomass ever lived* piss rate)/ (total water) = (average biomass vertebrates * piss rate per year * years of vertebrates) / (total water)
You will need to do some research in order to get reasonable values for all these inputs. The answers can vary depending upon the values you use for the calculation but considering safe assumptions, the water we drink has been drunk at least 4 times in the past. This number can increase up to 10 times in extreme cases. As dinosaurs ruled over the Earth a long time ago, it is a common perception that every glass of water we drink has actually gone through the guts of a dinosaur. They ruled Earth for a whopping 186 million years. The video by Curious Minds, a YouTube Channel, explained that they might have drunk every single drop of water on this planet during those years. That water returned back to the water cycle of the planet after passing through their kidneys. The video explained this process in the following words:
“Humans consume a lot of water, but our species hasn’t had the numbers or time to process a large portion of the Earth’s water. Dinosaurs, on the other hand, had a long time to drink water. The Mesozoic era – the reign of the dinosaurs – lasted for 186 million years. That gave them time to drink a lot of water. So while most molecules in your eight-ounce glass have never been drunk by another human, almost every single molecule has been drunk by a dinosaur.”
This shows us the quality of the natural filtering mechanism that continues to provide us with drinkable water even after billions of years.