The Origins of the Ocean's Salinity

[Veeger]

This question came to me while reading the planet earth topic. Many of you know I am a creationist, but for the purpose of this topic let's ignore the "God wanted it too" argument. I'm more interested in how you think it came into being literally. It would require the water to be superheated to absorb that much salt, so that coincides with the belief that water formed before the atmosphere, or possibly even the sun. This also coincides with biblical teaching as water was on the surface before God created light (the sun and moon: day one), and the atmosphere (the firmament to separate the sea from the sea, or our air from space). But where did the salt come from? Was it already on the surface? Did it form as the 'bang' happened?What are your thoughts?

[ecyor0]

I think the current scientific standpoint (this could be a little outdated) is that the salt was picked up by erosion of rocks by rivers on their way to the sea. When water evaporates, the salt remains and gradually grows in concentration over the years.

[Veeger]

An interesting idea. Is salt the only compound found in rocks that can is soluble in water? If not, is ocean water equally concentrated with these other minerals, making it even harder to cleanse?

[Dark_Magneto]

Read this USGS publication:

Why is the Ocean Salty? (http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/salty_ocean.htm)

An interesting idea. Is salt the only compound found in rocks that can is soluble in water? If not, is ocean water equally concentrated with these other minerals, making it even harder to cleanse?

It's not equally concentrated because elements come in different abundance, but they're there. For instance, it's possible to recover uranium from seawater (http://npc.sarov.ru/english/digest/132004/appendix8.html), but if it were anywhere near as abundant as salt then there'd be nothing but radiation-resistant mutants in the sea if anything.

[ecyor0]

Gold as well. The sea actually has more gold in it (microscopically dissolved in solution) than has ever been mined in the history of man - the only problem is it's low density yield (i.e, the amount of gold you get from one cubic metre of seawater is worth less than the cost of extracting it)

As to why there is more salt than other minerals, probably because salt dissolves so easily in water (and it's so easy to tell that it's in there - there's probably equal concentrations of other minerals, we just can't tell without analysis equipment.) There are plenty of insoluble minerals which just get deposited straight on the ocean floor as silt.

[Toucan]

Some seawater samples I have proscessed myself read as high as 8 grams per tonne. As a general rule a mining company won't setup for less than 10 grams per tonne (10 ppm), but sea water is very cheap to process.
There will be many ocean gold mines as soon as 2010.

[ecyor0]

Sounds promising - there's a lot of research going into the use of organic compounds for use in treating cancer with gold as a key element

[Toucan]

Need to make a correction.

No reading I ever saw was as high as 8 grams per tonne. The reading was 0.8 grams per tonne. (it was a ppb test, not a ppm test, rememberd it wrong, sorry)
Still however worth it with seawater. It's very cheap to process. All that needs to be done is to fill tanks with sea water (huge tanks of corse), evaperate the water, repeat the process over and over again, then put the salt through a specialy designed gold mill. Can actually produce Chlorine at the same time and that stuff is gold to.

[GenocideAlive]

I was about to say...10g/ton to set up shop? Jesus, must be more expensive to process than I'd think. :D

[Toucan]

We get some very high readings some times.
There grade has dropped a lot over the years so I doubt there would be any grief from telling you all.
I once did some samples from a mine called Granny Smith down here in WA, there mill feed test returned 2000g per tonne. 2 kilo's of gold from every tonne of dirt and they had like 600k tonnes of the shit.
None of us where allowed to buy shares in Granny Smith either, insider trading.

[Cpt.Chronic]

What's your job Toucan?

[Dark_Magneto]

None of us where allowed to buy shares in Granny Smith either, insider trading.

So you get someone trustworthy to be the shareholder for you.

[GenocideAlive]

That's also insider trading, it just means more people go to jail.

[Toucan]

What's your job Toucan?
Currently I work for a chemical plant, we produce or resupply just about every chemical you can imagine. As I said chorine is gold as well, our main product is Sodium Hypochoride (Liquid Chlorine) and you can never ever make enough of the shit, the plant produces a variety of acids and caustics through the same process.

Though I was a Lab Tecnician for a geolab when I had the chance to take those readings. My job was primarily to test samples for sulphate or sulphide and carbon or organic carbon, using a CS2000 analyser.
I would often change about through the lab doing various jobs when needed as I had been there for about 18 years and knew every process there blind folded.
I was working on an old Varian 10/10 (12' floppy disk drive, green screen, an old machine, but a damn good one, still prefer a 10/10 for gold over any new ICP unit) when I took those readings, it stands out in my memory because it was one we detected a problem on, not only was there mill feed coming back at 2000 ppm but so where there tailings, witch meant there mill was out right not working, no gold was getting taken out. I wonder how much dirt they had to put through again? Some one would have got there ass kicked over that.

[Dark_Magneto]

That's also insider trading.

No it's not.

You're just "giving someone a suggestion" and they are paying you well for the results it harbored. Consultants do this all the time.

[GenocideAlive]

No it's not.

You're just giving someone a suggestion and they are paying you well for the results it harbored. Consultants do this all the time.
Wow, OK, just to shut you up about it:

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

Legal "insider trading" may not be based on material non-public information. Illegal insider trading in the US requires the participation (perhaps indirectly) of a corporate insider or other person who is violating his fiduciary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary) duty or misappropriating private information, and trading on it or secretly relaying it.

I find it hard to believe that you are so ignorant that you believe that the US Government would "OK" workers with nonpublic information trading stock based upon it. If that were true, they wouldn't have to pay accountants in major companies because the accountants could outsource themselves as "consultants" to stock brokers. That makes no sense whatsoever.

[Dark_Magneto]

It was a joke, calm down man.

[Toucan]

It was about 15 years ago that this happened, I told you guys about it because the amount of gold that was there is most likely a matter of public record by now.

[Gunmonk]

well here is a thought... if you believe that we live in a post deluge world the it would seem to me the since salt is a mineral it could have been easily eroded from natural formations, taken by currents and settled elsewhere. this also makes sense to me because I grew up in hutchinson kansas a town noted for its salt mining (or at least used too) but all the salt is undergound so they have to mine it. there is already proof that there are salt deposits so a deluge could very well be the culprit you are looking for

[Toucan]

Consider the age of the world. It isn't a case that an area was once desert is now forrest, or a piece of forrest is now desert or ocean.
Every peice of land on earth has gone through many more changes in geographical history, a piece of land that is now forrest and was once a desert, before that an ice glacier, before that a swamp, before that a corel island, before that ocean floor. Not necessarily in that order but you get the idea.
Every change occured catastrophically, no doubt destroying some of the present land and washing it in to the ocean.

Dying eroding corel releases a great deal of salt as well.