1.2 billion year old 'Pandora's box' discovered in African mine

In 2016, the oldest water in the world was discovered at a depth of 3 km at the bottom of a Canadian mine. Since the previous record had been set three years earlier at a higher level in the same mine, the place seemed to be truly unique. However, a new discovery in another part of the world suggests that there may be many such special places in the bowels of the Earth.

The same team of scientists who explored the mine in Canada confirmed the presence of water at about the same depth in the Moab Hotsong gold and uranium mine in South Africa. The water is at least 1.2 billion years old. It contains elements that allow life to exist even without access to solar energy.

Scientists notethat many life forms survive without direct sunlight, such as in caves or on the ocean floor. However, for the majority, the sun is still the main source of energy, for example,

benthic speciesOrganisms that live at the bottom of the ocean and in the soil of water bodies. rely on food that seeps from the surface of the water. The exceptions are life forms that live around hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, and microbes that live on hydrogen deep underground.

Researchers have yet to establish depth limits for such hydrogen-eating life forms, but a new article86Kr excess and other noble gases identify a billion-year-old radiogenically-enriched groundwater system scientists at Nature Communications provides evidence that exceptionally deep and ancient habitats can be quite abundant. In the water from Moab Hotsong, they found the highest concentrations of elements produced by radioactive decay, and some of them offer opportunities for life.

Water is found in Precambrian crystalline rocks at a depth of 2.9 km from the surface. Scientists led by Dr. Oliver Warr from the University of Toronto believe that these rocks cover approximately 72% of the Earth's continental crust by surface area and may account for up to 30% of all groundwater planets.

Reactions between water and certain types of rocks produce hydrogen gas. Although such processes occur rather slowly, over time such a large area can produce a huge volume of gas, which is the main source of energy for microbes, or perhaps even for humans, if we learn how to use such reactions, the scientist added.

In their article, scientists have not yet assessed the possibility of life spreading in the waters of the Moav Hotsong mine. However, future research may not only reveal the deepest alien ecosystem, but also provide insight into the potential for life on other planets, where there is a lot of water, but no sunlight at all, and also deep below the surface Mars.

In 2011, Moab Hotsong researchers already found in the water pocket of a mine of never-before-seen microscopic worms about 5,000 years old. They lived without sunlight in unbearable heat. Before this discovery, scientists had no idea that animals could exist so deep in the earth's crust.