This Seawater Is 20,000 Years Old, and Has Remained Untouched Since the Last Ice Age

livescience.com ^ | May 26, 2019 08:57am ET | Brandon Specktor,

[BenLurkin]

The researchers found their watery prize while drilling sediment core samples out of the underwater limestone deposits that make up the Maldives archipelago in South Asia. After hauling each core onto their research vessel, the team sliced up the rock like a tube of cookie dough and put the pieces into a hydraulic press that squeezed any remnant moisture out of the pores.

When the researchers tested the composition of these fresh-pressed water samples aboard their ship, they were surprised to find that the water was extremely salty — far saltier than the Indian Ocean is today. They did more tests back on land to look at the specific elements and isotopes (versions of elements) that made up the water, and all the results seemed out of place in the modern ocean.

In fact, everything about these water samples indicated that they came from a time when the ocean was significantly saltier, colder and more chlorinated — exactly as it is thought to have been during the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets sucked up ocean water and dropped sea levels to hundreds of feet below current levels.

"From all indications, it looks pretty clear we now have an actual piece of this 20,000-year-old ocean," lead study author Clara Blättler, an assistant professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, said in a statement.

If these results indeed hold water, the new samples provide the first direct look at how the ocean reacted to the geophysical swings of the last ice age. This understanding could lead to improved climate models to help understand our own changing world, Blättler said, as "any model you build of the climate has to be able to accurately predict the past."

[grey_whiskers]

Unfortunately, I misread the title as “This SENATOR is 20,000 years old...”

[JimRed]

Ahhhh! The oceans are getting less salty! We’re all gonna DIE! Give us grant money to “study” the “problem”!

[gibsonguy]

Thanks for the link. Glad the Russians were able to be convinced to show restraint. There must be a way to explore without contamination who knows what they find down there. Hoffa? D.B Cooper? HRC’s e-mails?

[Pontiac]

Ummm, they're have to find a new way to scam people.

Like second hand smoke kills people?

Like asbestos in any amount is dangerous?

Like a homeowner can’t remove his own lead based paint?

[GOPJ]

Yep, you’re right - AND ‘global cooling, peak oil, ozone hole, acid rain, population bomb, etc etc etc...

[Pontiac]

Yes, you are correct, they are always finding new ways to scam somebody (if not everybody).

Every month or so a new commercial is on TV looking for suckers to sign up with a law firm for a law suit claiming that some drug, some procedure or some company caused somebody harm.

Trip and fall lawyers have all the morality of a tomcat or a serial killer.

[SunkenCiv]

:^)

[SunkenCiv]

:^) Even with no term limits we don't have any that old, but somehow when they leave office, they have accumulated a fortune that should have taken no-talent losers like themselves 20,000 years to pile up.

[logi_cal869]

“who knows what they find down there.”

---

Glad you asked. Lol.

https://www.disclose.tv/russian-scientist-claims-team-battled-creature-under-antarctic-ice-312533

[blam]

Even more amazing:

Isolation Of A 250 Million-Year-Old Halotolerant Bacterium From A Primary Salt Crystal

"Here we report the isolation and growth of a previously unrecognized spore-forming bacterium (Bacillus species, designated 2-9-3) from a brine inclusion within a 250 million-year-old salt crystal from the Permian Salado Formation."

[Wonder Warthog]

"There must be a way to explore without contamination who knows what they find down there. Hoffa? D.B Cooper? HRC’s e-mails?"

There are ways to capture an uncontaminated sample...,but once the environmental capsule is broken the environment will become contaminated. You just have to grab your multiple "clean" samples quickly.

But this is old stuff for experienced ultra-trace analytical chemists.

[sparklite2]

when ice sheets sucked up ocean water

---

But ice sheets formed from accumulated snow would, on melting, dilute the salt content of the ancient ocean to what we have today. Is that the thinking? But if the concentration is increased by evaporation alone, the ice sheets would merely be restoring the salt balance to what it was.

How did we get the dilution of today? Comets?

[sparklite2]

Predicting the past has a foot in religion, too.

Some writer tells of a past event, but does it
as someone writing long before the event.
The predictions he makes will thus be
uncannily accurate, inasmuch as the event
happened a long time ago.

But wannabe believers will marvel at the accuracy
of the ‘old’ book and decide it could only be divine.

The snake thus eats its own tail and religions are born.

[piasa]

antarctic

[ElkGroveDan]

This Seawater Is 20,000 Years Old

If only someone had purchased the lifetime extended warranty . . .

[minnesota_bound]

The Russians were going to go in probe it and they were trying to figure out how to do it because any opening would contaminate it. I never saw how any more information.

A creature came out and.... ahhhh!!!!

[NativeSon]

Yes. Because salts can remain in sediment and through selective filtration, water becomes “saltier”.

[SunkenCiv]

Nice!

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

Noah uses one of his peremptory challenges. [97/06/24]