Jakarta –
In 2016, researchers at a mine in Canada discovered it the oldest swimming pool in the world. The pool of water at a depth of about 3 kilometers is believed to be two billion years old.
This discovery “revises” the oldest known water data by at least 500 million years. The previous record was held by water discovered in the same mine by the same team in 2013, and came from a depth of about 2.5 kilometers.
Quoted from IFL Science, Sunday (7/1/2024) this mine is actually the deepest basalt mine in the world, because the search for copper, zinc and silver takes miners deeper into the earth’s crust.
As miners dug deeper, researchers saw the opportunity to explore deeper into the mine. They analyzed the water found by studying the gases trapped in it.
Gases such as helium and xenon can be trapped in water stuck in cracks in rocks, and measuring them can tell how old the water is.
“When people think about this water, they assume that it is a small amount of water trapped in the rock,” said Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar, who presented the discovery.
“But in reality these things flow at liters per minute, the volume of water is much larger than previously thought,” he continued.
Furthermore, the age of the vast body of water is not the only important discovery. When the researchers analyzed the fluid, they found traces of life within it.
While they didn’t find actual living bacteria, what they found is actually the fingerprint of life. From this they were able to conclude that some form of microbiology had existed in the water for a very long period of time.
The fact that something can survive, and indeed thrive, in waters so ancient and so deep within the Earth has several important implications.
Not only can it tell us about life on Earth billions of years ago, but it can also help find life outside of Earth, for example on Mars.
Even though rivers no longer flow on the surface of Mars, there are still pockets of water and ice beneath the surface. This is nowhere near as deep as the water found in Canada, and it is possible that these pockets could provide the conditions necessary for microorganisms to live.
Watch the video “NASA MRO reveals the latest information on the search for water on Mars”
(rns/agt)
2024-01-06 22:45:04
#Worlds #oldest #water #billion #years #reveals #Earths #history