In nature, very little is elemental and pure. More often than not the stuff that made the Earth are impure in order to enable its use by living organisms. Plants extract minerals and water from the soil, and carbon dioxide from the air. If we were to drown them in water, nutrients, or pure CO2, they'd die in an instant.

Moderation is key to a balanced life, and nature moderates itself by watering itself down.

Now, this topic might be controversial to some, but be that as it may, it currently provides the best explanation to how all life on Earth are the way they are. Note that we use the word "currently", as the theory of evolution through natural selection is ever changing with every new evidence discovered: fossils, taxonomy, genetics.

It is quite poetic that one of the most controversial theories in science also goes through the process of evolution. Maybe we'll cover how the idea changed since Darwin, but for now, we must first understand how it works.

If you're old enough to remember the sci-fi film The Matrix, then you can recall that scene at the end where Neo woke up and sees the world in codes (by the way, spoiler alert). Being a mineralogist is pretty much like that; wherever you cast your eyes, instead of phones, buildings, or cars, you will see bauxite, silica, dolomite, pyrite...etc.

It's a rather cool trick to deconstruct the world as we live through it. And it's a skill that's easily learned; though not as easy as by plugging your brain straight into the Matrix (spoiler alert, again).

There was news recently of how a coded DNA is used to hack a computer. It begs the question, can the human body be hacked itself? No, we're not talking about biohacking, we're talking about something more akin to the ones handeled by computer security companies...except with regards to our bodies.

John Murphy's Ransomware tells of such a possibility...

Next to gasses, liquids are probably the most things we take for granted in this world. We waste water as if it's an infinite source, but we put no though at all on how much energy is required to bring them into our rivers and taps. Liquids require a lot of energy to manage and manipulate, and this is due to their chemistry and physics.

​May they be water, petrol, or cooking oil, the nature of liquids is a cornerstone to understanding how our world works.