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The new discovery for the oldest water source beats the old record by 500,000 years. Water also found in Kidd Mine at 2.4 kilometers was estimated to be 1.5 billion years old.
There may be a ",000" missing ^^
Canada's oldest pool of water, nestled deep within a mine, is approximately two billion years old – and it could have sustained life, scientists have discovered. Scientists collaborated with mining companies to drill deep into the Kidd Mine, Ontario, approximately three kilometers below to discover the oldest water samples. …
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Oh, you beat me to it. My Fuji Water special ($9 in a hotel for 0.5L) - not even harvested in Fuji.
Just think - the Canadians can stop raping the oil sands of Alberta and start tapping the deep aquifers under their large part of North America. I think we'd all have to drink a hell-of-a-lot of H2O before the subsidence starts causing earthquakes (ala fractal drilling/extraction/injection.)
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"Yeah, us stupid scientist who are incapable of thinking about such things, controlling for them or working out ways of sampling which do not contaminate the source."
Nevertheless, one thing does worry me about this dating. There's only one radio-isotope found in water itself, tritium and that has a half-life far too short to be used in dating of this age. They're dating it on the isotopic make-up of the solutes. How do they demonstrate that they've been in solution that long?
I spent half my working life having to be concerned with contamination of samples, including dating samples. They're valid concerns and they're not addressed in the article nor in the linked abstract so you can have your snark back, thank you.
My school teacher told me that the earth was 2960 years old (at the time) and strapped my legs when I begged to disagree.
It seemed that there was only 1000 of our earth years before Christ (Long may he be remembered) so any wild talk of 'billions' is clearly heresy.
Not wishing to become embroiled in current abuse issues I post anonymously.
so whats the point of colonising Mars again?
apart from the fun of it, and I'm all for that, Its no more habitable than earth.
Far Far less in fact
Even though we have pollutted the planet to death
Even if we thoroughly nuked the place.
My point is whatever biosphere thing they are planning for mars they could equally do on earth. Under the sea even - that would give us a 200% space increase!
1) Adventure.
Yeah I'm all for having a laugh (we Vogons are known for it) , but when it costs all of humanity's resources and more money than has ever been imagined (even by Han Solo) perhaps it could be better employed at home.
2) Place to sit out a global disaster (on Earth).
Like I said, you could sit out even a nuclear winter or global tsunamis a lot easier here than moving to mars
3) The technology required to get there at reasonable cost could be used to make Earth a better place.
Indeed , so lets just develop the technology and skip moving to Mars
"Reduce it in fact, at BOTH ends of the age scale?"
I'm all for that. Far too many people on this planet. Not sustainable once the fossil fuel is gone.
However I'm not sure how you can reduce both ends of the age scale.
Are you suggesting having people born at puberty , ready to be productive and skip all that tedious crawling on the floor shitting all over the place stages? oh , wait - you mean less of them, ala china.gotcha. Yep I'm all for that. I've made a start by not having any myself.
This has all been thought through and solved years ago by Mr Adams...
1> Build a spacecraft big enough to hold a third of the human population.
2> Build two, non-working life sized models of craft from step 1.
3> Divide earths population into 3 groups: Doers; Thinkers; err...Others.
4> Announce imminent destruction of earth.
5> "Save" third group by launching them into space using REAL craft.
6> Dismantle models of other 2 craft.
> Indeed , so lets just develop the technology and skip moving to Mars
Humans are goal-oriented. So much so that the working hypothesis for the creation of the universe has for most of human history revolved around a super-natural being with a singular purpose in mind. There's even a fancy schmancy word for it: teleology.
The goal of colonizing Mars will spur technological development to a far greater extent than not having that goal. Same as the Space Race, and various arms races -- all goal-oriented in their own way.
"The goal of colonizing Mars will spur technological development"
Fine , as long as we all understand we're not actually doing it - just going through the motions and sending a couple people as proof-of-concept - and then use all that delicious technology back here.
You wouldnt like it anyway. The scenerys nice but the weathers terrible.
and they dont even have wifi.
and more to the point Theres NO F********** Oxygen!
or food
you could survive just as well marooned in space.
or on a rubber dinghy in the atlantic for that matter , which brings me back to my original point
Well, yes, but:
(1) we didn't need an interplanetary space program to develop LCD displays or mobile phones or gene therapy or, or, or,...
(2) throwing lots of R&D money at any problem will produce technological spin-offs. I am (I dare say) more of a space geek than many here (unmannedspaceflight.com much?) but you don't need humans to do the science and exploring when you can do it a thousandth of the cost and risk with robots. I bet there'd be plenty of spin-offs from a, say, $15Bn project for a Europa lander / ice borer / sub-surface submarine.
>lets [sic] just develop the technology and skip moving to Mars
In other words, send 'just the head'. If humanity ever gets its head out of its existential arse, it will realise that it has a duty to go to the stars. In baby steps, if needs be--but to go is a must. The moon having been reached, the next way-point for footprints is, necessarily, Mars. Sure, it's a larger leap, but it will have to be attempted eventually--and all the robotic exploration is merely a data-gathering, technology-perfecting run-up (see what I did there, and there) to landing, and standing, on the red soil.
"so whats the point of colonising Mars again?"
I don't remember the details, but it had something to do with a giant star goat about to eat our planet, or something.
Anyway, don't ask too much, make sure you don't miss your ark. Yes, that one, with the big letter "B" printed on it's side. Don't worry, the autopilot will take care of it.
Ever see the Onion article, "Richest 1% Complete Construction of Private Escape Pod"?
The idea that we should go all in on colonizing Mars, instead of solving the problems we have here, implicitly implies the lives of roughly 7 billion people are not worth saving as long as there's a lucky few elsewhere.
Why do you think Elon Musk is so keen to retire there?
This discovery will add to the knowledge base. Humans need water to survive no matter where they go. A trip to Mars is more about the technology that allows Humans to travel in space with the ultimate goal of reaching an Earth-like planet and setting up digs there. A colony on a hostile planet would require constant care packages from Earth, so it would be of limited benefit.
T.Boone Pickens said that 'water is the new oil'. He owns more water rights than anybody else in the world. He and his multi-billionaire cohorts have and are continuing to buy up water rights world wide at an unprecedented rate. Eventually, we will have to leave Earth, not to go boldly where no-one else has gone before, but because we will not be able to afford to buy water that is here.
> Just the trip ONE WAY to Mars shortens life by 15-24 years.
1. You are getting lost in scientific facts. Marketing is protesting.
2. Because we found two billion years old water on Earth, it follows without doubt that the same kind of water exists on Mars. No question about it.
3. Just because none of the bazillion-years-old water samples from Earth had any trace of life, that doesn't mean the ancient water on Mars - that we haven't found yet - isn't full of life. Quite the opposite. The ancient water on Mars - that we haven't found - is totally full of life.
4. Snark.
As we know, water has memory. [?]
So, this water must have some measureable medicinal effects that would reveal the environmental chemicals that it was in contact with BILLIONS of years, and hundreds of dilutions, ago.
The practitioners of Holistic Medicine need to be given a sample for testing. Immediately. This should be the opportunity of a lifetime, for direct and measureable insight into the precise environmental conditions billions of years ago.
I expect a full report.