Why is the ocean water salty?
(ORDO NEWS) — Most of our planet is covered with undrinkable water. The oceans cover 70% of the Earth‘s surface and account for approximately 97% of all water on the planet. On average, one liter of seawater contains 35 grams of salts (mainly sodium chloride). It seems that it is a little. However, it turns out that in one cubic kilometer of the world’s ocean there are 35 million tons of salt, and in total there are about 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers in the ocean. So where did this salt come from?
There is a lot of water around, but there is nothing to drink
Most of the sea salt comes from rocks. Dissolved carbon dioxide in rainwater makes it slightly acidic. When it rains, the water erodes rocks on land. Minerals from these rocks, together with rainwater, flow into rivers and streams, and then are carried into the ocean. In the ocean, some dissolved minerals, such as calcium, are removed from the water by biological processes, but the salt remains.
Another source of salt for the oceans is hydrothermal solutions (fluids). They come from underwater volcanoes. Water falls into a vent on the seabed and is heated by magma from the planet’s core. This leads to a series of chemical reactions.
Salt is not a natural part of seawater, but the result of the continuous interaction of ions entering and leaving the ocean. The exact same process occurs in other bodies of water. However, the concentration of ions is not high enough to make the water in streams and rivers undrinkable. At the same time, the ocean works like a dump for the world’s salt, and it can no longer be diluted.
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