Miners deep underground in northern Ontario find the oldest water ever known

[Ichingcarpenter]

Miners drilling deep underground in northern Ontario have long known about the sparkling salty water.

It’s been bubbling out of the rocks beneath their feet since the 1880s, but no one really appreciated the significance — until now.

An international research team reported Wednesday that miners near Timmins are tapping into an ancient underground oasis that may harbour prehistoric microbes. The water flowing out of fractures and bore holes in one mine near Timmins dates back more than a billion years, perhaps 2.6 billion, making it the oldest water known to exist on Earth, says the team that details the discovery in the journal Nature.

“This is the oldest [water] anybody has been able to pull out, and quite frankly, it changes the playing field,” says geologist Barbara Sherwood Lollar, at the University of Toronto, who co-led the team.



http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/15/worlds-oldest-water-bubbling-into-northern-ontario-mine/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter



I wonder if they will find any Acritarchs

[MisterP]

1. tekeli-li!

[flying rabbit]

6. ...

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. How do you date water?

Are they saying that it's unique because it's uncontaminated and in liquid state for a long time?

[demwing]

3. Well, first you get permission

from the water's dad. Then you bring candy and flowers....no need to spend a bunch of money. The goal is to spend quality time together. Any water that judges you by your paycheck isn't worth the second date.

And then there's the sex.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. DUZY award

LOL

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. I can't remember.

Numerous methods exist for age dating groundwater, including carbon-14, krypton-85, chlorine- 36, and chlorofluorocarbon analyses.


I forget which one they would use on water this old.

[sofa king]

7. Ask it if it ever wore a mullet.

[defacto7]

8. here's an article.

It's quite interesting.

http://www.phy.anl.gov/mep/atta/index.html

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. 'Nature' explains the dating and findings in more detail

To date the water, the team used three lines of evidence, all based on the relative abundances of various isotopes of noble gases present in the water. The authors determined that the fluid could not have contacted Earth's atmosphere — and so been at the planet's surface — for at least 1 billion years, and possibly for as long as 2.64 billion years, not long after the rocks it flows through formed. The study appears today in Nature1.

'Extremely strange'
“The isotopic compositions that they see in these samples are extremely strange, and the preferred explanation in the article seems to me the most likely one,” says Pete Burnard, a geochemist at the Centre of Petrographic and Geochemical Research in Vandœuvre-les-Nancy, France. “For the moment, I think we have to conclude that there are 1.5-billion-year-old fluids trapped in the crust.”

The findings are “doubly interesting”, Ballentine says, because the fluid carries the ingredients necessary to support life. The isolated water supply, he says, provides “secluded biomes, ecosystems, in which life, you can speculate, might have even originated”. His colleagues are now working to establish whether the water does harbour life.

The findings may also have implications for life on Mars,


http://www.nature.com/news/reservoir-deep-under-ontario-holds-billion-year-old-water-1.12995

[Judi Lynn]

10. 1.5 billion-year-old water found on Earth

1.5 billion-year-old water found on Earth
Kate Seamons, Newser10:30 a.m. EDT May 16, 2013

"Old" might not top the list of the adjectives you'd use to describe water, but that could very well change after reading this story: Scientists say they've found water whose age clocks in at no less than 1.5 billion years, making it the oldest cache to have ever been discovered. As the BBC explains, the only water to top it is "minute quantities" contained in some rock minerals.

Gold miners in Timmins, Ontario, were the ones who uncovered the water while drilling into bedrock; NPR reports that the team behind the discovery had been requesting such samples from a number of mines; a trio of dating techniques revealed this particular water to be remarkable -- between 1.5 billion and 2.6 billion years old.

The BBC reports the water likely didn't begin its ancient life 1.5 miles beneath the surface: It would have seeped from above ground through the earth, eventually becoming trapped.

The fluids that we see now are actually preservations of ancient oceans," a geochemist involved in the study explains. But that may not be the most interesting part: The water, which contains a good deal of hydrogen, could hold ancient life, too, and the scientists are currently testing samples to see if that's the case. And if it is, that could fuel hope that the same kind of life persists on Mars, which was once covered in oceans as well.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/05/16/newser-ancient-water/2165757/

(Short article, no more at link.)