World's oldest flowing water found deep in Timmins mine (CBC)
Last edited Fri Mar 14, 2014, 03:17 PM - Edit history (1)
Water found in a deep, isolated reservoir in Timmins, Ont., has been trapped there for 1.5 billion to 2.64 billion years — since around the time the first multicellular life arose on the planet — Canadian and British scientists say.
The water pouring out of boreholes 2.4 kilometres below the surface in the northern Ontario copper and zinc mine is older than any other free-flowing water ever discovered. It is rich in dissolved gases such as hydrogen and methane that could theoretically provide support for microbial life, the researchers report in a paper published Wednesday online in the journal Nature.
"What we can be sure of is that we have identified a way in which planets can create and preserve an environment friendly to microbial life for billions of years," said a statement from Greg Holland, the Lancaster University geochemist who is the lead author of the study.
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Microbes that have been isolated for tens of millions of years have been found in water with similar chemistry at even slightly deeper depths below the surface in a South African gold mine, using hydrogen gas as an energy source, the researchers noted.
The researchers estimated how old the water was based on an analysis of the xenon gas dissolved in it. Like many other elements, xenon comes in forms with different masses, known as isotopes. The water in the Timmins mine contained an unusually high level of lighter isotopes of xenon that are thought to have come from the Earth's atmosphere at the time it became trapped.
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more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/world-s-oldest-flowing-water-found-deep-in-timmins-mine-1.1387588
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