Water Isolated for Over a Billion Years Found Under Ontario
ananyo writes "Scientists working 2.4 kilometers below Earth's surface in a Canadian mine have tapped a source of water that has remained isolated for at least a billion years. The researchers say they do not yet know whether anything has been living in it all this time, but the water contains high levels of methane and hydrogen — the right stuff to support life. Micrometer-scale pockets in minerals billions of years old can hold water that was trapped during the minerals' formation. But no source of free-flowing water passing through interconnected cracks or pores in Earth's crust has previously been shown to have stayed isolated for more than tens of millions of years (paper abstract)."
If you need me, I will be in my hermetically sealed Doomsday Bunker, just in case a vicious and contagious disease emerges.
sudo make me a sandwich
Bottle it.
Then sell it at $50 a pop with dubious claims about health benefits.
"Billioneia Aquifer" - You can taste the years.
Scarce, scared, scarred, sacred... -Col. Bruce Hampton
Where they there to see it trapped? Then how do they know!?
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is said to have been disappointed with the find, but he is confident that continued efforts will eventually locate valuable stores of oil and coal ...
Alberta isn't 'digging' for oil. We are slowly separating British Columbia from the mainland. This will accomplish two things: 1) Provide Alberta with it's own seaports. 2) Ensure those B.C. hippies are physically isolated from the rest of the country.
The Silurians are going to be pissed.
Generally parasites co-evolve with their hosts. Because of this, it is actually fairly unlikely to unearth some vicious ancient virus from waters a billion years old. Billions of years ago all that existed was bacteria and the oldest viruses we know about go back only hundreds of millions of years.
That said I fully endorse your Hermetic seal and wish you well in your initiating our flippered friends into the alchemic ways.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
This is amazing. 1 billion year old mineral water and it's still fizzy!
Smivs on the intertubes!
You probably thought I was going to ask if it ran Linux, didn't you?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil