What makes the sea salty?

Answer 1

All water, even rain water, contains dissolved chemicals which scientists call "salts." But not all water tastes salty. Water is fresh or salty according to individual judgment, and in making this decision man is more convinced by his sense of taste than by a laboratory test. It is one's taste buds that accept one water and reject another.

How salty the ocean is, however, defies ordinary comprehension. Some scientists estimate that the oceans contain as much as 50 quadrillion tons (50 million billion tons) of dissolved solids.

Continue reading the article "Why is the Ocean Salty?" at http://www.palomar.edu/oceanography/salty_ocean.htm

Answer 2

Answer is mineral salts, here is the information of almost six times as salty as the ocean! It's called the Dead Sea because nothing lives in it. It is some of the saltiest water anywhere in the world. All roads lead to the Sea when it comes to the rivers in the area. The Dead Sea is continually fed water from the rivers and streams coming down off the mountains that surround it. But the kicker is this....no rivers drain out of the Dead Sea. The only way water gets out of the Sea is through evaporation. And boy does it evaporate! This part of the world get plenty hot. When the water evaporates, it leaves behind all the dissolved minerals in the Sea, just making it saltier. In fact, it's through the dual action of; 1) continuing evaporation and 2) minerals salts carried into the Sea from the local rivers, that makes the Sea so salty. The fact that the water doesn't escape the Sea just traps the salts within its shores. There's nothing living in the Dead Sea because it got so salty, so quickly, that evolution has not had a chance to produce any creatures that could adapt to such brutal conditions.

Answer 3

Wow, some thoughtful replies . . .

The sea is salty due to the leaching of the earth's minerals into the ocean. When water evaporates from the ocean to form clouds, it leaves behind all the salt in the ocean. Meanwhile this fresh water rains onto the land, which serves to rinse even more salts and pollution back into the ocean. Essentially, there is nowhere for it to go from here and so the concentrations of salt and other things continues to increase as the process continues.

Answer 4

Water on the land can dissolve salt outcrops, and can weather many minerals, especially clays and feldspars, and leach the sodium out of them. This sodium can be carried into the ocean by rivers. Some salt is supplied by water through the ground directly to the sea—called submarine groundwater discharge (SGWD). Such water is often very concentrated in minerals. Ocean floor sediments release much sodium, as do hot springs on the ocean floor (hydrothermal vents). Volcanic dust also contributes some sodium.

Austin and Humphreys calculated that about 457 million tonnes of sodium now comes into the sea every year.

http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/578

The saltiness of the sea is good evidence that the earth is not old. If it were then the oceans would be much more salty.
At the current rate of salt input the maximum age of the oceans is about 62 million years old. Of course it may have had salt in already which would reduce that age, and there may have been catastrohic events such as the Global Flood, adding large amounts of salt.

More technical article here
http://tccsa.tc/articles/ocean_sodium.html

Answer 5

A simple question like yours actually gives a glimpse into just one of the many complex cycles operating on our amazing planet!

The oceans form part of a very slow process that continously cycles salt from land to sea to land. This cycle interacts with the water cycle and plate tectonics.


From the website listed below:
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The salt cycle involves the ocean, the geosphere and to a very minor extent the atmosphere.

Minerals are leached from rocks through flowing groundwater and surface erosion. They enter the rivers and from there the ocean where they accumulate, making sea water salty. They are removed from the water and enter the sediment by chemical action.

The sediment is used to form new rock which brings the minerals back into the geosphere.

Salt gets into the atmosphere as spray from wind waves. This may be carried on to land, constituting a minute pathway from sea to land in the global salt cycle.

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Answer 6

Whale sperm...just kidding....One source of salt in the ocean is the hydrothermal vents on the seafloor that spew mineral deposits from beneath the ocean floor. Where the weather is hot and dry, more sea water is evaporated leaving salt behind and very little rain occurs to replenish theIn addition to salt, the ocean contains every single element found in the universe. Rivers slowly transfer salt and other minerals from the land to the oceans. If all the oceans were to evaporate, the salt left behind would cover the entire planet with a layer of salt that was 50 meters (half a soccer field) thick.

Answer 7

Minerals in rocks. Chlorine and bromine have been detected on mars showing the surface was once sea and global warming is making the sea less salty as more fresh water is washed into the sea.

Answer 8

The sodium & chloride constitute 85% of dissoved solids that makes the sea very salty & the gradual concentration of other dissoved chemicals eroded from earth's crust is washed into the sea.

Answer 9

It's all got to do with volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and the general shifting of the plates. Over the eons of time the old earth rejuvenates itself by turning inside out, which in turn cleans the oceans. The salt comes from deposits in the earth.( I think) so they are also replaced continually.

Answer 10

Salt supplies style to the nutrition. Sugar supplies sweetness. do no longer question bout God's creation. Do u comprehend... one guy observed an apple on a nuge tree and thought "O God, why did U make considered one of those extensive tree carry a small apple?" then he stumbled on a pumpkin creeper, he thought "God, why did U make such narrow creepers to hold such extensive pumpkins?" Then he sat all the way down to take a snooze. He awoke through an apple which fell on his head. It replaced into so painful. Then he found out why God placed apples in a extensive tree, If a pumpkin had fallen on his head, he wud have been ineffective through now.