Water World

I've written quite a lot of posts about water. It's the most common substance on the planet as well as in our own bodies, so you'd think we know everything there is to know about it. Well, we don't. In fact we're just beginning to discover many of its extraordinary properties and behaviors, a lot of which we're not even close to be able to explain...

When I say that water is still a big mystery to us, I mean it; I'll just list a couple of posts written by me about this ubiquitous enigma:

Remember Water?
Water's Fourth Phase
Wonderful Plants... & Water
Be Kind To Your Water: It Remembers!
Wonderful Water

There's something about the molecule that consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, something we don't quite understand yet, that gives this life enabling fluid some unique properties that aren't found in any other fluid we know of. One such property we're all acquainted with, and that is that water's solid state, ice, floats on its fluid state; ice is lighter than water. We all know this, we think it's normal, but it's really quite special; other substances do not exhibit this behavior, as their solid states sink to the bottom of their fluid states. Think that's trivial? It may not be; scientists believe that this unique behavior might have something to do with the fact that all life didn't disappear during Earth's early ice-ages; with the water being isolated beneath a shielding of ice, it didn't freeze solid all the way to the bottom of oceans and lakes, granting life in that water the chance to go on living.

As you can see in the list above, some years ago I already wrote about Water's Fourth Phase, which is also liquid, or rather somewhere between fluid and solid, where water molecules form groups in hexagonal patterns. I recommend you read that post to learn more about this phase's remarkable properties. This week I've stumbled across two videos with some more remarkable discoveries about water and our planet. The above linked video is about a very recent discovery and hypothesis that the early Earth could very well have been a water planet, with no dry land at all. This means that much of the water that once graced a truly blue planet is now contained within its innards, and that billions of years from now the oceans may well dry up completely. And no, that's not to say that we don't have to worry about rising sea-levels in the much nearer future. The below linked video is about two new states of liquid water that have recently been discovered, with those states appearing at certain temperatures, and endowing the liquid with yet more amazing new properties and behaviors.

Water is amazing. Just think about all the world's creation stories and myths; almost all of them have a central role for water, and many of them contain a story of a flooding of some kind. Water and life are not only inextricably intertwined, they're also equally mysterious. Enjoy the videos, and please revisit my previous posts if you want to learn more about this amazing liquid!

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