Seawater is salty. The salt, mostly the same stuff you shake on food, can be measured in parts per thousand. The more than one billion cubic kilometers (over 300 billion cubic miles) of water in the oceans contain the salts delivered to the sea by rivers, underground springs, and oceanic thermal (volcanic) vents (geysers), all of which carry dissolved solids. Over the course of four billion years, the salts have added to about 35 parts per thousand, a little more in some arid areas and a little less in some humid ones (from dilution caused by rain, river discharge, and ice melt). Some of the dissolved substances are “biolimited”; that is, organisms use them to make hard parts like shells and reefs. Salt deposits, mined from strata of varying thickness, attest to Nature’s littering: When water evaporates, it leaves behind salts like a discarded McDonald’s sandwich bag. Layers of salt on dry land simply indicate that there was once a sea or large lake that evaporated long ago.
To the unscientific eye, there’s no ostensible source of the salt. Stand by a river or lake, look at the water. See any dissolved substances? Of course not. They are invisible. Yet, as you look at the water, there’s probably some dissolving of local rocks adding minute amounts of salts, including, if they are present in the area, heavy elements like gold. Yes, you guessed it. There’s dissolved gold in seawater that you swallowed when you were tossed around by a wave at the beach.
The oceans weren’t originally salty. The process took time and the recycling of Earth’s water from sea to land and back again in the hydrologic cycle you studied in elementary science class. The process took place out of the sight of human—actually, out of the sight of any—eyes. The inostensible acquisition of salts in the ocean is much like the inostensible acquisition of personality traits that lead to inexplicable or unexpected behavior.
As each of us grows, we are like the oceans. We get a constant influx from all those ostensible and inostensible sources of influence. When we read about someone’s committing an act of atrocity, we say, “Why didn’t we notice? Why didn’t someone know what was going on? Nothing like this was apparent.”
Each of us is an ocean of dissolved influences. The widespread and constant influx over a lifetime makes determining the source of even our own “salt content” difficult or even impossible to determine. Some of the salts of idea and behavior go back into our early history. Some are recycled. Some left behind. Some are still with us in varying proportions, more where the influence was strong and less where it was diluted by fresh waters of new emotions and ideas.
When you look out over the sea, realize that on average only 96.5% of what is ostensible is actually water. The rest is dissolved solids. Invisible, but there. When you look at another person, realize that much is hidden, and much derives from an unknowable source.
To the unscientific eye, there’s no ostensible source of the salt. Stand by a river or lake, look at the water. See any dissolved substances? Of course not. They are invisible. Yet, as you look at the water, there’s probably some dissolving of local rocks adding minute amounts of salts, including, if they are present in the area, heavy elements like gold. Yes, you guessed it. There’s dissolved gold in seawater that you swallowed when you were tossed around by a wave at the beach.
The oceans weren’t originally salty. The process took time and the recycling of Earth’s water from sea to land and back again in the hydrologic cycle you studied in elementary science class. The process took place out of the sight of human—actually, out of the sight of any—eyes. The inostensible acquisition of salts in the ocean is much like the inostensible acquisition of personality traits that lead to inexplicable or unexpected behavior.
As each of us grows, we are like the oceans. We get a constant influx from all those ostensible and inostensible sources of influence. When we read about someone’s committing an act of atrocity, we say, “Why didn’t we notice? Why didn’t someone know what was going on? Nothing like this was apparent.”
Each of us is an ocean of dissolved influences. The widespread and constant influx over a lifetime makes determining the source of even our own “salt content” difficult or even impossible to determine. Some of the salts of idea and behavior go back into our early history. Some are recycled. Some left behind. Some are still with us in varying proportions, more where the influence was strong and less where it was diluted by fresh waters of new emotions and ideas.
When you look out over the sea, realize that on average only 96.5% of what is ostensible is actually water. The rest is dissolved solids. Invisible, but there. When you look at another person, realize that much is hidden, and much derives from an unknowable source.
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