Scientists are hoping water found near Timmins, Ont., that is more than a billion years old can provide insight into the possibility that life once existed on Mars.
Dr. Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a University of Toronto geochemist, first found the ancient salt water 2.4 kilometres underground in Kidd Creek Mine in 2009.
It took Sherwood Lollar’s team four years to verify the age of the water. They then began sampling it for microscopic life. Four to five years later, they confirmed that microbes lived in the water.
The discovery “opened up our understanding of the frontiers of the planet,” the geochemist said.
Sherwood Lollar has been sampling water in mines across Canada, in southern Africa and northern Europe for about 34 years. She knew that mines had salty water and wanted to understand why.
She took the trip to the Kidd Creek Mine, which is about 24 kilometres north of Timmins, in search of water as old or older than water the scientist had found in South African gold mines between 2003 and 2011. Sherwood Lollar confirmed that water to be anywhere from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years old.
The Kidd Creek sample was the first time particles of flowing water were verified to be more than a billion years old.
While miners have long known about the salty water, research into why it was salty “flew under the radar of the scientific community,” Sherwood Lollar said. In fact, most Canadian geologists working on the Canadian Shield weren’t aware of any water in the mines, said Sherwood Lollar. It wasn’t until the 1980s and ’90s that scientists began investigating.
Sherwood Lollar hypothesized the salinity was a product of chemical reactions between the water and rock over long periods of time. The resulting chemicals made the ancient water habitable and could indicate that life exists in it, in the form of rock-eating microbes, or chemolithotrophs, the geochemist thought.
The rocks in the Canadian Shield, the exposed portion of the continental crust underneath the majority of North America that makes up about half of Canada’s land mass, are some of the oldest on Earth, with most ranging from 2.7 to three billion years old.
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but the oldest rocks are usually not preserved because they have been destroyed over time, Sherwood Lollar said. The rock at Kidd Creek, however, is quite well-preserved, she said.
By 2019, Sherwood Lollar and her team confirmed the hypothesis that the life forms do, indeed, exist in the ancient water.
The rock-eating microbes can live deep within the Earth because they are not photosynthetic, and therefore, do not rely on the sun for energy, Sherwood Lollar said.
Discovering that the water at Kidd Creek was more than a billion years old led Sherwood Lollar’s team to compare it to Mars and other planets.
Organisms in ecosystems deep beneath the surface of the Earth could provide insight into life that may have existed under similar conditions on Mars, three or four billion years ago, she said.
“The big question is … could any signs of that life still be preserved in the subsurface of Mars, where water might still be in evidence?
“We know now that Mars is a cold, dry desert. Nothing’s living on the surface of Mars,” Sherwood Lollar said. “But early in its history, Mars had a much more habitable environment, or potentially habitable environment, similar to Earth.”
Sherwood Lollar’s team extracted various samples of the ancient water for research and teaching purposes. In 2019, she approached Ingenium’s National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa.
A conservation lab at the Ingenium Centre, next to the Museum of Science and Technology, now hosts a 60 millilitre sample of the ancient water, in a vial that can fit in the palm of a hand.
Rebecca Dallgoy, curator of natural resources and industrial technologies at Ingenium, said she feels “honoured, humbled and responsible,” for the water now under Ingenium’s stewardship.
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The sample is being kept at room temperature in a silicate glass vial to ensure it does not evaporate.
There are plans to house the sample at other facilities within the Ingenium Centre, such as the Digital Innovation Lab and Research Institute. There, the museum can host researchers and make the water available for digital projects.
“We mostly do research on the artifacts in our collection and on material culture and on relationships with visitors,” Dolgoy said. “We won’t be analyzing the water sample in the lab. It’s more of the interpretive possibilities and the meanings.”
Sherwood Lollar is excited about the timing of the Ingenium exhibit, “because it’s coming about right about the same time that we’re finally able to tell you something about the organisms that are living in that ancient water.”
The geochemist never predicted that she would find water so ancient at Kidd Creek.
“We expected to find something old, but as happens with science, sometimes it still manages to surprise you,” Sherwood Lollar said.
When her team learned the water was more than a billion years old, they took their time to retrieve more samples and run more tests, Sherwood Lollar said.
In fact, her team didn’t publish its first paper on the water until four years later, in 2013.
The scientists used nine factors to determine the water’s age, including the amount of noble gases present. Noble gases are highly unreactive, so they accumulate over time. In turn, the concentration indicates how long the water has been present, Sherwood Lollar said.
“We wanted to be so sure that we were getting this right because it was such a game changer,” Sherwood Lollar said. “It literally pushed back our understanding of how old flowing water could be.”
In 2019, Sherwood Lollar was named co-director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research program “Earth 4D — Subsurface Science and Exploration.”
The scientist will continue working with international partners to research the system found at the Kidd Creek Mine and whether or not it could exist elsewhere on Earth.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMijAFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVzdGFyLmNvbS9uZXdzL2NhbmFkYS8yMDIxLzAxLzA0L2xpZmUtb24tbWFycy1iaWxsaW9uLXllYXItb2xkLXdhdGVyLWZvdW5kLW5lYXItdGltbWlucy1jb3VsZC1vZmZlci1nbGltcHNlLWludG8tdGhlLXBhc3QuaHRtbNIBkAFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVzdGFyLmNvbS9hbXAvbmV3cy9jYW5hZGEvMjAyMS8wMS8wNC9saWZlLW9uLW1hcnMtYmlsbGlvbi15ZWFyLW9sZC13YXRlci1mb3VuZC1uZWFyLXRpbW1pbnMtY291bGQtb2ZmZXItZ2xpbXBzZS1pbnRvLXRoZS1wYXN0Lmh0bWw?oc=5
2021-01-04 19:56:49Z
CAIiEFLm7KnUafZFr-Uwz4lvYogqFwgEKg4IACoGCAow6bV4MPfJDDDB1MUF
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