Scientists have just found a sugar molecule in a giant molecular cloud called G+0.693-0.027, located near the center of the Milky Way. The sugar is called erythrulose, & on Earth it's also found in raspberries, fermented foods, some bacteria, & in cosmetics, especially self-tanners, because it reacts with skin proteins to create a browning effect. By itself, erythrulose is barely sweet. It's only 10-20% as sweet as sucrose. So if a teaspoon of sugar (4 g) tastes "normal," you'd need 5-10 teaspoons of erythrulose to get the same sweetness. But finding the sugar molecule is significant because sugars are essential for life; they are part of RNA, DNA, & cellular metabolism, they're needed for energy storage, & they are key to biochemical reactions. Finding them in space means life's building blocks don't need a planet to form, & they have been delivered to planets, including Earth, by comets & asteroids. The early Earth received huge amounts of organics in what is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) between 4.1 and 3.8 billion years ago.

The LHB was frequent (thousands of years), huge & energetic. Explosions were equal to being hit by billions of nuclear bombs. The LHB is basically Earth's worst meteor shower ever. During this bombardment, Earth received water & organic molecules, like sugars, amino acids & alcohols, & created hot pools & chemical environments where life could have begun. If Earth received 0.5 and 50 million tons of erythrulose, that's 1 million to 100 billion pounds or 450,000 to 45 million metric tons. That's enough to coat the Earth with a thin layer of organic molecules. This is the first confirmed detection of erythrulose in the interstellar medium. Before this, scientists had found other sugars such as glycolaldehyde, glyceraldehyde, ribose, erythritol (a sugar alcohol that is also used in low-calorie artificial sweeteners), & other polyols & sugar-like molecules.

Why Does Lake Natron Turn Animals to Stone?

Lake Natron reaches pH 9-13.5, making it 100 times more alkaline than seawater, which strips moisture and minerals from animal bodies in days. The lake's extreme alkalinity calcifies and mummifies animal remains instead of decomposing them, creating perfectly preserved ghostly specimens. Evaporation

Why Does Lake Natron Turn Animals to Stone?

Lake Natron reaches pH 9-13.5, making it 100 times more alkaline than seawater, which strips moisture and minerals from animal bodies in days. The lake's extreme alkalinity calcifies and mummifies animal remains instead of decomposing them, creating perfectly preserved ghostly specimens. Evaporation

Why Does Lake Natron Turn Animals to Stone?

Lake Natron reaches pH 9-13.5, making it 100 times more alkaline than seawater, which strips moisture and minerals from animal bodies in days. The lake's extreme alkalinity calcifies and mummifies animal remains instead of decomposing them, creating perfectly preserved ghostly specimens. Evaporation

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The book is based on the author’s impressions of her numerous expeditions in the many countries. It is a fascinating narrative rather than a mere record of facts irrespective of how scientifically valid they can be. The book is bound to be appreciated as a piece of absorbing reading by anyone who cares to increase the scope of his or her competence about our sweet home of a planet that must be…

The argument revolves around whether all water on Earth has, at some point, been peed out. The pee comes from all animals with a backbone or at least a notochord (stiff rod) at some point in their lives, called "chordates." That, of course, includes humans. This also includes mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, & a few weirdos & some squishy early-life forms that aren't around anymore. The group also includes dinosaurs. The argument goes that chordates pee a LOT; water cycles through organisms over millions of years, so statistically, most water molecules have been inside a bladder at some point in Earth's history. This is the "dinosaur pee in your glass" argument.

But this includes big assumptions about how much animals pee & assumes that water mixes thoroughly & that nearly all water participates in the water cycle. The reason the argument falls apart is that most of Earth's water is NOT in the fast-moving water cycle. Some water is locked away for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Some water, trapped deep below the Earth, has never been in the water cycle at all, known as "juvenile water." We have glacial ice with water trapped for up to millions of years. Therefore, it's impossible for every drop to have been peed out. That's not to say that no water we drink or shower with has at some point been peed out. A lot of water molecules in rivers, lakes, & oceans have been inside organisms. It's just that an enormous amount of water is & has been locked away or newly created & has never been inside anything alive. So the statement "every drop has been peed" is false, but the statement "you've drunk water molecules that were once pee" is true.

Let's look at the math. An avg. person = 110 lb (50 kg); daily pee = 0.26 gallons/d (1 L/d)—that's 2% of their body weight per day. But many animals don't really pee. Birds excrete uric acid paste, some desert animals barely pee, fish pee directly into water, & insects don't pee like mammals at all. Hypothetically, if all chordates peed at least 1% of their body weight, it would be calculated to be 0.2 gigatons/d (200 million tons/d), the equivalent of 80,000 Olympic-size pools. The nos. are almost certainly wrong, as they're built on shaky assumptions. Here's the thing—the U.S. Geological Survey estimates Earth's total water at 1.4 billion gigatons (or 326 million trillion gallons). The argument that says that every drop has been accounted for by pee assumes that it would take 19 million years to account for all of Earth's water. It's a fun number but wrong.