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The water in your glass has been around for billions of years and is simply passing through.

Earth Science Facts, sourced to NASA.

What it means

Water is not created or destroyed in any quantity by the cycle that moves it. The same molecules evaporate, condense, fall, run to the sea and evaporate again, and they have been doing so since the oceans formed. A given molecule may spend a week in the atmosphere, a decade in a river system or ten thousand years locked in an ice sheet before it moves on.

The claim comes from NASA, and the page it comes from was read on 2026-08-27 to confirm it still says this.

This is not the kind of claim that goes out of date, which is why it was set as a puzzle rather than a fact with a shelf life.

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