Water found three kilometres down in the gold mines of South Africa's Witwatersrand Basin are believed to be the oldest on Earth. The water is found in fractures in the two-to-three billion-year-old rock and has been isolated from the surface for a long period of time, possibly tens of millions of years. New research by Dr. Barbara Sherwood Lollar, from the Department of Geology at the University of Toronto, suggests the key to the water's age is the presence of neon. The neon's specific isotope signature tells them that it was trapped within this rock at least two billion years ago. Another element of this study was that one of the fracture systems in the rock contained the deepest known microbial ecosystems on Earth. These are organisms that exist without sunlight and thrive on the chemical energy that originates from rock. Because the rock that comprises the Canadian Shield is the same age, it is reasonable to believe that similar findings could be made here in Canada.
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