Scientist finds the oldest water on Earth — then decided to taste it: "We were able to see a..."

Pollution and unchecked consumption as well as wastage are either destroying water bodies, or they are drying up rapidly. Scientists are still exploring the depths of the ocean and untouched corners of the planet for clues about Earth's history dating back billions of years. Finding any kind of evidence from that time is difficult but a group of scientists were able to locate the ‘oldest water on Earth’ as per Good.

The discovery was made more than a decade ago in 2013. The group of scientists was led by Barbara Sherwood Lollar as they explored the secrets of Kidd Creek Mine in Timmins, Ontario, Canada. The mine is owned by the mining company Glencore since the region is rich in several elements like zinc, copper, lead, silver, and tin. It reportedly produces an average of 40,000 tonnes of copper and 70,000 tonnes of zinc annually.

Kidd Creek is the world's deepest base-metal mine below sea level, reaching 10,000 feet but there were secrets hidden below that depth which fascinated Lollar and her team, who published their findings in Nature. At the depth of 1.5 miles in the mines, was a stream of ancient water. “It really pushed back our understanding of how old flowing water could be and so it really drove us to explore further,” Lollar told BBC.

This was not just some small deposit of water that could dry up at any time. According to Loller, this stream was pumping water at liters per minute, which is extraordinary considering how ancient it is. “It’s very much bubbling right up out at you. These things are flowing at rates of liters per minute, the volume of the water is much larger than anyone anticipated,” she explained.

Being a scientist, Lollar’s curiosity wasn’t fulfilled by just discovering the stream and she had to find out what water preserved for billions of years tasted like. So she dipped her finger in and licked it. It was salty and bitter and even had a viscous texture like syrup. This is not unusual since water gets saltier and thicker as it ages. This stream of water had been untouched for billions of years. On further inspection, it was discovered that there used to be life in it.

“By looking at the sulfate in the water, we were able to see a fingerprint that’s indicative of the presence of life. And we were able to indicate that the signal we are seeing in the fluids has to have been produced by microbiology - and most importantly has to have been produced over a very long time scale. The microbes that produced this signature couldn’t have done it overnight," Lollar said.

Lollar’s discovery was a revelation in the world of geology and other scientists also visited the area to find out more about what was under the surface. In 2016, another team of scientists led by Dr. Oliver Warr dug further below the surface, this time going as deep as 1.86 miles. Even they found water which was proven to be even older than what Lollar had found. This one was somewhere between 1.5 billion and 2.64 billion years old.