Primeval water reveals Earth’s history.
PRISTINE DATA
When multicellular life began on planet Earth, it needed water. The water that helped this life begin has been found in a pocket in a copper and zinc mine in Timmins, Ontario. Dating back 1.5 billion to 2.64 billion years, the oldest flowing water known to man has been uncovered by miners drilling deep underground in northern Ontario, according to a paper published in the journal Nature in May 2013. The H2O is flowing out of fractures and bore holes drilled by the miners 2.4 kilometers (about one and a half miles) from the Earth’s surface. Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a geologist from the University of Toronto, who is co-leading a research team on this project, has said that ancient isolated water may be found in several regions of Earth in geological formations below the surface. Mining projects have helped unearth these sources of water as they dig deeper than ever to uncover copper, zinc, and gold, which has shot up in price. Scientists collected samples from one fracture that was pouring out at a rate of two liters (a little over half a gallon) per minute.
EVIAN IT AIN’T
The water is rich in hydrogen and methane, which could support life, so scientists are testing the water to see if such life is there. Microbes that have been isolated for tens of millions of years have already been found in other underground water sources. This water is salty and filled with bubbles containing ancient gasses. Scientists already know that hydrogen-rich water from hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean can sustain microbial life, and that 2.7 billion years ago there was a huge hydrothermal vent system on an ancient seafloor beneath the Earth’s crust. Professor Sherwood Lollar says that life on the plant very well could have started far below the surface protected from the ultraviolet radiation and meteorites that were showering the earth at that time, and she speculates that we might find similar energy rich water beneath the surface of Mars.
Minnedosa, Manitoba, gets its name from the Sioux phrase minne duza which means “fast water.”
When you find something that’s been in your freezer for six months or a year, you might chuck it out because it’s just not good any more. That’s why scientists from the University of Alberta were surprised to find that plants they found frozen in glaciers for 400 years could be brought back to life. In Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic, researchers discovered moss in a glacier that showed signs of being dormant rather than being dead. A large ice mass at Ellesmere had been melting and shrinking at a rate of about three or four meters (about 10 to 13 feet) a year since 2004. While it’s unfortunate that the glacier is disappearing, the melting had revealed large areas of plant life for scientists to analyze. The researchers are focusing on bryophytes, which are super-simple plants like moss. The moss was well preserved despite being buried in centuries of ice, amazing scientists. Much of the moss was still green and after the moss was exposed, the scientist observed bright green stems emerging from the vegetation. However, thawing out and reanimating plants is far different than bringing a living creature, such as a wooly mammoth or caveman, back to life should one be discovered. Because the bryophytes are so hardy, investigators have a notion that they possibly could survive beyond this planet. With increasing interest in sending people to Mars and possibly colonizing the Red Planet one day, scientists wonder if a plant like a bryophyte might hold a key for sustaining life on the fourth rock from the sun.
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AND PINGOS WERE THEIR NAME-O
Pingos are unique, earth-covered ice mounds, and Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories is loaded with them. In fact, this area has the highest concentration of these hills anywhere in the world. About one-quarter of the world’s pingos—1,350—dot the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula in the western Arctic region. Basically, these landforms are made from ground ice that develops when the temperatures plunge in the winter months. They’re slow growing, expanding only a few centimeters each year. At their peak, they reach up to 70 meters (230 feet) in height and up to 600 meters (2,000 feet) in diameter. In time, pingos break down and collapse, but they generally last about 1,000 years. Because the pingos are made of ice, some native Inuit hunters reportedly hollowed some out and used them as freezers to store their meat.
Hockey star Hector “Toe” Blake got his name from a younger sister who said his name “hec-toe.”