The world, explained through water.
A publication about a single molecule and everything it touches — and a dataset that measures what it costs, where it comes from, and what it takes to keep it flowing.
The Visible Fraction
The largest fjord system on Earth was cut by one kind of water and filled by another. One of them holds most of the planet's fresh water; the other holds almost none of it. And much of the water people actually depend on is in neither of those visible reservoirs.
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Earth · 7 min
The Long Pause
In January 2025 a drill on the East Antarctic plateau reached bedrock at 2,800 metres and recovered ice formed more than a million years ago. It had not sat still: it had compacted, recrystallised and moved slowly with the ice sheet. What it had not done was return to the fast water cycle.
What a standardized household pays for tap water, calculated from each city's own published tariff and shown with its arithmetic and its sources.
The cost of 1,000 litres for one standardized household, in each city's own currency. These 11 figures are not compared with one another — that needs an exchange rate fixed to a named month, and none is set.