Scientists discover worlds oldest water

An ancient pool in Canada upwards of 2 billion years containing the worlds oldest known water was just discovered by scientists.

Three years ago, water dating back approximately 1.5 billion years in Ontario was discovered; however upon a deeper excavation at the site an even older source underground was discovered.

The initial discovery of the archaic water in 2013 was made at a depth of around 2.5 kilometers in an underground tunnel. Now the surprise find of the oldest water came at an astounding depth of 3.1 kilometers in the deepest base metal mine in the world.

"[The 2013 find] really pushed back our understanding of how old flowing water could be and so it really drove us to explore further," geochemist Barbara Sherwood Lollar from the University of Toronto told Rebecca Morelle at the BBC.

"And we took advantage of the fact that the mine is continuing to explore deeper and deeper into the earth."

The new source was found at about 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) down, and according to Sherwood Lollar, there's a lot more of it than you might expect.

"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," she added.

Groundwater mostly flows tremendously lethargically as compared to surface water as slow as 1 meter per year but when boreholes are drilled in the mine, it can go up to 2 liters per minute.

Upon analyzing gases dissolved in the ancient groundwater, which included helium, neon, argon and xenon, the researchers were able to date it back to at least 2 billion years, deeming it the oldest known water on Earth.