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Scientists probing the deepest reaches of the Earth to find clues about the origins of life have found something unique: the world’s oldest water.
While the Earth’s most ancient source of H20 has since 2013 been known to exist in the Kidd Creek Mine in Timmins, Ontario, a team of researchers from the University of Toronto that went even deeper into the mine has come up with new findings.
“This has to be an indication that organisms have been present in these fluids on a geological timescale”
The 2013 water, found to be 1.5 billion years old, was detected at a depth of 2.4 kilometres down the copper, zinc and silver mine. But the recently discovered water coming from boreholes in the ground, was found even deeper, at a depth of nearly three kilometres, and has been dated at roughly 2 billion years old.
The results were presented at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in San Francisco.
“When people think about this water they assume it must be some tiny amount of water trapped within the rock,” Barbara Sherwood Lollar, geochemist at U of T and lead author of the new study, told the BBC. “But in fact it’s very much bubbling right up out at you. These things are flowing at rates of litres per minute – the volume of the water is much larger than anyone anticipated.”
What’s more, the ancient water was found to contain chemical traces left behind by a single-celled organism that once lived there.
“This has to be an indication that organisms have been present in these fluids on a geological timescale,” Lollar told the British public broadcaster.
Owned by Glencore (LON:GLEN), Kidd Creek is the world’s deepest base metal mine below sea level, with mining taking place at 9,600 feet. It also has the longest surface-to-bottom ramp.
The mine uses automated loaders and on-demand ventilation to produce an average 40,000 tonnes of copper and 70,000 tonnes of zinc annually.
6 Comments
Cholly
May you make it a habit that when you write on dimensions in feet you convert for us the same in metres and out in brackets. Some readers are from countries that only use metres.
Richard J E Niels
Interesting article, however to set the record straight, this was not the oldest ancient water intersected in a Canadian mine. Patino Mines, (Chibougamau, Quebec) back in 1975-1976, when I was a young mine geologist, we intersected many sealed pockets of this ancient metalliferous fluids in raises, dating back to 3.5-4 billion years. These samples were sent to numerous international universities for study. I don’t remember the outcomes since I never did receive any of the published papers on the fluid. In all likelihood these intercepts are not restricted to the Kidd Creek Mine but to many Canadian mines, but not reported to the scientific community. With all due respect to Barbara Sherwood Lollar, geochemist at U of T, perhaps she can research the old archive at U of T, Lakehead University, Western, Colorado School of Mines, London School of Mines, McGill University, or several other Universities these samples were sent to. I would suggest that she contact Mr. R. Kanwar, then Chief Geologist for Patino Mines, and later Mining Director for Northgate, he would have information on where these samples were sent and what the results were. Mr, Kanwar has been retired for many years but, I believe he is still living in the Toronto area. RJE Niels, PGeo (ltd), FGAC,FCIM
Aqui Fer
As a mine geologist, you should have also learned that the rocks in the Abitibi are no older than ~2.7 Ga… You are suggesting that the fluids are billions of years older than the rocks themselves. As a hydrogeochemist, I find this very hard to believe, especially since Barbara has dated water that aligns with this rock age. Even more so, the fact that your record did not receive any mention in a publication suggests that you are incorrect in your age estimate, and/or recollection. It would be more likely that a distinguished professor would have done their due diligence to see if this was in fact the oldest water recorded, especially before giving a presentation at a major conference. So Richard, you might be the one who will have to do the research to figure out how old the water actually was at the Patino Mine. My guess is that it was less than 2.7 Ga, but if it was older than 2 Ga please feel share.
Martolt
How exactly do they date water?
Metanoone
They bring it to a nice restaurant and finish the evening with flowers? 🙂
LAMB
Seems that there is a lot of nit-picking and “noses – out – of joint” here – suffice to say the water is OLD wherever it was found !!!!!