Comment on If a planet was completely covered in water, wouldn't it all be freshwater?
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
So let’s consider the premise that our oceans got their salt from water washing over the land in rivers after it rains.
On a world completely covered with water, are we presuming there is a solid ocean bottom? Because if so, that water is “washing over the land” 24/7, isn’t it?
HotDayBreeze@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Running water causes a lot more erosion than stationary bodies of water. Consider lakes, which are still cycling water much like a river, but over thousands of years they deposit so much silt that they cease to exist.
Underwater erosion is certainly a thing, but in comparison to downhill water erosion on land, it’s pretty insignificant. It does not seem a given that it could significantly offset the processes that remove salt from salt water.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
A river will erode more than a static lake, true, but what about an ocean? They’re far from calm. And an ocean’s amount of water to rock contact is a couple of orders of magnitude greater than a rocky landscape with rivers in specific places, so more sites where salination can occur.