Posted on 12/20/2016 1:44:17 PM PST by NYer
Deep within a mine in Canada, there is a pool of water bubbling out of the ground. It’s close to 2 miles below the surface of the earth and, according to the scientists who discovered it, it’s been there for 2 billion years, making it the oldest pool of water in the world.
Previously that record was held by a pool further up in the mine, about 1.5 miles down, which was discovered in 2013 and given the age of 1.5 billion years.
The scientists date the water by analysing the gases trapped inside. As the CBC explains, gases like helium and xenon accumulate in the water while it’s stuck in rock fractures. Measuring those concentrations can tell the researchers how old the water is.
What’s unique about this water is that it’s been conserved for all that time. Much of the water on this planet has an even older origin: half of the water on Earth is actually melted interstellar ice that predates the sun.
As the BBC reports, the most fascinating aspect of these billion-year-old pools of water is the possibility that they could reveal more about life on Earth billions of years ago. The scientists have detected signs that single-celled organisms once lived in this water, which is now about eight times saltier than seawater.
Wow...no evaporation in all that time...amazing.
Well that was easy - must have had a date of manufacture on it.
OK excuse me if I think this is crap. The scientist dig a hole and think that this pool is older than any other pool beneath any other hole they could have dug. Scientist crap just to get published.
Uh huh.
It seems to me that with the water cycle, y’know, that thing you learned in what, 3rd grade the amount of water on earth is pretty much constant, it just evaporates, turns to rain, comes down, evaporates again and so on.
So, given that all water is constant, it’s all the same age.
Of course, I’m not a scientist.
The hydrogen atoms in our bodies are (allegedly) close to 14 billion years old. They were created soon after the BB.
I learn something new every day around here.
We’re all recycled stardust, which kind of makes me feel special.
Cool stuff!
It would be fun to take a jar of it to the kid behind the counter at the swimming pool supply store and see what chemicals he advises dumping into it.
[ The hydrogen atoms in our bodies are (allegedly) close to 14 billion years old. They were created soon after the BB. ]
No wonder my siatica hurts so much...
If that water could talk, what would it say?
“I’m running for president as a Democrat in 2020!”
It would be the oldest candidate for that nomination...probably...
Ah, a child of the 60's.
We are stardust
We are golden
We are caught in the Devils bargain
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden
As a point of reference, 2 billion years ago, Strom Thurmond had only just finished his second term in the US Senate.
You were formed by the Creator of that stardust - which is an even more astounding thought!
"Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."
Genesis 2:7
"When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty!"
Psalm 8:3-5
I’m wondering why it didn’t raise up 2 miles and flood everything around it
My refrigerator looked like that, under the vegetable drawers, before I cleaned it.
After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year, New York Scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 100 years and came to the conclusion, that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 years ago.
Not to be outdone by the New Yorkers, in the weeks that followed, a California archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet, and shortly after, a story in the LA Times read: “California archaeologists, finding of 200 year old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network a hundred years earlier than the New Yorkers”
One week later. A local newspaper in Idaho reported the following: “After digging as deep as 30 feet in his pasture near Weippe, Idaho, Bubba, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Bubba has therefore concluded that 300 years ago, Idaho had already gone wireless”.
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