Resumen de The deep, dark lake frozen in time
Barbara Sherwood Lollar and her team has found a fertile watery world 2.5 kilometers beneath the Earth's surface. The water circulates through fractures in the rocks of a Canadian copper mine. Dating techniques indicate it has been isolated from the rest of the planet for up to 2.64 billion years--making it a time capsule from the early days of life on Earth. The team dated the water using the radioactive decay of elements in the rocks to inert gases. Potassium, for instance, gradually decays to argon. So argon levels in the water help establish how long it has been sitting in the rock fractures, isolated from the rest of the world. This and other proxies suggest the water is between 1.5 and 2.6 billion years old.
