Scientists are hoping water found near Timmins, Ont., that is more than a billion years old can provide insight into the possibility that life once existed on Mars.
Dr. Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a University of Toronto geochemist, first found the ancient salt water 2.4 kilometres underground in Kidd Creek Mine in 2009.
It took Sherwood Lollar’s team four years to verify the age of the water. They then began sampling it for microscopic life. Four to five years later, they confirmed that microbes lived in the water.
The discovery “opened up our understanding of the frontiers of the planet,” the geochemist said.
Sherwood Lollar has been sampling water in mines across Canada, in southern Africa and northern Europe for about 34 years. She knew that mines had salty water and wanted to understand why.
She took the trip to the Kidd Creek Mine, which is about 24 kilometres north of Timmins, in search of water as old or older than water the scientist had found in South African gold mines between 2003 and 2011. Sherwood Lollar confirmed that water to be anywhere from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years old.
The Kidd Creek sample was the first time particles of flowing water were verified to be more than a billion years old.
While miners have long known about the saltywater, research into why it was salty “flew under the radar of the scientific community,” Sherwood Lollar said. In fact, most Canadian geologists working on the Canadian Shield weren’t aware of any water in the mines, said Sherwood Lollar. It wasn’t until the 1980s and ’90s that scientists began investigating.
Sherwood Lollar hypothesized the salinity was a product of chemical reactions between the water and rock over long periods of time. The resulting chemicals made the ancient water habitable and could indicate that life exists in it, in the form of rock-eating microbes, or chemolithotrophs, the geochemist thought.
The rocks in the Canadian Shield, the exposed portion of the continental crust underneath the majority of North America that makes up about half of Canada’s land mass, are some of the oldest on Earth, with most ranging from 2.7 to three billion years old.
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but the oldest rocks are usually not preserved because they have been destroyed over time, Sherwood Lollar said. The rock at Kidd Creek, however, is quite well-preserved, she said.
By 2019, Sherwood Lollar and her team confirmed the hypothesis that the life forms do, indeed, exist in the ancient water.
The rock-eating microbes can live deep within the Earth because they are not photosynthetic, and therefore, do not rely on the sun for energy, Sherwood Lollar said.
Discovering that the water at Kidd Creek was more than a billion years old led Sherwood Lollar’s team to compare it to Mars and other planets.
Organisms in ecosystems deep beneath the surface of the Earth could provide insight into life that may have existed under similar conditions on Mars, three or four billion years ago, she said.
“The big question is … could any signs of that life still be preserved in the subsurface of Mars, where water might still be in evidence?
“We know now that Mars is a cold, dry desert. Nothing’s living on the surface of Mars,” Sherwood Lollar said. “But early in its history, Mars had a much more habitable environment, or potentially habitable environment, similar to Earth.”
Sherwood Lollar’s team extracted various samples of the ancient water for research and teaching purposes. In 2019, she approached Ingenium’s National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa.
A conservation lab at the Ingenium Centre, next to the Museum of Science and Technology, now hosts a 60 millilitre sample of the ancient water, in a vial that can fit in the palm of a hand.
Rebecca Dallgoy, curator of natural resources and industrial technologies at Ingenium, said she feels “honoured, humbled and responsible,” for the water now under Ingenium’s stewardship.
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The sample is being kept at room temperature in a silicate glass vial to ensure it does not evaporate.
There are plans to house the sample at other facilities within the Ingenium Centre, such as the Digital Innovation Lab and Research Institute. There, the museum can host researchers and make the water available for digital projects.
“We mostly do research on the artifacts in our collection and on material culture and on relationships with visitors,” Dolgoy said. “We won’t be analyzing the water sample in the lab. It’s more of the interpretive possibilities and the meanings.”
Sherwood Lollar is excited about the timing of the Ingenium exhibit, “because it’s coming about right about the same time that we’re finally able to tell you something about the organisms that are living in that ancient water.”
The geochemist never predicted that she would find water so ancient at Kidd Creek.
“We expected to find something old, but as happens with science, sometimes it still manages to surprise you,” Sherwood Lollar said.
When her team learned the water was more than a billion years old, they took their time to retrieve more samples and run more tests, Sherwood Lollar said.
In fact, her team didn’t publish its first paper on the water until four years later, in 2013.
The scientists used nine factors to determine the water’s age, including the amount of noble gases present. Noble gases are highly unreactive, so they accumulate over time. In turn, the concentration indicates how long the water has been present, Sherwood Lollar said.
“We wanted to be so sure that we were getting this right because it was such a game changer,” Sherwood Lollar said. “It literally pushed back our understanding of how old flowing water could be.”
In 2019, Sherwood Lollar was named co-director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research program “Earth 4D — Subsurface Science and Exploration.”
The scientist will continue working with international partners to research the system found at the Kidd Creek Mine and whether or not it could exist elsewhere on Earth.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
