One and half miles beneath the surface of the Earth in a Canadian mine, researchers have found pockets of water in rocks that have been isolated from the surface for some two billion years.
The chemistry of the water could support life, the team reports today in the journal, Nature supporting water might also lie in similar kinds of rocks deep beneath the surface of mars.
Because the water was trapped at a time when Earth was very different than it is today, the new findings also lend insight into the evolution of the early atmosphere and the habitability of the deep Earth. Until now, the oldest underground water dated back just tens of millions of years.
Barbara Sherwood Lollar a geologist in the department of Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto and collaborated with other researches on analyzing water found in a Canadian mine in Timmins, Ontario. They published the findings showing that the water is between 1.5 and 2.6 billion years old -- meaning It has been totally isolated for long
Lollar dipped the tip of her finger in this water and tested it with her tongue. She found the ancient sample “very salty and bitter – much saltier than seawater.”
“If you’re a good geologist who worked with a lot of rocks you’ve probably licked a lot of rocks,” She said.
It takes more than a taste to figure out how old water is however “we can get a sense of antiquity by looking at things like salinity of the water and more particularly, looking at the oxygen and hydrogen in the water molecule itself,” She said.
For more details follow this link: www.cnn.com/2013/06/21/world/americas/ancient-water-tasting
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