Read More: Water dating back 2 billion years has been discovered 3 km underground in a Canadian mine: literally a sip from the Precambrian, older than almost all complex life<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nBarbara Sherwood Lollar of the University of Toronto first visited the Glencore-owned mine in 1992, but the record-setting samples came years later. In 2013, a team reported water from about 1.5 miles underground that had been isolated for roughly 1.5 billion years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then scientists went deeper. Work led by Oliver Warr on samples from about 1.8 miles down found residence times ranging from about one billion to 2.2 billion years, pushing the story even farther back into Earth history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How scientists dated it<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This was not carbon dating. That method works for much younger material, not for water that may have been sealed away since long before animals existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, researchers measured noble gases, a group of gases that includes helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon. These gases slowly build up in trapped fluids as elements in the surrounding rock change over time, so their amounts can help estimate how long the water has been isolated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That age is better understood as a minimum isolation time, not the birthday of every water molecule. In practical terms, it means the fracture system held water away from the surface for stretches of time so long they are hard to picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Underground](\"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/kidd-creek-mine-ancient-groundwater-canada-two-billion-years.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
A deep underground passage at Kidd Creek Mine, the site where researchers identified some of the oldest known groundwater on Earth, preserved in ancient rock fractures for billions of years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhy the water tasted so strange<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
One detail has followed the story everywhere. Sherwood Lollar tasted the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why would anyone do that? In field geology, taste can still give a quick clue about salinity, even though the serious answers come later in the lab. According to Maclean\u2019s<\/a>, the fluid was up to 10 times saltier than seawater and had a musty smell that helped lead researchers to the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRead More: The legendary cloud jaguar finally showed up on camera after a decade of hide-and-seek in the jungle canopy<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nShe described finding it by “following your nose right up to the rock.” The water was not fresh, clear, or inviting. It was thick with dissolved minerals, bitter, sulfurous<\/a>, and shaped by reactions that had been going on in the dark for an almost unimaginable span of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat it says about life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The deeper question is not whether the brine tastes bad. It is whether this kind of hidden water<\/a> can support life without sunlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA Nature Communications study<\/a> found that reactions between the rock and water can produce sulfate and hydrogen. In simple terms, those chemicals can act like a buried energy system for microbes, a little like food and fuel in a place with no plants, no sunlight, and no normal ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRead More: Rangers near Sydney found living trees thought extinct for 90 million years \u2013\u00a0basically botanical zombies<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nLater work at the Kidd Creek Observatory<\/a> reported native microbial communities in the deep fracture waters, including organisms linked to sulfate-based metabolism. But scientists are careful here. The strongest claim is not that the same microbes<\/a> lived there continuously for two billion years, but that the water and rock chemistry can support a deep, isolated biosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy space scientists care<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This is where a Canadian mine starts to sound like a story about Mars<\/a>. If microbes can survive deep underground on Earth using only chemical energy from rocks and water, then similar habitats may be worth searching elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNASA\u2019s astrobiology program<\/a> has pointed to Kidd Creek Mine as a field site where researchers can test ways to detect possible signs of life in deep subsurface rocks<\/a>. That matters because future missions may have to look for life in places that are dark, buried, salty, or frozen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRead More: Melting icebergs are raining rocks on the Arctic seafloor, creating surprise condos for deep-sea squatters<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nMars is the obvious comparison, especially its subsurface. Icy moons such as Europa and Enceladus are also part of the conversation because they may hold hidden oceans<\/a> beneath ice, where sunlight cannot reach but chemistry might still do some of the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe search continues<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Kidd Creek water is among the oldest ever dated this way, but scientists do not think it must be the oldest water on Earth. It may simply be the oldest that humans have managed to reach and measure directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The broader search has already moved beyond Canada. Researchers reported more than billion-year-old groundwater from a South African mine in 2022, suggesting that ancient deep water may be more common than once thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For now, the Kidd Creek discovery remains a rare sample of Earth\u2019s deep memory. Not a fossil. Not a bone. Just water, still moving through rock, carrying chemical clues from a world before forests, flowers, insects, and footsteps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main work on the deeper samples has been published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, building on earlier work published in <\/a>Nature<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nearly two miles below northern Ontario, a mine built for copper, zinc, and silver opened a strange window into Earth\u2019s … <\/p>\n
A deep underground passage at Kidd Creek Mine, the site where researchers identified some of the oldest known groundwater on Earth, preserved in ancient rock fractures for billions of years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Why the water tasted so strange<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
One detail has followed the story everywhere. Sherwood Lollar tasted the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why would anyone do that? In field geology, taste can still give a quick clue about salinity, even though the serious answers come later in the lab. According to Maclean\u2019s<\/a>, the fluid was up to 10 times saltier than seawater and had a musty smell that helped lead researchers to the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She described finding it by “following your nose right up to the rock.” The water was not fresh, clear, or inviting. It was thick with dissolved minerals, bitter, sulfurous<\/a>, and shaped by reactions that had been going on in the dark for an almost unimaginable span of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The deeper question is not whether the brine tastes bad. It is whether this kind of hidden water<\/a> can support life without sunlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Nature Communications study<\/a> found that reactions between the rock and water can produce sulfate and hydrogen. In simple terms, those chemicals can act like a buried energy system for microbes, a little like food and fuel in a place with no plants, no sunlight, and no normal ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later work at the Kidd Creek Observatory<\/a> reported native microbial communities in the deep fracture waters, including organisms linked to sulfate-based metabolism. But scientists are careful here. The strongest claim is not that the same microbes<\/a> lived there continuously for two billion years, but that the water and rock chemistry can support a deep, isolated biosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where a Canadian mine starts to sound like a story about Mars<\/a>. If microbes can survive deep underground on Earth using only chemical energy from rocks and water, then similar habitats may be worth searching elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NASA\u2019s astrobiology program<\/a> has pointed to Kidd Creek Mine as a field site where researchers can test ways to detect possible signs of life in deep subsurface rocks<\/a>. That matters because future missions may have to look for life in places that are dark, buried, salty, or frozen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mars is the obvious comparison, especially its subsurface. Icy moons such as Europa and Enceladus are also part of the conversation because they may hold hidden oceans<\/a> beneath ice, where sunlight cannot reach but chemistry might still do some of the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kidd Creek water is among the oldest ever dated this way, but scientists do not think it must be the oldest water on Earth. It may simply be the oldest that humans have managed to reach and measure directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The broader search has already moved beyond Canada. Researchers reported more than billion-year-old groundwater from a South African mine in 2022, suggesting that ancient deep water may be more common than once thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For now, the Kidd Creek discovery remains a rare sample of Earth\u2019s deep memory. Not a fossil. Not a bone. Just water, still moving through rock, carrying chemical clues from a world before forests, flowers, insects, and footsteps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main work on the deeper samples has been published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, building on earlier work published in <\/a>Nature<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nearly two miles below northern Ontario, a mine built for copper, zinc, and silver opened a strange window into Earth\u2019s … <\/p>\nRead More: The legendary cloud jaguar finally showed up on camera after a decade of hide-and-seek in the jungle canopy<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
What it says about life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Read More: Rangers near Sydney found living trees thought extinct for 90 million years \u2013\u00a0basically botanical zombies<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Why space scientists care<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Read More: Melting icebergs are raining rocks on the Arctic seafloor, creating surprise condos for deep-sea squatters<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
The search continues<\/h2>\n\n\n\n