Why are the oceans salt water?

[R1Geezer]

Obviously something to do with the early formation of the planet but why so much salt?

[squarebear]

The ocean is salty because the salt manufacturers around the world pour most of their assets into the ocean and seas of the world in order to make salt more rare, and thus more valuable.

The Dead Sea and Salt Lake City are actually sites where massive Exxon-Valdez-type salt spills have occurred. Instead of cleaning up their mess, the manufacturers built a city upon one location and planted some very old biblical scrolls upon the other as a diversion.

The upside of this scandal is that salt makes water more buoyant so swimmers are now able to float longer in the ocean than they used to and fewer are drowning because of this.

[jake-the-peg]

The rivers constantly disolve various salts (not just Sodium Chloride) into the sea.

A classic statistic is that a cubic mile of sea water contains a tonne of gold.

So over time the Oceans become more salty. In fact the salt concentration of the oceans was one of the earliest attempts to calculate the age of the Earth. Unsurprising it was way out but it came up with many millions of years rather than 6,000

[R1Geezer]

great, thanks Jake, now you come to mention it, seems logical.

Square bear, go easy on the LSD!

[squarebear]

Hehe!

[R1Geezer]

Jake how can we get this gold out of the Sea water?

[jake-the-peg]

That's the catch in the statistic

It gets people all excited but a tonne of gold is only about 50 litres, a cublic mile is 4,000 billion litres you get £20 miilion from your tonne of gold that means that breaking even you cave to run up a cost of less than a thousandth of a penny a litre to process

Processing a cubic mile of seawater for that sort of money is completely impractical

But like many things you have to look at the numbers

[R1Geezer]

glad you told be that jake, I was just off to the beach with a tea strainer!

[another-view]

How do they know there's a tonne of gold in a cubic mile of sea if it's too expensive to extract?

[another-view]

We've got some Polish round here who'll work for 1/1000th of a penny.

<--- Heads off to the coast.

[R1Geezer]

well Another-view, I imagine that a smaller amount of sea water has been analysed and the content extrapolated.

[another-view]

That doesn't sound very scientific!

I saw a rockpool (of about 2 litres) with a lolly stick in it but that doesn't mean there is a tonne of lolly sticks in a cubic mile of sea water.

[buildersmate]

Until you've been out there and counted them, no-one can possibly expect us to believe you. Report back when your count is complete and we'll re-evaluate your so-called 'evidence'.