Water worlds

Water is one of those things that seems ordinary until you start looking into it.

The subject always puts me in mind of the deeply poignant Doctor Who episode "The Waters of Mars," which has to be in my top five favorite episodes ever.  (If you haven't seen it, you definitely need to, even if you're not a fanatical Whovian like I am -- but be ready for the three-boxes-of-kleenex ending.)  Without giving you any spoilers, let's just say that the Mars colonists shouldn't have decided to use thawed water from glaciers for their drinking supply.

Once things start going sideways, the Doctor warns the captain of the mission, Adelaide Brooke, that trying to fight what's happening is a losing battle, and says it in a truly shiver-inducing way: "Water is patient, Adelaide.  Water just waits.  Wears down the cliff tops, the mountains.  The whole of the world.  Water always wins."

Even beyond science fiction, water has some bizarre properties.  It's one of the only substances that gets less dense when you freeze it -- if water was like 99% of the compounds in the world, ice would sink, and lakes and oceans would freeze from the bottom up.  Compared to most other liquids, it has a sky-high specific heat (ability to absorb heat energy without much increase in temperature), which is why my wife and I notice the difference in our hot tub when it's set at 100 F rather than 102 F.  A two-degree temperature difference in air temperature, you'd hardly register; two degrees' difference in water represents a lot of extra heat energy.

There's also the huge heat of vaporization (the heat energy required for it to evaporate), which is why sweating cools you down so efficiently.  Both the high specific heat and high heat of vaporization contribute not only to allowing our body temperature easier to regulate, they make climates near bodies of water warmer in winter and cooler in summer than it otherwise would be.  Other odd properties of water include its cohesiveness, which is the key to how water can be transported a hundred meters up the trunk of a redwood tree, and is also why a bellyflop hurts like a mofo.  Finally, it's highly polar -- the molecules have a negatively-charged side and a positively-charged side -- making it an outstanding solvent for other polar compounds (and indirectly leading to several of the other properties I've mentioned).

And those are the characteristics water has at ordinary temperatures and pressures.  If you start changing either or both of these, things get weirder still.  In fact, the whole reason the topic comes up is because of a paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters called "Irradiated Ocean Planets Bridge Super-Earth and Sub-Neptune Populations," by a team led by astrophysicist Olivier Mousis of Aix-Marseille University, about a very strange class of planets where water is in a bizarre state where it's not quite a liquid and not quite a gas.

This state is called being supercritical -- where a fluid can seep through solids like a gas but dissolve materials like a liquid.  For water, the critical point is about 340 C and a pressure 217 times the average atmospheric pressure at sea level -- so nothing you'll run into under ordinary circumstances.  This bizarre fluid has a density about a third that of liquid water at room temperature, so way more dense than your typical gas but way less than your typical liquid.

Mousis et al. have found that some of the "sub-Neptune" exoplanets that have been discovered recently are close enough to their parent stars to have a rocky core surrounded by supercritical water and a steam-bath upper atmosphere -- truly a strange new kind of world even the science fiction writers don't seem to have anticipated.  One of these exoplanets -- K2 18b, which orbits a red dwarf star about 110 light years from Earth -- fits the bill perfectly, and in fact mass and diameter measurements suggest it could be made up of as much as 37% water.  (Compare that to the Earth, which is about 0.02% water by mass.)

So there you are -- some strange features of a substance we all think we know.  Odd stuff, water, however familiar it is.  Even if you don't count the extraterrestrial contaminants that Captain Adelaide Brooke and her ill-fated crew had to contend with.

****************************************

Water worlds

Water is one of those things that seems ordinary until you start looking into it.

The subject always puts me in mind of the deeply poignant Doctor Who episode "The Waters of Mars," which has to be in my top five favorite episodes ever.  (If you haven't seen it, you definitely need to, even if you're not a fanatical Whovian like I am -- but be ready for the three-boxes-of-kleenex ending.)  Without giving you any spoilers, let's just say that the Mars colonists shouldn't have decided to use thawed water from glaciers for their drinking supply.

Once things start going sideways, the Doctor warns the captain of the mission, Adelaide Brooke, that trying to fight what's happening is a losing battle, and says it in a truly shiver-inducing way: "Water is patient, Adelaide.  Water just waits.  Wears down the cliff tops, the mountains.  The whole of the world.  Water always wins."

Even beyond science fiction, water has some bizarre properties.  It's one of the only substances that gets less dense when you freeze it -- if water was like 99% of the compounds in the world, ice would sink, and lakes and oceans would freeze from the bottom up.  Compared to most other liquids, it has a sky-high specific heat (ability to absorb heat energy without much increase in temperature) and heat of vaporization (the heat energy required for it to evaporate), both of which act not only to allow our body temperature easier to regulate, it makes climates near bodies of water warmer in winter and cooler in summer than they otherwise would be.  It's cohesive, which is the key to how water can be transported a hundred meters up the trunk of a redwood tree, and is also why a bellyflop hurts like a mofo.  It's highly polar -- the molecules have a negatively-charged side and a positively-charged side -- making it an outstanding solvent for other polar compounds (and indirectly leading to several of the other properties I've mentioned).

And those are the characteristics water has at ordinary temperatures and pressures.  If you start changing either or both of these, things get weirder still.  In fact, the whole reason the topic comes up is because of a paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters called "Irradiated Ocean Planets Bridge Super-Earth and Sub-Neptune Populations," by astrophysicist Olivier Mousis of Aix-Marseille University, about a very strange class of planets where water is in a bizarre state where it's not quite a liquid and not quite a gas.

This state is called being supercritical -- where a fluid can seep through solids like a gas but dissolve materials like a liquid.  For water, the critical point is about 340 C and a pressure 217 times the average atmospheric pressure at sea level, so nothing you'll run into under ordinary circumstances.  This weird fluid has a density about a third that of liquid water at room temperature -- way more dense than your typical gas and way less than your typical liquid.

Mousis et al. have found that some of the "sub-Neptune" exoplanets that have been discovered recently are close enough to their parent stars to have a rocky core surrounded by supercritical water and a steam-bath upper atmosphere -- truly a strange new kind of world even the science fiction writers don't seem to have anticipated.  One of these exoplanets -- K2 18b, which orbits a red dwarf star about 110 light years from Earth -- fits the bill perfectly, and in fact mass and diameter measurements suggest it could be made up of as much as 37% water.

So there you are -- some strange features of a substance we all think we know.  Odd stuff, water, however familiar it is.  Even if you don't count the extraterrestrial contaminants that Captain Brooke and her crew had to contend with.

****************************************

Water worlds

Water is one of those things that seems ordinary until you start looking into it.

The subject always puts me in mind of the deeply poignant Doctor Who episode "The Waters of Mars," which has to be in my top five favorite episodes ever.  (If you haven't seen it, you definitely need to, even if you're not a fanatical Whovian like I am -- but be ready for the three-boxes-of-kleenex ending.)  Without giving you any spoilers, let's just say that the Mars colonists shouldn't have decided to use thawed water from glaciers for their drinking supply.

Once things start going sideways, the Doctor warns the captain of the mission, Adelaide Brooke, that trying to fight what's happening is a losing battle, and says it in a truly shiver-inducing way: "Water is patient, Adelaide.  Water just waits.  Wears down the cliff tops, the mountains.  The whole of the world.  Water always wins."

Even beyond science fiction, water has some bizarre properties.  It's one of the only substances that gets less dense when you freeze it -- if water was like 99% of the compounds in the world, ice would sink, and lakes and oceans would freeze from the bottom up.  Compared to most other liquids, it has a sky-high specific heat (ability to absorb heat energy without much increase in temperature) and heat of vaporization (the heat energy required for it to evaporate), both of which act not only to allow our body temperature easier to regulate, it makes climates near bodies of water warmer in winter and cooler in summer than it otherwise would be.  It's cohesive, which is the key to how water can be transported a hundred meters up the trunk of a redwood tree, and is also why a bellyflop hurts like a mofo.  It's highly polar -- the molecules have a negatively-charged side and a positively-charged side -- making it an outstanding solvent for other polar compounds (and indirectly leading to several of the other properties I've mentioned).

And those are the characteristics water has at ordinary temperatures and pressures.  If you start changing either or both of these, things get weirder still.  In fact, the whole reason the topic comes up is because of a paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters this week called "Irradiated Ocean Planets Bridge Super-Earth and Sub-Neptune Populations," by astrophysicist Olivier Mousis of Aix-Marseille University, about a very strange class of planets where water is in a bizarre state where it's not quite a liquid and not quite a gas.

This state is called being supercritical -- where a fluid can seep through solids like a gas but dissolve materials like a liquid.  For water, the critical point is about 340 C and a pressure 217 times the average atmospheric pressure at sea level -- so nothing you'll run into under ordinary circumstances.  This weird fluid has a density about a third that of liquid water at room temperature -- way more dense than your typical gas and way less than your typical liquid.

Mousis et al. have found that some of the "sub-Neptune" exoplanets that have been discovered recently are close enough to their parent stars to have a rocky core surrounded by supercritical water and a steam-bath upper atmosphere -- truly a strange new kind of world even the science fiction writers don't seem to have anticipated.  One of these exoplanets -- K2 18b, which orbits a red dwarf star about 110 light years from Earth -- fits the bill perfectly, and in fact mass and diameter measurements suggest it could be made up of as much as 37% water.

So there you are -- some strange features of a substance we all think we know.  Odd stuff, water, however familiar it is.  Even if you don't count the extraterrestrial contaminants that Captain Brooke and her crew had to contend with.

****************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is for anyone who likes quick, incisive takes on scientific topics: When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought by the talented science writer Jim Holt.

When Einstein Walked with Gödel is a series of essays that explores some of the deepest and most perplexing topics humanity has ever investigated -- the nature of time, the implications of relativity, string theory, and quantum mechanics, the perception of beauty in mathematics, and the ultimate fate of the universe.  Holt's lucid style brings these difficult ideas to the layperson without blunting their scientific rigor, and you'll come away with a perspective on the bizarre and mind-boggling farthest reaches of science.  Along the way you'll meet some of the key players in this ongoing effort -- the brilliant, eccentric, and fascinating scientists themselves.

It's a wonderful read, and anyone who is an aficionado of the sciences shouldn't miss it.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Waterworks

Thanks to a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, I now know that apparently there is a growing number of people who believe that water is not H2O.

Unsurprisingly, if you created a Venn diagram between these people and the people who believe the Earth is flat, there'd be a large overlap.  So not only have the scientists been lying to us about the shape of the Earth, they've been lying to us about the nature of water.  Who knows what else they've been telling us that's wrong?  Maybe DNA is actually made of tiny bendy-straws.  Maybe the stars are  fireflies that landed on the hemispherical glass sky-dome that covers the (flat) Earth.  Maybe our brains actually aren't neural tissue, but a couple of pounds of banana pudding with crushed vanilla wafers mixed in.

I know that's what my brain feels like at the moment.

Note for the record that I am not here addressing a philosophical argument that was in vogue a few years ago about the "nature of water," that contended (with some justification) that because an individual H2O molecule did not have the properties we associate with water -- clarity, wetness, ability to dissolve stuff, and so on -- that H2O was, in fact, not water.  And that some things we call water (e.g. ocean water) are not pure H2O.

That was a discussion about how we use words, which is an important enough topic, although sometimes it gets pushed far enough that it seems to me to be no different than arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.  Which, I suppose, explains why I went into science and not philosophy.

Nor am I talking about hair-splitters who say that even pure water isn't pure H2O -- that in a glass of pure water, some of the molecules are dissociated into H+ (more correctly, H3O+) and OH- ions.  I call them "hair-splitters" because under ordinary conditions, out of every 10,000,000 molecules of water, 9,999,999 of them are in the form of H2O and 1 is in the form of H+/OH-.  (Which, for science-minded types, directly leads to why the pH of pure water is 7, something I could explain further if anyone's interested.)

But no, what I'm referring to here is the people who think that water molecules are not H2O.  In one example the loyal reader sent me -- and one is about all I can stand to look at in detail -- the person argues that water can't be H2O, it actually is O2.

Yes, diatomic oxygen, like the stuff that makes up 20% of the air we're breathing.  So if he was right, we could breathe underwater, which would be pretty fucking cool, but which I clearly refuted fifteen years ago when I nearly drowned in a scuba accident.  I can say from personal experience that what I was attempting to breathe was not oxygen.

Here's a small sample of the argument the person gives, if I can dignify it by that name.  Grammar and spelling has been left as-is, because you can only write [sic] so many times.

[W]ater, as oxygen molecule, is only formed by two oxygen atoms. We think the difference between water and oxygen molecules must be found at the different phase of variation of the intersected gravitational fields that creates their different electrical configurations and spatial symmetries. 

For us each material mass has its own gravitational field that vary – expands and contracts – with a specific frequency. When two gravitational fields – from two oxygen masses, by example – intersect, they create in their mutual intersection some new fields with different motions and pressures that are currently known as “chemical bonds”. 

I used above the term “mass” and non “atom” because here we are thinking about a different model of “atom”. For us material masses do not have electrical charges inside of them. Electrical charges for us are consequences of intersections of at least two gravitational fields that vary with the same or opposite phase. So, we think about electrical charges like fields that moves and create different pressures inside them... 

In our perspective water molecules do not have Hydrogen atoms. They only have 2 Oxygens. So we think that for transforming water molecules into Oxygen molecules and oxygen molecules into water molecules it is only necessary to change the phase of variation of one of their intersected gravitational fields to make equal or opposite.

Right!  Sure!  What?

To go through the scientific inaccuracies here would take me all day, but let me start out with the most egregious: nothing about the interaction between two molecules, or the atoms within a molecule, has the least thing to do with gravity.  Gravity is (by far) the weakest of the four fundamental forces.  If you compare gravity to electromagnetism -- which is the force that holds molecules together -- electromagnetism is 10 ^36 times stronger.

That's 1 followed by 36 zeroes, folks.

The only reason gravity seems so strong to us is that we're comparing things to the gravitational pull of the Earth, and the Earth is freakin' huge.  On the scale of molecules, gravitational interaction is so small that it is, for all practical purposes, zero.

The other thing that bears mention is that you can demonstrate that water is proportionally composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen by the simple experiment performed back in 1976 by me and my lab partner John in high school chemistry, namely running an electric current through water to break it up and collecting the gases in two separate test tubes.  You can show they're not the same by inserting a lighted wooden splint into the two tubes -- the one with the hydrogen will give a musical little "pop" as the hydrogen around the mouth of the tube ignites with the oxygen in the air; the one with the oxygen will begin to burn merrily.

Or, you can do what John did, which was to bubble the hydrogen gas into the oxygen tube, and then insert the lighted splint.  The result was:

BANG

... as the two gases, in exactly the right proportions, combusted back into water.  This left John holding the remains of a broken test tube, wearing a terrified expression, with his eyebrows singed off and his hair blown back in the fashion of a Looney Tunes character who has just had a gun fired directly into his face.

It also bears mention that this is the same reaction that did this:

[Image is in the Public Domain]

So the weight of the evidence is very much in favor of water being dihydrogen monoxide.  Just as well; rewriting all those textbooks would be a serious pain in the ass.

It's unsurprising, as I mentioned, that many of the Water-Is-Actually-Oxygen people are also The-Earth-Is-Flat people.  Once you've decided that (1) evidence and logic are inadmissible for determining the truth, and (2) all the experts are lying to you for their own nefarious purposes, the jig is up.

Now, I need to go have another cup of coffee, and see if I can reconfigure the banana pudding in my head back into neural tissue.  The vanilla wafer crumbs are making the inside of my skull itch.

*****************************

I picked this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation because of the devastating, and record-breaking, fires currently sweeping across the American west.  Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers is one of the most cogent arguments I've ever seen for the reality of climate change and what it might ultimately mean for the long-term habitability of planet Earth.  Flannery analyzes all the evidence available, building what would be an airtight case -- if it weren't for the fact that the economic implications have mobilized the corporate world to mount a disinformation campaign that, so far, seems to be working.  It's an eye-opening -- and essential -- read.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Real vs. fake water

In further adventures of friends and loyal readers of Skeptophilia trying to induce me to do a skull-fracture-inducing faceplant, today we have: "Real Water."

I bet you thought you were fine drinking regular old tap water.  I know that's what I thought.  But little did I know that tap water (and other sorts of water) are "damaged."  Here's a direct quote from their website:

Most of the drinking water is stripped of valuable electrons, making the water acidic and creating free radicals. 

Free radicals steal electrons from the body’s cells.  This is called Free Radical Damage and it is the cause of many serious health conditions.  They operate much like rust on a car, zapping people from their life force.

So the claim, apparently, is, "the more electrons, the better."  This comes as a bit of a surprise, because when large amounts of electrons are contributed to someone's body all at once, this is called "being struck by lightning."  The result is called "electrocution," and frequently, "death."

But that doesn't stop the "Real Water" people, who tell us that they somehow put the missing electrons back in:

E2: Electron Energized Technology adds trillions and trillions of electrons.  Thus producing stable negative ionization.  Negative ions along with antioxidants act to neutralize free radicals.  They are more accepted by the body’s aquaporins.  Channels the usher in water and cellular nutrients for increased cellular hydration.

Like many woo-woo claims, this one has a few grains of truth.  Antioxidants do exist, and they do neutralize free radicals that (left unchecked) would oxidize organic compounds.  One of the most common free radicals in living systems is the peroxide ion (O2-), and we actually make three enzymes to deal with it -- catalase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase.  Given that peroxide ions and other free radicals would build up and kill us without them, it's a little unlikely that we'd have evolved just to sit around until the Real Water company came along to provide us with "alkalinized water" to deal with the problem.

We also get antioxidants in our food, especially vitamins C and E, and selenium.  However -- and this is important -- extensive studies have shown that taking supplements of any or all of these has no effect on the incidence of either cancer (often attributed to free radical damage) or degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.  So the whole antioxidant craze is a conglomeration of small amounts of actual science mixed with a heaping helping of hype and outright falsehood.

Don't be fooled by how harmless this looks.  It could be hosting free radicals.  Or evil spirits.  Or something.  [Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Then there's the aquaporin thing.  Those do exist, and in fact are critical for moving water into and out of cells (water can pass through cell membranes, but slowly).  However, there is absolutely no evidence that creating "stable negative ionization," or (as the site also claims) "structuring water," makes a difference with regards to how the body uses it.  If you don't believe me, humble biology teacher that I am, maybe you'll accept the word of Stephen Lower, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Simon Fraser University:

Any uncertainty that the chemistry community may have about the nature and existence of water clusters is not apparently shared by the various "inventors" who have not only "discovered" these elusive creatures, but who claim findings that science has never even dreamed of!  These promoters have spun their half-baked crackpot chemistry into various watery nostrums that they say are essential to your health and able to cure whatever-ails-you.  These benificences are hawked to the more gullible of the general public, usually in the form of a "concentrate" that you can add to your drinking water— all for a $20-$50 charge on your credit card. 

Some of these hucksters claim to make the water into "clusters" that are larger, smaller, or hexagonal-shaped, allowing them to more readily promote "cellular hydration" and remove "toxins" from your body.

The fact is that none of these views has any significant support in the scientific communities of chemistry, biochemistry, or physiology, nor are they even considered worthy of debate.  The only places you are likely to see these views advocated are in literature (and on websites) intended to promote the sale of these products to consumers in the notoriously credulous "alternative" health and "dietary supplement" market.

And one last thing: "acid" doesn't mean "bad" and "alkaline," "good."  In fact, one of the major functions of your kidneys is to maintain your blood pH, and if that didn't work, you'd drop dead of blood acidosis every time you drank a glass of lemonade, which (at a pH of around 3) has 10,000 times the number of hydrogen ions per milliliter as tap water does.  If you are in any doubt as to how tightly this system is controlled, let me elaborate:

blood pH = 7.6: dead
blood pH = 7.5: blood alkalinosis -- lethargy, confusion, coma
blood pH = 7.4: healthy and happy
blood pH = 7.3: blood acidosis -- gasping for breath, rapid heartbeat, headache, nausea
blood pH = 7.2: dead

So even if "Real Water" could alkalinize your blood, the result would not be better health, or protecting you from rusting, or whatever the fuck it is they're claiming.

And at $36 (plus shipping and handling) for a twelve-pack of one-liter bottles, it's not cheap.  The bottom line: "Real Water" is primarily aimed at people with more money than sense.

Anyhow.  That's today's helping of pseudoscience.  Me, I'm going to go get a cup of plain old tap water, heated up, to which has been added ground up toxin-free all-natural free-radical-busting aura-protecting seeds from the sacred plant Coffea arabica.

Better known as coffee.

*********************
NEW FEATURE ON SKEPTOPHILIA!

Each week (more often if I find something really cool) I'll post a link to a book that should be required reading for all skeptics.  This week I'll start with a classic: Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.  If you haven't read this one, you should rectify that error immediately!

Saturday science shorts

Because I am totally disheartened by the news, frustrated by the lack of critical thinking everywhere I look, and also because my blender exploded when I was making breakfast this morning and splattered orange juice and half-processed fruit over every square inch of the kitchen including myself, I am retreating to my happy place, namely: cool stuff in science news.

Let's start with a story from astronomy about something that is a near-obsession with me; the possibility of life on other planets.  This particular research involves the star system TRAPPIST-1, discovered last year and found to have not one, not two, but seven planets, three of which are in the so-called "Goldilocks Zone" (where the temperature is juuuuust right for water to be in liquid form).  Of course, that doesn't guarantee that water's there, just that if it was, it would be liquid, which scientists surmise would be a pretty good indicator of the likelihood of the probability of hosting life.

Now, researchers have found that all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets do have water -- in some cases, up to five percent of their mass.  So the three in the habitable zone might well be water-worlds.  All of which reminds me of the planet Kamino from The Phantom Menace, which otherwise was a dreadful movie, but I have to admit reluctantly that this part was cool.

Here's what we know about the TRAPPIST-1 system, although keep in mind that the illustrations of the planets are artists' renditions of what they might look like:

[image courtesy of NASA/JPL]

So that's pretty wicked cool.  The difficulty, of course, is that even if they did host life, it'd be hard to see that if the inhabitants had not advanced technologically to the point that they were sending out signals.  But even that hurdle might not be insurmountable -- as I wrote in a post a couple of weeks ago, astronomers are now trying to figure out if life is present on an exoplanet by the composition of its atmosphere.

Then, from the realm of biology, we have a study elucidating how those tiny jet fighters of the avian world -- hummingbirds -- maneuver as well as they do.

A group led by Roslyn Dakin and Paolo Segre of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute of Ottawa examined hundreds of hours of high-speed video of hummingbirds in flight, looking at twenty-five different species and examining how they do their amazing aerobatics, including pivoting while in flight, hovering, and moving in an arc so narrow that it almost defies belief.  

The research took them to remote places in Panama, Costa Rica, and my favorite country of Ecuador -- the tiny nation that is host to 250 different species of hummingbirds, including the preternaturally beautiful Violet-tailed Sylph (Aglaiocercus coelestis):

Where I live, we have a paltry one species, albeit a beautiful one -- the Ruby-throated Hummingbird.  So it's no wonder the researchers decided to head south.

Another hummingbird researcher, Christopher Clark of the University of California-Riverside, has said that the new study is like moving from analyzing individual gestures of a ballerina to looking at how the moves fit together.  "Now," Clark says, "we're putting together the entire dance."

Last, some scientists at the University of Zurich have for the first time been able to see new neurons being formed in the brains of embryonic mice.  

Starting out by tagging 63 neural stem cells in the hippocampus, Sebastian Jessberger and his team were able to watch as the neurons grew outward and formed connections (synapses) with neighboring neurons.  What was most intriguing was that some of the new neurons had short lives -- perhaps acting as scaffolding for the developing brain and then self-destructing (undergoing apoptosis) when their task was complete.

Amongst these tagged cells, the red ones are the newest, orange next, and continuing through yellow and green (the oldest cells).

What is most exciting about this is that being mammals, it's expected that the knitting together of the embryonic human brain probably proceeds in a very similar fashion.  So what Jessberger et al. are doing might well inform us regarding how our own neural systems form.

So there you have it -- three cool new developments in the world of science.  Which has cheered me up considerably.  That's a good thing, considering the fact that now I have to go clean my kitchen, which I'm definitely not looking forward to.

Don't drink the water

It's been a while since we've had a new bizarre alt-med claim to poke fun at, so I was delighted when a loyal reader sent me a link yesterday to a site for something called "Starfire Water."

What is "Starfire Water," you might be asking?  Let me allow the website to speak for itself:

Starfire Water™ is a proprietary alkaline (pH 8.5) performance water produced using breakthrough 21st-century quantum water technology.  Starfire Water is treated with ultraviolet ozonation, infrared stimulation and electromagnetism for a negative ion charged water, as in nature, allowing deep, cellular intake through aquaporins, the floodgates to hydration.

So we're starting off the right way, with the mention of "quantum."  Everything in alt-med has to be "quantum."  As far as the rest, it appears to me that the writer of the above paragraph came up with this text by opening the glossary of a college chemistry text and pointing at random words, then stringing them together into sentences.

"Ultraviolet ozonation," my ass.

So then we get to find out how "Starfire Water" is made, and that adds a whole new layer of wacky woo-woo pseudoscience to the mix:

Our process utilizes a centrifugal vortex to implode the water and set the water in motion for several hours. This reorganizes the molecular order into a receptive state to receive high frequency vibration. The water is then passed through a chamber where magnetic resonance imprints a series of frequencies in an infinitely modulating sequence. Molecular order and frequency loading mutually reinforce each other to maintain the transformation of the water. 

The result is a liquid with the water formed into small, biocompatible water crystals that resonate at a designed and predictable frequency. The specific frequencies of the crystalline structured water solution are designed to be amplified by the cells of the human body, and transferred through resonant paths to tissues in need of “tuning”.

So, let's see here.  We have:

• a "centrifugal vortex."  Because apparently there's another kind.
• "reorganized molecular order."  Don't want to drink disorganized water, after all.
• "high frequency vibrations."  The higher the frequency the better, apparently.
• "infinitely modulating sequences" imprinted by "magnetic resonance."  I have a bachelor's degree in physics, and I have no idea what the fuck that means.
• "water crystals."  You mean ice?
• "frequencies of crystalline structured water solution amplified by cells and transferred through resonant paths."  Okay, fine, you win.  I give up.

But one more thing bears relating, which is the diagram that shows the highly scientific method they use to make this stuff:

So evidently electrons get sucked down whirlpools, and positive ions get flung out of it, or something.  But at least now we know how the water is "imploded in a centrifugal vortex."

What this product appears to be is mineral water that they spin around for a while and then sell for six dollars a gallon to unsuspecting gullible types.  And there are a good many gullible types, apparently; even their Facebook page has been "liked" 3,960 times, probably because they make a point of telling us that their water is "treated with S.S.R.T. , Sacred Sound Resonance Transmission, making it the world’s finest premium Cell Ready performance 'living' hexagonal water ever produced."

Which you have to admit sounds pretty impressive.

So that's our dip in the deep end of the ordinary-water-filled pool for today.  Spending an hour pawing through the nonsense on this site -- and believe me, what I've written here represents only the barest fraction -- is making me consider giving up on water entirely.

At the moment, I'm thinking of switching to scotch.

Fracking, the EPA, and slanted journalism

Popular media make me crazy sometimes.

It's intensely frustrating to see science misrepresented by news outlets, and people unquestioningly accepting that misrepresentation as fact.  Some copy writer with who-knows-what background in actual science is given the task of summarizing scientific research, and then it's headlined with a catchy phrase that not only doesn't reflect the story accurately but simply reiterates whatever political slant that media corporation has.  Readers then take away from that inaccurate summary whatever they got from it -- sometimes only by reading the headline -- and interpret it via whatever biases they came equipped with.

Any wonder why the average American's knowledge of science is so skewed?

Take, for example, the recent report by the Environmental Protection Agency regarding hydrofracking and its effect on drinking water.  Here's a brief excerpt:

From our assessment, we conclude there are above and below ground mechanisms by which hydraulic fracturing activities have the potential to impact drinking water resources. These mechanisms include water withdrawals in times of, or in areas with, low water availability; spills of hydraulic fracturing fluids and produced water; fracturing directly into underground drinking water resources; below ground migration of liquids and gases; and inadequate treatment and discharge of wastewater.

We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. Of the potential mechanisms identified in this report, we found specific instances where one or more mechanisms led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells. The number of identified cases, however, was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells. This finding could reflect a rarity of effects on drinking water resources, but may also be due to other limiting factors. These factors include: insufficient pre- and post-fracturing data on the quality of drinking water resources; the paucity of long-term systematic studies; the presence of other sources of contamination precluding a definitive link between hydraulic fracturing activities and an impact; and the inaccessibility of some information on hydraulic fracturing activities and potential impacts.

So far, kind of an equivocal finding.  There has been some well contamination... but it doesn't seem to be very frequent... but it does sometimes happen... but there could be several reasons for that including "inaccessibility of information" -- i.e., the natural gas corporations not releasing said information when contamination happens, or maneuvering the people affected into silence via gag orders.

Understandable, of course, that the EPA wants to keep a low profile these days, considering the number of legislators who would like to see it defunded or dismantled completely.  So it's unsurprising that they're taking a "maybe so, maybe not" approach and trying to fly under the radar.

But that, of course, is not how the media spun the report.  The day the report was released, The Washington Times and The New York Post both had articles headlined, "EPA: Fracking Doesn't Harm Drinking Water."  The Times later amended their headline to read "EPA Finds Fracking Poses No Direct Threat to Drinking Water" after enough people wrote in to say, "Did you people even read the report?"  Which is marginally better but still not reflective of the waffling language in the report itself.  Even Newsweek went that way, with an article headlined, "Fracking Doesn't Pollute Drinking Water, EPA Says."

But lest you think that the conservative, pro-fracking media sources were the only ones who gave the report their own unique spin, the liberal, anti-fracking sources were just as quick to jump in and claim that the report proved that fracking was highly dangerous.  Common Dreams, an online progressive news source, ran it as "EPA Report Finds Fracking Water Pollution, Despite Oil and Gas Industry's Refusal to Provide Key Data."  Nation of Change had the story headlined with, "Long-Awaited EPA Study Says Fracking Pollutes Drinking Water," along with the following photograph:

So the conservative outlets told the conservative readers what they wanted to hear, and the liberal outlets told the liberal readers what they wanted to hear, and neither one reflected accurately what the original report said, which was virtually nothing of substance.

Add to that the fact that what little the EPA's report did say was immediately called into question, in one of those examples of weird synchronicity, by the resignation of Mark Nechodom, director of the California Department of Conservation, the day after the report was released -- over allegations that he had looked the other way while natural gas companies disposed of fracking wastewater by injecting it into central California agricultural and drinking water aquifers.

"Nechodom was named this week in a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a group of Kern County farmers who allege that [California Governor Jerry] Brown, the oil and gas division and others conspired with oil companies to allow the illegal injections and to create a more lax regulatory environment for energy firms," an article in The Los Angeles Times said.  "Nechodom's resignation was unexpected, although he had increasingly been called upon by state officials to explain problems in the oil and gas division’s oversight of the oil industry and a parade of embarrassing blunders."

Not only that, a criticism levied against the EPA report itself appeared in EcoWatch, claiming that the writers of the report cherry-picked their data to ignore cases of contamination, including 313 documented cases of well contamination in a six-county region in Pennsylvania.  You have to wonder how much damage there'd have to be before the EPA did consider it "widespread."

So once again, we have government agencies waffling and misrepresenting the data, special interests and slanted media obscuring the real situation, and hardly anyone checking their sources, resulting in everyone pretty much thinking what they thought before.

And, of course, doing nothing about the actual problem.

The whole thing makes me want to scream.  Because what we need is responsible media, giving accurate and comprehensive reporting on issues like this -- not more shallow and skewed blurbs that do nothing but muddy the water (as it were).  And we need readers who are willing to follow the first rule of critical thinking -- check your sources.

And we also need government agencies that are willing to bite the bullet and tell people the truth, come-what-may.

And because none of that is likely, what I need is a couple of ibuprofen and another cup of coffee, because all of this depressing stuff has given me a headache.

Diamonds, water, the Great Flood, and car wrecks

When I was thirteen years old, I witnessed a car crash in front of my parents' house.

It was a bright red convertible, going far too fast -- and the driver was not quite able to negotiate the curve that the road made right by our driveway.  The car hit a road sign, went airborne, flipped in midair, and skidded down the hill in the neighbor's yard on its top.

My dad and I ran toward it, knowing that the likelihood was that there was a severely mashed human underneath.  But amazingly, this was the one-in-a-million situation where not wearing a seatbelt had saved the driver's life.  He'd been thrown clear, and came away with no more than cuts and bruises (and a totaled car).

But what I remember about this incident most of all is the feeling of complete helplessness -- watching the car careening down the road, seeing it launch itself into the air, being certain at the time (although I was happily proven wrong in the end) that that driver was seconds from his death.  To this day, I still have this feeling when I see something rushing toward an outcome that I am powerless to prevent.

It's an intensely uncomfortable sensation.

I experienced this feeling just yesterday, albeit in a less life-threatening situation, when I ran into a seemingly innocuous story over at the BBC News Online entitled, "Mineral Hints at Bright Blue Rocks Deep in the Earth."  In it, we hear about the discovery of inclusions of a mineral called ringwoodite in diamonds that had formed deep in the Earth (an estimated 600 kilometers underneath the Earth's surface).

[image of a ringwoodite crystal courtesy of photographer Jasperox and the Wikimedia Commons]

"Diamonds, brought to the Earth's surface in violent eruptions of deep volcanic rocks called kimberlites," the article states, "provide a tantalising window into the deep Earth.  A research team led by Prof Graham Pearson of the University of Alberta, Canada, studied a diamond from a 100-million-year-old kimberlite found in Juina, Brazil, as part of a wider project."

So far, something of interest only to geologists.  But then the article went on to explain one of the odd things about these inclusions:

"While ringwoodite has previously been found in meteorites, this is the first time a terrestrial ringwoodite has been seen. But more extraordinarily, the researchers found that the mineral contains about 1% water.  While this sounds like very little, because ringwoodite makes up almost all of this immense portion of the deep Earth, it adds up to a huge amount of deep water...  They also provide the first direct evidence that there may be as much water trapped in those rocks as there is in all the oceans."

And that's when I saw the impending car crash.

"A key question posed by the observation," the article continues, "is to understand the extent to which plate tectonics on Earth leads to oceans of water being recycled deep within our planet, and to predict the likely amounts of water trapped in other rocky planets."

No, no, stop, please stop...

"Prof Joseph Smyth of the University of Colorado has spent many years studying ringwoodite and similar minerals synthesised in his laboratory.  He said: 'I think it's stunning! It implies that the interior may store several times the amount of water in the oceans. It tells us that hydrogen is an essential ingredient in the Earth and not added late from comets.'"

Too late.

You do see where this slow-motion auto accident is heading, right?  Let me make it clear by posting three of the comments that showed up when the story, in somewhat abbreviated form, made its way onto The Daily Mail:

The Christian bible has some things to say about incredibly large amounts of water deep within the earth. KJV Genesis 7:11 Noah, his family and the creatures, enter the ark 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. KJV Genesis 8:2 The waters subside 2 The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; KJV Proverbs 8:27-29 27 When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: 28 When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: 29 When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment.

This water was mentioned in the bible when it told of God making all the water below the earth rise and flood the world. Read about Noah. Believe what the bible teaches us. Your soul is at stake.

"....all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. And the rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights. " Genesis 7:11 cf John Lennox Mathematician Oxford U. It is certainly scientific to believe in God, and really now, what sort of spirit promotes hatred for people who do?

Then some poor slob, who hasn't figured out yet that arguing in the "Comments" section of popular media is completely pointless, responded that in order to believe the biblical account of the Great Flood, you'd have to accept that it rained enough in "forty days and forty nights" to cover the entire surface of the Earth, a quantity he calculated as 2000 million cubic kilometers of water.  (I haven't checked his math, but it doesn't seem to be off by much, given that the surface area of the Earth is 510 million square kilometers.)

 

To no avail.  Of course.

[1] Direct your free water clarifications to the DM which created the headline, "Revealed:The vast reservoir hidden beneath the Earth's crust that holds as much water as ALL of the oceans." [2] You say, "2000 M cubic km of water fell as rain." Where does the bible say that? Read Genesis 7:11 again. It specifically mentions the breaking up of the fountains of the deep along with the windows of heaven being opened up. This implies that all the water did not come from rain. Besides providing the source for your claim, please show your calculations along with your assumptions. [3] You don't know and can't prove that these bible stories are myths anymore than you can definitively show what a photon is or what gravity is. Neither can you prove by testable replication where and how life originated and diversified. You are as powerless to explain these things as you are to definitively reject these verses in the bible.

So if the initial publication of the article led me to feel like I was watching the beginning of an intellectual train-wreck, the aftermath left me doing repeated headdesks.

And just because I feel obliged to say it:  no, the discovery of a great deal of chemically-bound water in the mantle transition zone does not support the biblical flood story.  For one thing, the rocks down there are at at temperature of about 1600 C, so if god "broke up the fountains of the deep," what would come out is not pure, clear water, but a huge gusher of extremely hot magma.  No, there is nothing even remotely possible about a Great Flood Covering the Earth, not to mention the whole Noah's Ark nonsense.  In order to accept any of that as literal fact, you either have to be (1) ignorant, or (2) engage in confirmation bias to an extent that is truly mind-boggling.

And to the scientists who published this research; I know you were just trying to do some cool geology.  I know you were excited by your find, and what it might tell us about the chemistry of the Earth's mantle.  But we skeptics already spend way more of our time than we should arguing against the biblical literalist lunatics, and trying to stop them from spreading their nonsense into public schools -- and now they think they have some scientific support for their Bronze-Age mythology.

Yes, I know it doesn't really support their beliefs, but they think it does, and as a result we're going to be hearing about it for the next ten years.  And for that, I don't know if I can ever forgive you.

Deep waters

There's something about water that is mysterious.  It comprises, by some estimates, an average of 65% of the mass of living tissue.  We're drawn to it, and not just because we need a steady source of it to remain alive.  Look at how attracted we are by lakes, rivers, and oceans; consider how much more people will pay for houses with a view of a body of water.

Even the chemists tell us that water is weird.  It has a number of odd properties, including high polarity, specific heat, and heat of vaporization, and is (to my knowledge) the only common substance that expands when it freezes.  (If it weren't for this peculiarity, ice would sink, and bodies of water would freeze from the bottom up -- so there would probably be a permanent ice layer at the bottom of the world's lakes and oceans.)

So I guess it's no surprise that the woo-woos love making claims about water.  It seems like lately I've been seeing more and more of them -- mostly advertisements for devices that allegedly make your water... better.  Or healthier.  Or more nutritious.  Or waterier.  It's hard to tell, sometimes, exactly what they are claiming, because they don't seem all that sure about it themselves.

Take the "MRET Water Activator," offered for sale by the Sound & Consciousness Institute of San Francisco.  Here's the claim:

The patented i-H2O Activation System is the most effective hydration technology available today. This easy-to-use wellness breakthrough allows you to transform ordinary, filtered water into ultra-hydrating, "living water" within 30 minutes. During the automated i-H2O activation process, the chaotic structure of water molecules is transformed into a single-file alignment, mimicking the body's own natural state of healthy cell water, thereby creating optimally energized, bio-available water.

I don't know about you, but the idea of my water molecules marching along in single file is a little... creepy.  But no worries, because they put you on notice right away that they haven't the vaguest idea what they're talking about:

This device infuses the Schumann Resonance (7.83 hertz) into the water. The Schumann Resonance is an electromagnetic frequency that resonates in our atmosphere between the earth and the ionosphere. It is triggered by lightning, which strikes every second somewhere on the planet. Based on the laws of brainwave entrainment, this frequency entrains every brain on the planet (including animals) into this state, which is right on the threshold of the brainwave states of theta and alpha. In fact, over millions of years, we have become addicted to this frequency and it is a core part of who we are as humans. However, the problem is that this frequency gets obscured in cities by all of the ambient electromagnetism. NASA has found that astronauts actually get sick when they go outside of the atmosphere and don't receive the frequency. Currently, all astronauts now receive this frequency electromagnetically.

What is it with these people and the Schumann Resonance?  They love the Schumann Resonance.  For those of you who aren't aficionados of obscure features of atmospheric physics, the Schumann Resonance is an ultra-low-frequency electromagnetic standing wave in the ionosphere.  Here's how Wikipedia describes it:

This global electromagnetic resonance phenomenon is named after physicist Winfried Otto Schumann who predicted it mathematically in 1952. Schumann resonances occur because the space between the surface of the Earth and the conductive ionosphere acts as a closed waveguide. The limited dimensions of the Earth cause this waveguide to act as a resonant cavity for electromagnetic waves in the ELF band. The cavity is naturally excited by electric currents in lightning. Schumann resonances are the principal background in the electromagnetic spectrum beginning at 3 Hz and extend to 60 Hz, and appear as distinct peaks at extremely low frequencies (ELF) around 7.8 (fundamental), 13.7, 19.6, 25.5, 31.4, 37.3 and 43.2 Hz.

It has nothing to do with brainwaves.  It is not "obscured in cities."  NASA doesn't "give this frequency to astronauts."  And we are not "addicted to this frequency."

Oh, and there's no way to "infuse a frequency" into water.

If you keep reading, though, the claims just get wilder and wilder.  "Activated water" that has been "infused with the Schumann resonance" has the property of "super liquidity."  It's "bio-available."  (As opposed to ordinary water, which is just "available.")  And then after telling you how all of this nonsense has to do with the special properties of water, they tell you you can use their device to "activate" other substances...

...such as oil.  Which last I checked doesn't have much water in it.

If "MRET Activated Water" isn't bad enough, just today I ran into another claim, this one that we should all be drinking water in its "fourth phase."  What the hell could that mean, you might ask?

Well, you all learned in grade school how substances usually exist in one of three states -- solid, liquid, and gas.  (As you'll see in a moment, that is a dramatic oversimplification.)  But these people claim that these phases somehow aren't good enough, that we should be drinking water in a "fourth phase:"

4th Phase is a liquid water purifier!

It removes and renders harmless an enormous number of contaminants that are commonly found in water, whether from natural or man-made sources. It then puts water into what scientists are now calling the fourth phase of water (a liquid that has a beautiful, crystalline structure to it).

Ah, yes, those conveniently anonymous "scientists," always ready and waiting to be trotted out to support whatever idiotic claim is being made.

So what, exactly, is this stuff?  Check out the FAQs, and you find out:

4th Phase is a concentrated, water based solution of ionic minerals. The mother concentrate is made by extracting mineral salts from the stone, biotite mica, which are then diluted in purified water, bottled and sold, primarily as a liquid based water purifier. The resulting minerals are in sulfate form rather than the chloride form that most companies offer (The requirement for sulfur is nearly twice the requirement for chloride in the human body).

This, they tell us, comes out of the work of Dr. Gerald Pollack of the University of Washington, who tells us the following:

Dr. Pollack asserts that water, in it’s [sic] maximum potential as a substance that enlivens and hydrates us, needs to be highly energized and it reaches this high energy state through a variety of ways, one of which is that it creates this liquid crystalline structure when it is in the presence of external energy sources like light (sunlight, for example.) When water is in this high energy state, it mimics the water that surrounds our cells and is found throughout the body, and it has many other properties as well.

I'm so relieved to hear that now the water in my body will have many other properties!  That sounds great!  I'd hate to think that my water had "few properties."

What's interesting is how these people are using half-truths, incorrectly interpreted research, and out-and-out falsehoods to sell a product.  For example, the whole premise of a "fourth phase" of water, a mystical and energized phase, ignores the fact that the chemists have known for decades that water can exist in at least eighteen different phases (fifteen solid phases, plus liquid, vapor, and supercritical fluid), depending on temperature and pressure:

And unfortunately for these claimants, here at sea-level atmospheric pressure and typical room temperature, we're stuck in one boring old phase: liquid.

Now, Dr. Pollack himself, as far as I have been able to find, seems to have some degree of credibility in his field, and has been the author of a good many peer-reviewed papers.  On the other hand, the fault may not lie entirely with the purveyors of "4th Phase" hijacking Pollack's work.  At least one of Pollack's colleagues, neurobiologist Alexander Stein, has given an evaluation of Pollack's research that is nothing short of scathing:

Dr. Pollack is an embarrassment to his field and his University. This book [Cells, Gels, and the Engines of Life] is a collection of old results (from as far back as 50 years ago) that puzzled the world's scientists at the time they were first published. There has been much progress in the intervening decades that Dr. Pollack would do well to read and understand. All of the ancient science upon which Pollack's argument depends has since been explained or refuted. People are entitled to write, or say, whatever they choose. However, that doesn't necessarily make it true. Before purchasing this book, people should browse Dr. Pollack's publication record. They should note that in those instances when his science has escaped the peer-review process, references to his ridiculous opinions about cell biology have been omitted. Prospective buyers should also note that this book was published using the private funds of Pollack's family, and not solicited or endorsed by any scientific organization. I fully support anyone who wishes to read this comedy of ignorance, provided they then turn the pages of a good cell biology textbook. This book may change the way you look at the world around you, but so will psychoactive drugs and head trauma. Pollack is a laughing-stock. He will tell you that he is a persecuted genius. It is important to remember, though, that sometimes people are laughed at because they are genuine fools.

Ouchie.  So suffices to note that Pollack himself may not exactly be the solidest foundation on which to rest your claim.

Now, I'm not a chemist, and I would be unqualified to comment upon Pollack's research into the properties of water; but I do teach biology, and I can say without particular fear of error that the claims of the "4th Phase" people with respect to the biological effects of this Magic Water are bogus.  The bottom line: save your money.  Plain old tap water (in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, at least) is safe, hydrates you just fine, and has the additional advantage of being cheap.

So, there you have it; yet another example of combining "a fool and his money are soon parted" and "there's a sucker born every minute."  Myself, I think you can solve the whole thing by switching to red wine.  Except... uh-oh...

Tomorrow: Do the antioxidants in red wine actually prevent cancer?  Or do people just like getting drunk?