Scientists at the University of Toronto have discovered the oldest water sample dating back to about two billion years, breaking the record of the oldest discovered water on the surface of the Earth by more than 500 million years.
The team of researchers, who presented their findings at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting last week in San Francisco, made the discovery while working deep in a mine in Canada.
Scientists have been working with mining companies for quite sometime to learn about water that exists far below the groundwater, isolated from the water table, unseen and untouched for billions of years. As miners went deeper, the researchers gained access to even deeper sources of water.
Before this ground-breaking discovery, the same team working on the same mine back in 2013 - the Kidd Mine in Ontario - found a water sample at approximately 2.4 km below the surface that dated back to approximately 1.5 billion years ago. The new record-holder for the world's oldest water sample was found at approximately 3 km below the surface, Phys reported. The researchers determined the age of the water samples by studying dissolved gasses.
The samples of water obtained by the researchers came from what they describe as a large source flowing out of the ground at a rate of several liters per minute - a volume much larger than predicted. They also discovered that sulfate in the water was a result of interactions between the water and the rocks around it, rather than coming from another source. According to them, this suggests that the water was capable of sustaining life. If such microbial life does exist somewhere deep below the surface, it will represent a form of life that has evolved separately from all other life on Earth.
Also, space scientists might have to consider the possibility of similar forms of life living far beneath the surface of Mars or other planets.