General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNot a joke. Billion-year-old water found in Ontario, potentially contains life
Its older than cavemen. It predates the dinosaurs. And it just might contain clues to the possibility of life on Mars.
A team of U.K.-Canadian scientists have discovered billion-year-old water deep underground in an Ontario mine and, according to their research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, they think it might actually contain life.
We've found an interconnected fluid system in the deep Canadian crystalline basement that is billions of years old, and capable of supporting life, University of Manchester professor Chris Ballentine said in a news release. Our finding is of huge interest to researchers who want to understand how microbes evolve in isolation, and is central to the whole question of the origin of life, the sustainability of life, and life in extreme environments and on other planets.
Researchers from the universities of Manchester, Lancaster, Toronto and McMaster analyzed water pouring out of boreholes 2.4 kilometres underground near Timmins, Ontario.
Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/billion-year-old-water-found-in-ontario-potentially-contains-life-1.1282836#ixzz2TOHeOQY5
liberal N proud
(60,339 posts)And now man has gone and found it and destroyed that too.
Figures.
Baitball Blogger
(46,756 posts)Chakab
(1,727 posts)lpbk2713
(42,766 posts)Poll_Blind
(23,864 posts)PB
phantom power
(25,966 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)It would have to be beer.
Let me buy ya a beer, eh?
They could call it Pre-Cambrian Ale. (Well, somehow Mesoproterozoic Stout just doesn't trip off the tongue.)
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)"Pure Newfoundland water", etcetera.
longship
(40,416 posts)But the marketing still works, eh?
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)Initech
(100,099 posts)Jenoch
(7,720 posts)If so, it is now contaminated.
When I first read the headline it occurred to me, "isn't ALL water over a billion years old"?
knightmaar
(748 posts)Hydrogen and Oxygen and what not.
As long as the water is pouring out of the holes, then it's uncontaminated up to the exit point. I'm guessing that they got its age from the balance of isotopes in the minerals that are in it.
Hard to say, since the article doesn't discuss it.
Orrex
(63,220 posts)Just saying.
n
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)G_j
(40,367 posts)A nourishing cocktail containing hydrogen, methane and Noble gases? I don't know about this billion year old water harboring life forms. I would believe sulfur, but Noble gases are known for their inertness.
Auntie Bush
(17,528 posts)Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)According to wikipedia, the jury's still out. The shit about the kerosene contaminants, however, make me seriously question the Russian team's repeated assurances that they're not going to fuck up the water down there.
LeftInTX
(25,515 posts)There is a region in Canada where rocks are billions of years old. If the water has been trapped that long, it could hold secrets about earth during that time.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)According to a joint press release by the researchers and universities involved:
"The ancient water that we have discovered located deep in Pre-Cambrain rocks under Northern Ontario has been found to definitely be...wet."
Hekate
(90,773 posts)Given the environments in which life has been found, and given the depths at which even complex life-forms have been found, I'd say this is a good bet. I believe that those who say the entire Earth is alive are right.
applegrove
(118,759 posts)those microbes.
LeftinOH
(5,357 posts)All water on Earth is the same age.
Megalo_Man
(88 posts)you can make new water right now by combining hydrogen and oxygen
Locut0s
(6,154 posts)And even harder to prove that the life is descended from that a billion years old without surface contact/contamination.
chuckrocks
(290 posts)'cause there'd be koala bears living there by now.
Larkspur
(12,804 posts)This water is used today to irrigate crops and water livestock in Northern Africa.
The only problem I have with the billion year old water is did it seep into the mine from above or is the rock layer surrounding the water impenetrable by surface water seepage? Also, how old is the mine? Isn't water sometimes used to cool drill bits used to drill into the mine walls?