I just spent the past week at Ocean City, MD with my girlfriend, Kathleen, and her family. The weather was decent (if you love arctic temperatures like I do), and the waves were high and strong. I spent several days being battered by the crashing waves and enjoying the scenic beach front and night sky.

While looking at the ocean one night, Kathleen and I had the realization that the ocean has been part of everything on earth. Since water changes locations so often, from being evaporated, condensed and rained back down to the earth, then back to the ocean somehow. It was interesting to think about how the condensation from a bottle of my water could one day make its way down to the deepest crevice of the ocean floor, or how from that same crevice could be water that I am drinking now.

For ages, water has been the major component in all life, so it is conceivable that water from some of the first cells that appeared on earth is still around. These thoughts roused statistical problems I have read about such as the probability that a person has inhaled air that had once passed through several notable figures (Jesus and Caesar).

Ideas such as those make me wonder what else lies in wait for us to discover, since the majority of the ocean has gone unseen by human eyes for eons, who knows what we’ll find?