Toowoomba, water recycleing

[silentC]

There are some other theories about how water got here, one of which is that it was created during the formation of the solar system and it ended up here because the conditions are right. Or maybe Earth is here because of the water.

As a matter of fact, I don't recall ever hearing that water has EVER been discovered anywhere else. There are traces or evidence of what COULD be water elsewhere but I don't think anyone has proven it yet. I think our position in the solar system is conducive to the existence of water. They've just discovered what they think are methane lakes on Titan - imagine swimming in that?

So, as far as where it came from, we will probably never know. Maybe one day someone will discover a new form of energy that makes it feasible to create water molecules. Maybe they'll blow us all up in the process. It wont happen tomorrow though and in the meantime all those thirsty Sydney-siders want to wash their Beemers and water their driveways, so someone needs to do something! ;)

[Zed]

the giant canyon on Mars was formed by water erosion.. they think. perhaps... http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060730.html

They reckon at least one of the moons of saturn has frozen water on it too. (Io or titan ??)

Some of the asteriods are just frozen water.


try www.badastronomy.com (http://www.badastronomy.com) = great site....

[silentC]

the giant canyon on Mars was formed by water erosion.. they think.

They reckon at least one of the moons of saturn has frozen water on it too. (Io or titan ??)

Some comets are thought to have ice at their core too. Although it's unclear to me whether they mean frozen water or some other frozen stuff.

Titan is where they reckon they have found methane lakes.

Regarding Mars, there ain't no water there now, if there ever was. None that they have found anyway. All they have found is 'evidence' of water, which includes what looks like water erosion. How do they know it wasn't some other liquid that caused it though? Maybe it was Martian juice.

As for the asteroids, I plead ignorance on that one. I'll take your word for it though.

Anyway, my point is that water appears to be rare in the solar system and most of it, if not all, is here.

[Zed]

my point in previous post (you clot :D ) was that Hydrogen and oxygen are comparitively COMMON, ergo, water is too! was I too obtuse ?:rolleyes:

[Rocker]

my point in previous post (you clot :D ) was that Hydrogen and oxygen are comparitively COMMON, ergo, water is too! was I too obtuse ?:rolleyes:

Actually, elemental hydrogen is very rare on Earth. Hydrogen forms only 0.00005% of the air. It is common enough in compounds such as sulphuric acid and hydroxides, but it takes a lot of energy to produce water from these.

Rocker

[goat]

years ago i watched a program on tv about desalination plants in saudi arabia they where like huge glass houses they pumped in salt water in to these glass houses and the sun did it's thing and out poured fresh drinkin water now the 2 things that australia isn't short of is (1) sun and (2) salt water we,re surrounded by the stuff it has got to be better than drinkin other peoples piddle, here's some info i found on the net



Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of desalinated water from the sea. In 1992, there were 18 desalination on the western coast, with a total capacity of over 0.7 million m³/day of water , and four plants on in the east coast, with a total capacity of over 1.1 million m³/day of water In 1992, actual desalinated water production. was about 675 million. m³.

[echnidna]

Solar desalination plants are simple even on a small scale.

[ozwinner]

Saudi (http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=desalination+saudi&btnG=Google+Search&meta=)

Al :cool:

[goat]

seems if australia did this it would also solve any electricity supply problems (for a while any way)


The Kingdom is now the world's largest producer of desalinated water. The 27 desalination plants provide drinking water to major urban and industrial centers through a network of water pipes running for more than 2,300 miles. Desalination meets 70% of the Kingdom's drinking water requirement. Several new desalination plants are under construction. Once completed, the Kingdom's network of desalination plants will have a capacity of 800 million gallons a day.
Desalination plants also generate electricity. In 2000, the Kingdom's desalination plants generated a total of 28 million Megawatt Hours

[Bushmiller]

water is H2O that is;

- except the additives liek flouride etc that we want and other naturally occuring trace elements.
Shoot me down like a dog - please - I want to be corrected if any of the abovce is wrong.Are you absolutely sure you want to add flouride? Did those nice aluminium companies faced with ever increasing piles of useless flouride suddenly find out it was good for us, by chance or did they fund studies to prove it was good for us.

Shame they kept running out of money. It was probably only coincidence that the studies were going the wrong way.

Regards
Paul

[Bob Willson]

Hi Bushmiller,
They were adding fluoride to water when I was a baby and that was BEFORE they invented (discovered?) aluminium. I still have all but two of my own teeth, all in good nick and I hardly ever go to the dentists. (About once every ten years)

[Bushmiller]

Bob

There was a huge push by the aluminium companies in the early sixties to include flouride in toothpaste as well as water. (I wasn't aware that flouride was introduced artificially to water befor this time>)Their sponsored studies/trials conducted were very questionable to put it euphemistically.

Are your teeth in good nick because of flouride or despite flouride? I think I have had two fillings in the last 25 years or is it 30 years and I have deliberately avoided flouride both in toothpaste and water.

In making statements such as these we are both guilty of making exceptions fit the rule. The aluminium companies tended to use the same techniques to make the claims fit the agenda.

Comparison tests from similar socio economic regions, control measures and representative numbers should all have been unquestionable but probably were not.

Apologies though. This post is on recycling water. My fault.

Regards
Paul

[Rocker]

Bushmiller,

You might like to consider this story from today's Australian: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19990895-2702,00.html

Rocker

[silkwood]

The idea that water is not still be made naturally is similar to the argument creationists use to negate evolution: if evolution is true, how come we don't see monkeys (or apes) partially evolved into Homo Sapiens? The answer is-opportunity. Evolution is still happenning, the opportunity for the same evolution to happen again is not available, the niches have been filled (apart from the fact(?) we didn't evolve from apes, we both evolved from a common ancestor).

Same with water (it didn't evolve from apes either:p :p ), all the conditions for abundant production of water are not now avaiable. Apparently water is still being produced, but in such small quantities in such rare conditions that it has no effect upon current water volume.

Does anyone know what effect production of water as a by-product of hydrogen engines would be (that is, if they can ever produce them effectively to be common)?

Cheers,

Mark

[silentC]

The idea that water is not still be made naturally is similar to the argument creationists use to negate evolution
I take extreme exception to that remark! Comparing me to a creationist :mad: ;)

If water was created during some event during the creation of the solar system, then I can quite easily believe that all that we have now was created then and no more is being created today. I'm not saying that it isn't, you are saying that it might be, is there anyone here who can say that it is? Sources please!!

BTW your analogy falls down because the processes that cause evolution ARE still present today, as are the processes which shape the Earth, and at the same rate that they were hundreds, thousands and millions of years ago. The same might not be said for the creation of water.

[Rocker]

There is plenty of info on the origin of water available if you search for Origin of water on Google. The consensus among experts seems to be that water was brought to the Earth by comets during a period of intense bombardment that occurred during the early part of the evolution of the Solar System. The fact that sea-level remains constant, apart from changes that are reasonably attributable to the state of the polar ice-caps, indicates that water is not being continuously created. If it were, coastal cities would be in even more strife than they are already, when sea-level is rising due to melting of polar ice.

Rocker

[silentC]

Here is the Wikipedia article on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_water_on_Earth

Note that this is not an authoritative source.

[ozwinner]

Rain and sandstorms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandstorm) may have pooled..

I like that bit the best.

So its true, all water comes from rain. :rolleyes: :p

Al :D

[silkwood]

BTW your analogy falls down because the processes that cause evolution ARE still present today, as are the processes which shape the Earth, and at the same rate that they were hundreds, thousands and millions of years ago. The same might not be said for the creation of water.

Firstly I said "similar to" not a direct comparison. Actually the part of the comparison I was trying to get across holds pretty well as an analogy- I DID state evolution still goes on, it's just not the same as it was. The ecological conditions and niches available are different, so we don't see ape-like beings developing into human-like beings. One of my favourite writers on this subject is Steven J Gould. Well worth looking up.

My comment on water being still made is the result of one of those wierd coincidences. I bumped into an old climbing buddy and he's now working as.. a hydrologist! I mentioned this thread and he's the one who made the "water still being created" comment.Unfortunately it was a brief meeting or I would have grilled him to gather info to blind you all with facts! Unfortunately I'm still a neophyte! On the other hand the creation of water is a given, chemical reactions occur all the time producing water as a by product. You probably created some today- why do you think your car exhaust rusts!:confused:

The concept that it was all water to begin with doesn't quite hold up, we have some chemical interactions that result in water which MAY not have existed before. Point is, it's irrellevant, even amongst those who believe there can be new water, it's accepted it is a meaningless amount in the overall picture.

I did a quick search and this is the first site I hit; http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem00/chem00147.htm

The point is chemical reactions aren't going to supply us with the water we need, the vast, vast majority (heck, for all intents & purposes-all) quantities of water are already with us.

I certainly wasn't aming at you being a creationist! I hope I didn't give that impression!

Cheers,

Mark

[silentC]

You probably created some today- why do you think your car exhaust rusts!
Are you saying my car engine creates water as a by product? I'd say that the water comes from the surrounding air or from the fuel.

Well the deal is that pretty much all the water that is created from these reactions was water once upon a time. For example photosynthesis makes glucose from water and carbon dioxide, and vaporization of saltwater (e.g. from lava flowing into the sea) makes hydrochloric acid gas. These are natural processes that consume water and make other chemicals, which can then recombine to create water again.
and

SO even though water is created in one process, it is used up again in the opposite process, so there is no net gain.

So what they seem to be saying is that the water is changing state into some other chemical and then back again. Yes, I selected these quotes from the link when others seem to be supporting the idea that "new" water is created all the time.

I'm not railing against the idea that it is, remember. I'm objecting to the point of view that "The idea that water is not still [being] made naturally is similar to the argument creationists use to negate evolution". If there were natural processes that created "new" water, then there's no reason why we shouldn't see them as abundantly today as we might have millions of years ago. On the other hand, if it was all created during one event, then I can easily accept that we wont see it happening again. Water is created as a byproduct of chemical processes but what some of the posters in your link are saying is that the water existed as water at some time in the past and it was converted into something else (like acid) as part of an earlier chemical process. So round and round we go.

I also believe that evolution proceeds at the same rate as it always has (if it can be said to have a 'rate'). In other words, the processes which bring about evolution are happening every day. You're never going to see apes turn into humans because it is a process that happens gradually over thousands or millions of years. To assume that it is no longer occuring at the same rate is to miss the whole point, in my opinion.

Have you ever been to England and walked inside one of the old houses? ;)

[silkwood]

Silent: notice in your quote the author says "pretty much". That's what I meant by "for all intents and purposes all" because the amount of water produced by chemical reaction is infinitesimal in relation to the amount of water on Earth. Yes your car does produce water from complex chemical reactions, taking the componentry from the atmoshere and the fuel. It is not just "left over water" from the air used in combustion. Did the molecules in this water come from water at some point? Probably so, in fact almost certainly. Were all of these available molecules originally present on earth only from water? Highly unlikely that all of these molecules came here that way, regardless of your preferred origin theory (keeping in mind that's all they are). However the overwhelmingly vast majority of them would have, given water's abundance and its utilisation of most of the critical components available on Earth. Note no-one is saying the molecules are new and have been created (well actually a few scientists believe we are receiving molecular bombardment which ever so slightly outweighs the loss from our planet,but, well are the words "bees-dick" familiar:D ).

I think the question "is new water created from existing matter" has to be answered with a resounding YES. As to whether those molecules only ever originally existed as water- probably not, but overwhelming majority yes. It is probably fultile arguing about this particular point as you are on the money when you say the mass production (absorbtion/creation/impact) of water does not and will not happen now.

By the way, look up "punctuated equilibrium", Gould (and others) suggest evolution is not a smooth line, but possibly a series of abrupt changes interspersed with smooth-appearing changes. We will not see apes changing into humans not only because the process is way to long for us to observe but the same conditions will not occur again.

Cheers,

[silentC]

Gould (and others) suggest evolution is not a smooth line
That's what I meant when I said "if it can be said to have a rate". It's like so many natural processes that occur constantly, in that they don't actually ever stop, but in fits and starts where nothing seems to happen for a long time and then they happen all at once, like a volcanic eruption or an earthquake which builds up over a long time and then manifests itself spectacularly.

I think we are more in agreement than disagreement. I'm still getting over being compared to a creationist arguing against evolution ;)

[Bob Willson]

Have you ever been to England and walked inside one of the old houses? ;)

Yes, I have. But that doesn't mean that the people were necessarily shorter then; it could just mean that the doorways were expensive to build. :U




As a matter of fact, I don't recall ever hearing that water has EVER been discovered anywhere else. ;)

No longer true silent. Just a few days ago there was an article that said that water had definitely been found on a distant planet outside this solar system.

[silentC]

it could just mean that the doorways were expensive to build
Wouldn't that be like saying the holes in a doughnut cost more to make the larger they are? :p


Just a few days ago there was an article that said that water had definitely been found on a distant planet outside this solar system.
Not that I doubt it, but I don't think that's conclusive yet. I must say it's beyond me how they can work that out. I suppose they're analysing the light waves or something to predict the molecular structure of the vapour they're looking at. Apparently another team had failed to find any sign of water a couple of months ago. Be interesting if it's true though.

[Daddles]

Wouldn't that be like saying the holes in a doughnut cost more to make the larger they are? :p


Not that I doubt it, but I don't think that's conclusive yet. I must say it's beyond me how they can work that out. I suppose they're analysing the light waves or something to predict the molecular structure of the vapour they're looking at. Apparently another team had failed to find any sign of water a couple of months ago. Be interesting if it's true though.

Stop being a cycnic. They had a chat with the little green men :doh:

Richard

[silentC]

So does it taste like Earth water, Daddles? :U