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Most people know that there is water underground, even lots of water. That is how wells work, so no big deal. Once you get to a certain depth, however, water becomes much less common.
So, when geologists were in a Canadian mine back in 2016, they were quite surprised to find water at about 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) below the surface. After doing some research, they found that the water had been sealed away for approximately 2.64 billion years, making it the oldest water known to man.
As geologists do, the team wrote a paper on the find and published it in Nature. Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar was the leader of the team, and she talked about this find with BBC News, saying:
“When people think about this water they assume it must be some tiny amount of water trapped within the rock. But in fact it’s very much bubbling right up out at you. These things are flowing at rates of liters per minute – the volume of the water is much larger than anyone anticipated.”
She also commented on what was found in the water, which pointed toward the fact that it had once had life in it:
“By looking at the sulphate in the water, we were able to see a fingerprint that’s indicative of the presence of life. And 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. 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.”
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Having the opportunity to study the water that had been isolated for so long is a unique opportunity, and one that they took full advantage of. Long Li is an assistant professor in the University of Alberta’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. In a press release about the find, she said:
“The sulfate in this ancient water is not modern sulfate from surface water flowing down. What we’ve found is that the sulfate, like the hydrogen, is actually produced in place by reaction between the water and rock. What this means is that the reaction will occur naturally and can persist for as long as the water and rock are in contact, potentially billions of years.”
While all of this is obviously very interesting, and from a scientific point of view, a very important find, there is one thing that most average people will want to know. What exactly did this 2.64 billion year old water taste like? Well, normally it is not a good idea to drink water that hasn’t been tested to be safe, but Lollar threw caution to the wind and put a drop of it on her tongue. She described it to CNN, where she explained that it was ‘very salty and bitter’ which should not be a surprise given that it has been isolated for so long.
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