A scientist found the oldest water on planet Earth then decided to give it a taste

A scientist who discovered the oldest water in the world did what any scientist at the start of a horror movie who is about to unleash something terrible would do, taste it.

Fortunately for geologist Barbara Sherwood Lollar and the human race in general she seems to have had no ill effects that we know of.

It would have made the world slightly more interesting, but on the whole we reckon that drinking strange, ancient, freshly discovered water having no catastrophic consequences is probably the best outcome.

She made the marvellous discovery in 2016 in an abandoned gold mine in Canada, and according to IFL Science a team of geologists made it about 1.8 miles down underground before discovering the water.

Testing it they found that the water was somewhere between 1.5 and 2.6 billion years old and had been undisturbed for that whole time.

However, all the scientific analysis of this previously undiscovered water pales in comparison to the mighty taste test, so Lollar stuck her finger into the water and had a taste to see what it was like.

She said the ancient water which had been undisturbed until her team had discovered it had been 'very salty and bitter' and 'much saltier than seawater', so don't expect bottles of billion-year-old water to be hitting the shelves any time soon.

We're not even joking about the effectiveness of the taste test, as Lollar told CNN: "If you’re a geologist who works with rocks, you’ve probably licked a lot of rocks.

"We can get a sense of antiquity by looking at things like salinity of the water, and more particularly, looking at oxygen and hydrogen in the water molecule itself."

So there you have it, if you're a scientist who has made a big discovery then licking the weird stuff you find is a perfectly legitimate method of discovery.

Of course it can't be your only way to find out what you've discovered, all sorts of tests are done to learn more.

If you want to learn how old water is you can study the amount of Noble Gases present in there.

Noble Gases are elements like Helium which don't easily combine with other elements, by looking a which isotopes were present they could get a pretty good idea of the age of the water.

Of course there's a range of about 1.2 billion years in this ancient, previously undiscovered water but considering how old it is a bit of leeway is understandable.

Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Photos

Topics: Science, World News, Food And Drink

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker