Deep down within a Canadian mine research worker have made an ancient breakthrough . They have foundthe world ’s previous water . At a depth of roughly 3 klick ( 1.8 nautical mile ) , tests have find that the water is at least an telling 2 billion years erstwhile .
The modish discoverypushes back the date for the oldest known piss by at least 500 million years . The late criminal record was hold by water found in the same mine by the same squad back in 2013 , and came from a deepness of around 2.5 kilometre . When the miners dug deeper , the researchers take the chance to research further into the mine and made their current discovery .
The mine is in fact thedeepest basal metal minein the human race , as the search for fuzz , atomic number 30 , and atomic number 47 is taking the miners deeper and deeper into the Earth ’s encrustation . As the mine continues to expand , the researchers are using the burrow to get a glance into what is hidden far below the surface , include searching for ancient weewee .
“ When people cerebrate about this water they assume it must be some tiny amount of urine trap within the rock , ” Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar , who presented her findings at the American Geophysical Union Fall meeting , narrate BBC News . “ But in fact it ’s very much eruct right up out at you . These things are flowing at rates of liters per minute – the book of the pee is much larger than anyone anticipated . ”
What is more , the vast age of the water is not the only important discovery . When the investigator analyzed the liquid , they witness traces of life within it . While they are yet to find real support bacteria , what they did discover was in effect the fingerprint of life story . From this they are able to infer that there has been some form of microbiology be within the H2O and over a very long clip menstruum .
The fact that something has been able to survive , and indeed flourish , within water that is so old and so deeply within the Earth has some important implications . While river no longer flow on the surface of Mars , there are still pockets of pee and ice under the surface . These are nowhere nigh as deep as the body of water chance on in Canada , and it is therefore potential that these pockets could provide the conditions necessary for micro-organism to live .
