Liquid lessons: What can we learn from the world’s oldest water?
No, you can’t drink it. “As scientists, we asked the next question: If we go to a similar geologic setting, but one where rocks were less disturbed, well preserved, how old might the waters be there?” The team headed to the ancient rocks of Ontario’s Kidd Creek mine in 1992, peering closely at the copper and zinc deposits, “following our noses for the ‘musty’ scent,” of the super-saline waters collected in the fissures. It’s older than the dinosaurs and Mount Everest, smells like rotten eggs and is 10 times saltier than seawater By 2013, the team knew that the mine water was at least a billion years old. “It pushed back our understanding of how old flowing water could be in the deep crust of the planet,” Sherwood Lollar says. “The vast majority of the Mars crust is continental rock that is billions of years in age, like the Canadian Shield, South Africa and the rocks of southern India,” Sherwood Lollar says.
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