• Question: Would it be possible to live off sea water?

    Asked by to Ben on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ben Butler

      Ben Butler answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      Hi poorvigiri4,

      Great question because this is something that lots of scientists are working on!

      Out of all of the water in the world, 97% of it is seawater. If we were to try and drink this seawater it would make us sick after a few mouthfuls because our bodies don’t like the salt.

      In order to live off of seawater we would therefore need to take the salt out of it. Scientists are trying to work out the best way to do this. Some methods include passing the seawater through REALLY fine filters, others work by evaporating the water to leave the salt behind, and some new techniques even freeze the seawater to get rid of the salt.

      The important thing to notice is that all of these methods use a lot of energy, so it would make water very expensive!

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