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World’s Oldest Water Gets Even Older

posted by martyb on Friday December 16 2016, @02:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-a-mattter-of-time dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

The world’s oldest water, which is locked deep within the Earth’s crust, just got even older.

The liquid was discovered deep down in a mine in Canada in 2013 and is about 1.5 billion years old.

But now, at the same site, University of Toronto scientists have found a deeper source of water that is at least 500 million years more ancient.

The work was presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar, who led the team that made the discovery, told BBC News: “When people think about this water they assume it must be some tiny amount of water trapped within the rock.

“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.”

In your face, Peru!

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday December 16 2016, @03:33PM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Friday December 16 2016, @03:33PM (#442067) Journal

    The world’s oldest water, which is locked deep within the Earth’s crust, just got even older.

    To be fair, you could say the same of anything at all, at any time. For example this joke is currently getting older at a rate of one second per second.

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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by vux984 on Friday December 16 2016, @04:50PM

    by vux984 (5045) on Friday December 16 2016, @04:50PM (#442096)

    "For example this joke is currently getting older at a rate of one second per second. "

    Alas that it isn't getting funnier at that rate. ;)

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by zocalo on Friday December 16 2016, @04:53PM

    by zocalo (302) on Friday December 16 2016, @04:53PM (#442097)
    Pfft! That's nothing. I heard this water is getting older at a rate of 86,400 seconds *per day*!
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @05:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @05:13PM (#442109)

    If you kicked that joke, let's say 9.8 meters then it's aging would equal acceleration due to gravity on earth's surface.

  • (Score: 2) by MrGuy on Friday December 16 2016, @05:35PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Friday December 16 2016, @05:35PM (#442116)

    "One time, this guy handed me a picture of him, he said 'Here's a picture of me when I was younger.'
    EVERY picture is of you when you were younger."
    --Mitch Hedberg

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday December 16 2016, @10:18PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Friday December 16 2016, @10:18PM (#442246)

      You only think that because you haven't seen my five-dimensional hypercamera - it only takes pictures of you when you were older.