A geology professor has revealed her experience of drinking the oldest water on Earth, which was discovered in a Canadian mine and has been trapped for billions of years
In 2016, Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a geologist, stumbled upon the oldest water ever found on Earth in a Canadian mine in Timmins, Ontario.
The water is estimated to be between 1.5 billion and 2.6 billion years old. “When people think about this water they assume it must be some tiny amount of water trapped within the rock,” she explained. “But in fact, it’s very much bubbling right up out at you. These things are flowing at rates of litres per minute – the volume of water is much larger than anyone anticipated.”
After tasting the ancient water, she described it as “very salty and bitter – much saltier than seaweed”.
She clarified that while the water is not potable, it appears “crystal clear when it first comes out of the rock and looks very tempting”. Moreover, the water is “scientifically too valuable to waste” by treating it like ordinary tap water.
The high salt content was a promising sign, as saltier water tends to be older. By examining the sulphate (salt composition) more closely, the team concluded that microbes had once existed in the water.
“We were able to indicate that the signal we are seeing in the fluids has to have been produced by microbiology – and most importantly has to have been produced over a very long time scale.Prof Lollar explained: “.
Prof Lollar has made an intriguing revelation, saying: “The microbes that produced this signature couldn’t have done it overnight. This has to be an indication that organisms have been present in these fluids on a geological timescale”. The scientific team involved in the research examined the range of noble gases in the water and particular isotope signatures to deduce its rough age, revealing potential parallels with extraterrestrial life.
Chris Ballentine from the University of Manchester, who contributed significantly to the study, told CNN, “On somewhere like Mars, any life that formed could have found its way into similar pockets of water in the Martian crust, and our work shows that these pockets of water can survive and provide a place for the life to have survived long after the surface of Mars lost its water and became sterile”. The investigation zeroed in on Timmins mine because of previous discoveries at 1.7 miles deep, where microbial communities were living off dissolved hydrogen, leading to the speculation that even ancient waters might be flowing beneath, all thanks to the local geology.