Bottling the primordial soup

• Autores: Catherine Brahic
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2976, 2014, págs. 8-9
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Ancient rocks deep underground contain water that has been locked away for billions of years. It may never have been touched by life. In 2007, geochemist Barbara Sherwood Lollar at the University of Toronto in Canada and her team found treasure in a copper mine. Water gushing out of cracks in the rock, caused by mining, turned out to be over a billion years old. Now the group has made a similar find in a second mine, suggesting ancient rocks could be riddled with such time capsules, right back to the early days of life on Earth. Sherwood Lollar's team is now scouring the water for ancient forms of life, perhaps unknown to science. So far it seems it holds no life, but that is just as exciting because it means the water they found may be identical to that in which life began.