Huge quantities of Earth's oldest water are discovered deep underground - and could be supporting unknown lifeforms

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Huge quantities of Earth's oldest water are discovered deep underground - and could be supporting unknown lifeforms

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Huge reserves of the oldest water on Earth are locked deep within the planet's crust and could be home to new forms of life, according to scientists.

Geologists have revealed that they have found water that is up to 2.7 billion years old in sites all over the world.

They now estimate that there could be around 2.5 million cubic miles (11 cubic million km) of this water buried beneath the ground.

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Ancient water rich in hydrogen was found to be bubbling to the surface in a gold mine in South Africa

This is more than all of the world's rivers, swamps and lakes put together.

The scientists have also found tantalising hints that the highly salty water, which is spread out through tiny vein-like networks through the rock, could be home to life.

The water appears to be reacting with the rock to produce large quantities of hydrogen in a similar way to what occurs around deep sea vents.

WHAT DOES THE WORLD'S OLDEST WATER TASTE LIKE?

Most people would think twice about consuming something that has been hanging around for more than 2.5 billion years - making it older than some mountain ranges.

But Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar could not resist having a taste.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, she described it as tasting 'terrible' due to the high salt content.

Reactions between the water and rock have made the water extremely salty and rich in minerals.

She said: 'It is more viscous than tap water.

'It has the consistency of a very light maple syrup.

'It doesn't have color when it comes out, but as soon as it comes into contact with oxygen it turns an orangy color because the minerals in it begin to form — especially the iron.'

'It tastes terrible. It is much saltier than seawater. You would definitely not want to drink this stuff.'

They claim that this means the water trapped within the Earth's crust has the potential to support life.

Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a geologist at the University of Toronto, who led the work along with colleagues from Oxford University, said: 'This represents a quantum change in our understanding of the total volume of the Earth's crust that may be habitable.'

The researchers took samples of water trapped inside the Precambrian shield rocks - the oldest rocks in the Earth's crust - from 19 different mines in Canada, South Africa and Scandinavia.

Here they were able to build up estimates for just how much water might be stored down the tiny cracks and pores that have formed in the ancient granite, basalt and quartzite rocks.

Such Precambrian rocks make up around 70 per cent of the Earth's crust.

In one zinc and copper mine in Timmins, Ontario, the ancient water has been bubbling up to the surface for decades.

Noble gas isotopes, which accumulate in the water over time, have allowed the researchers to estimate the age of this water.

They believe it has been trapped in the rock for more than a billion years and could even be up to 2.7 billion years old, when the rocks first formed.

The researchers estimated the amount of hydrogen being produced by reactions between rocks in the precambrian crust (exposed rock is marked blue while buried rock is marked green) after taking samples of water from mines (marked by yellow dots) in Canada, South Africa, Scandinavia and around Europe

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Sherwood Lollar said: 'The rocks are so ancient they contain records of fluid and the atmosphere from the earliest parts of Earth's history.

'But simultaneously, they also provide us with information about the chemistry that can support life.'

She said that the huge quantities of hydrogen rich water in the Earth's crust was a 'sleeping giant' that could be a source of possible energy for life.

Water trapped within tiny veins in ancient rock can preserve chemicals from the environment long ago

Scientists taking samples of some of the oldest water on Earth

In 2006 scientists discovered rock and chemical eating bacteria living in Gold mines in South Africa, 1.7 miles (2.8km) under ground.

Here the microbes were found to be using hydrogen and sulfates to survive in the salty water that filled tiny fractures.

Similar types of bacteria have been found living in the hydrothermal vents that form on the sea bed, allowing entire ecosystems to flourish.

Professor Sherwood Lollar and her colleagues believe that there could be entirely new undiscovered forms of life and ancient bacteria living in the viscous salt waters that leak through the oldest rocks in the Earth's crust.

Their work, which is published in the journal Nature and was also presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, could also provide clues about where life on Mars, if it exists, could be found.

Mars surface consists of rocks that are billions of years old and have the potential to produce hydrogen in the same way as those on Earth.

Barbara Sherwood Lollar says she has tasted the water as it is a quick way of finding the saltiest samples

Researchers took samples of the highly salty water in 19 mines around the world to test for hydrogen content

Another recent discovery of flourishing colonies of slow growing bacteria in seams of coal, 8000 feet below the sea bed off the coast of Japan.

Professor Sherwood Lollar said: 'If the ancient rocks of Earth are producing this much hydrogen, it may be that similar processes are taking place on Mars.'

Her colleague, Professor Christ Ballentine, from the University of Oxford, said it was a surprise to find so much water preserved under ground.

He said: 'When you think about what's down beneath your feet, it's more exciting than just some rock.

'Until our most recent work, the hydrogen production in the continental crust was calculated to be negligible.

'This was very wrong and our work shows the hydrogen production in the continental crust to be the equal to that produced in the oceanic crust.

'This doubles the estimate of hydrogen produced on Earth.'

IS WATER 'SQUEEZED' FROM DRY ROCK DEEP INSIDE THE EARTH'S MANTEL?

A new study has suggested that geological processes could have been responsible for helping to create much of the water on the Earth's surface.

While some scientists believe water was first brought to our planet by icy comets from elsewhere int he solar system, Researchers at Ohio State University believe that the early Earth had entire oceans-worth of water trapped in its interior and these have been continually released to the surface by plate tectonics.

They believe that the huge pressures on rocks deep inside the Earth's mantle are actually squeezing water out from the dry rock by forcing hydrogen and oxygen atoms trapped inside minerals there to combine.

In laboratory experiments, Professor Wendy Panero, an earth scientist at Ohio State University, has been compressing minerals that are common in the Earth's mantel to subject them to high pressures and temperatures.

In a paper they presented at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting, they reported how recent tests of the mineral bridgmanite, the most abundant mineral in the lower mantel, does not contain enough hydrogen to play an important role in the Earth's water supply, but two other minerals called Ringwoodite and garnet may.

'If all of the Earth's water is on the surface, that gives us one interpretation of the water cycle, where we can think of water cycling from oceans into the atmosphere and into the groundwater over millions of years," said Professor Panero.

'But if mantle circulation is also part of the water cycle, the total cycle time for our planet's water has to be billions of years.

'When we look into the origins of water on Earth, what we're really asking is, why are we so different than all the other planets?

'In this solar system, Earth is unique because we have liquid water on the surface. We're also the only planet with active plate tectonics.

'Maybe this water in the mantle is key to plate tectonics, and that's part of what makes Earth habitable.'

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