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Why are water and carbon essential to live?

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Why are water and carbon essential to live?

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This solution discusses why water and carbon are essential to life.

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Every living organism on earth must have water in some form in order to survive. Every living cell is composed primarily of water. Water vapor in the atmosphere, unlike liquid water, absorbs the sun's ultraviolet radiation which otherwise would be extremely harmful to life on earth. Both liquid and water vapor are nontransparent to the infrared radiation which is given off by the earth, thereby preventing much of this heat from being lost to space and keeping earth's temperatures at habitable levels. While oxygen atoms comprise almost 80% of water by weight, this oxygen is chemically bound and not available to plants and animals. However, some ...

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