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Planetary science

Planetary science

Dripping with science

03 Dec 2015
Taken from the December 2015 issue of Physics World

The Water Book: the Extraordinary Story of Our Most Ordinary Substance
Alok Jha
2015 Headline £20.00hb 384pp

Icebound

Pick up a newspaper, and chances are it will have a story about water in it. From news of floods and droughts to the discovery of water flowing on Mars, water is embedded in our surroundings and in our culture (“Water, water everywhere”). Yet despite its ubiquity, we don’t really understand it. From the forces that bind it into a solid, to the way it cools and even how it sustains the cells that build our bodies – the humble H2O molecule still retains many of its mysteries.

In The Water Book, science journalist Alok Jha endeavours to connect each of us through the intrigues of this deceptively simple substance “to everyone and everything else and the rest of the universe”. The book is told in the form of a story that chases the enigmatic water molecule from the far reaches of space to the Atacama Desert and back again. But it isn’t just us, the readers, who get to go on a journey, for Jha is on the move as well: as the book begins, he is boarding the vessel MV Akademik Shokalskiy, bound for Antarctica on a research trip.

The voyage doesn’t start well, but it does give Jha an excuse to treat us to an extensive description of the trials and tribulations of a journey through the “roaring forties” to the icy Southern continent. As the ship progresses, he describes the larger context of its voyage, elegantly moving from historic to present-day scientific impacts. In doing so, Jha sets the tone for the book, weaving tales from his journey to Antarctica in with the twists (and a few red herrings) in the meandering story of water.

The scope of the task Jha sets himself is challenging, as there are few scientific topics that water does not seep into. To tackle this, Jha loosely separates his treatise into sections discussing water on Earth in liquid (“The Hydrosphere”) and solid (“The Cryosphere”) forms before heading off our planet to hunt for places where water hides out in the rest of the solar system. This sectioning of the book serves him well as he winds descriptions of various research on the water molecule into stories of his own journey south.

When discussing water here on Earth, Jha is unapologetic about refusing to separate the fundamentals of water science (particularly as it is applied to our environment) from the pressing issue of climate change. This issue crops up a number of times, and although he states that a discussion of climate change is beyond the scope of the book, many of the topics he chooses to cover stray unavoidably into the Earth’s gloomy future. This is particularly stark as he travels across the Antarctic ice in search of the now ice-locked hut that sheltered the Australian explorer and scientist Douglas Mawson in 1912–1913. On arrival at the hut, Jha pauses his story to discuss the effect of the changing landscape on the nearby colony of Adélie penguins, followed swiftly by a description of research on ice-sheet dynamics and ice-core isotopes, and then by a summary of results from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This rather breathless coverage of topics is somewhat a feature of the book.

As for water as a chemical, I particularly liked the book’s account of the “Victorian controversy” over who actually discovered that water molecules consist of two hydrogen atoms attached to an oxygen. Was it the aristocrat Henry Cavendish? The engineer James Watt? Or the French tax collector Antoine Lavoisier? Jha includes a deft description of the polar nature of the water molecule and its implications, and he delves particularly into the impact of polarity on our understanding of biochemistry, pointing out the usefulness of the ubiquitous hydrogen bond in water. In doing so, he certainly fulfils the brief to connect water to everyone in the most intimate sense. Most crucial, he explains, is the generation of “proton currents” (thanks to water’s ability to carry charge momentarily) for storing energy in our bodies and indeed those of most other living organisms. Paired with water’s extraordinary solvent properties, which enable it to transport elements where needed, it’s easy to see why we are made of more than 70% water.

In tackling the physics behind water, Jha takes in both the big and the small. He describes the compound’s astrophysical beginnings in chance encounters of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, then moves on to discuss the diversity and complexity in the structure of water. To learn about the many solid forms that water can take, he consults with a number of scientists who explain how 16 different solid structures of ice can form, depending on pressure and temperature. Jha then applies all of this knowledge to the question of where water might exist elsewhere in our solar system – and perhaps beyond.

The subject matter in The Water Book is admirably diverse, but in its quest to use water to connect such a wide range of scientific topics, the book does come across as a little rushed in places. Some topics that Jha promises to return to are barely covered later in the text, while various intriguing aspects of water research are introduced but not dwelled on – meaning that at some junctures, the reader is only given a tantalizing glimpse into possible depths.

To my mind, there also seemed to be a number of exciting, topical water quests that went under-explored. What about all the water in the interior of the Earth? Surely the ability of water to store energy, or the physics of quasi-liquid layers, also has an impact on our lives? I also found it surprising that some historic water controversies, such as the “polywater” debacle of the 1960s and early 1970s, were not covered. But perhaps this is churlish. Overall, I would venture to say that even the most general of “water experts” is likely to learn something new in this book. In addition to the breadth of topics covered, I genuinely enjoyed Jha’s descriptions of the voyage on the MV Akademik Shokalskiy. He brings to life the progress of the voyage in a way few Antarctic explorers could. The dramatic conclusion of the journey, and of the book, serves as the perfect testament to humankind’s struggle with water – a substance that never quite does what we expect.

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