Water is everywhere, from the vast glaciers of Mars to the cells in our own bodies. And yet it remains a mystery
The Chinese symbol for “political order” is made from the characters for river and dyke. The greatest cities are on rivers or have harbours. Ships create empires. Water is intrinsically linked with being human. We are almost entirely made of it: a human foetus is 95% water; the water content of an adult liver is 73%; that of the nervous system’s tissues is 84%. Our planet is seven-tenths water; until recently, scientists thought that water was a fundamental condition for life (though this is now seen as “chemical parochialism”). H2O is the only chemical formula that has entered everyday speech. We take water for granted, by thinking it ordinary, but we still don’t understand it. “Of all known liquids,” wrote the great water chemist Felix Franks, “water is probably the most studied and least understood.”
Related: Water: the weirdest liquid on the planet
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