One of the oldest museum artifacts in the world has been added to a world class collection of science and technology – at Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation.
Quick Facts
For further details on the ancient water sample acquired by Ingenium, a fact sheet is available for download in PDF format below:
Images
High resolution images are available for download below:
Download the high resolution images (ZIP)
Photo credit: Pierre Martin, Ingenium - Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation
Video
An informative video with Curator Rebecca Dolgoy is available for viewing below:
Transcript
sometimes i sit with a glass of water in
front of me
and wonder about the water molecules
where were they before
where are they going next how does water
connect
us to our environment and to each other
what does water remember
my name is rebecca dalgoy and i'm the
curator of natural resources and
industrial technologies at ingenium it
is my pleasure to welcome you to the new
ingenium center
in this building we will be able to look
after the national science and
technology collection
everything from pieces of decommissioned
nuclear reactors to sewing machines
and once we are all moved in we will be
better able to make sure that this
collection is accessible to canadians
whether this means that you can come
visit us in person or
that we can produce high quality 3d
scans of the artifacts
but today i want to speak with you about
the newest
and actually the oldest addition to the
collection
though this may look like an ordinary
water sample
the water in this bottle is actually a
specimen of the oldest known
flowing water on earth its mean
residence time
in this case the amount of time that the
water has been out of touch with the
earth's surface
is more than a billion years this puts
the water in pre-cambrian time
to give a little bit of context
dinosaurs lived during the mesozoic era
approximately 66 to 245 million years
ago
this water has been in the earth's crust
since well before the time of the
dinosaurs
the water was collected in 2009 by
university of toronto geochemist
dr barbara sherwood lawler and her team
in the kid creek mine
the deepest base metal mine in north
america near timmins ontario at
approximately 2.4 kilometers below the
earth's surface
dr sherwood lawler and her team traced
many lines of evidence that both
investigated the water's geochemical
and radiogenic fingerprints meaning they
measured the quantities of certain
isotopes of noble gases
and analyzed the sulfate-reducing or
rock-eating microbes that
lived in the water looking closely at
the bottle you can easily see the
yellow-looking sediment
analysis showed that there were a
variety of things in the water
including the tiny microbes i mentioned
before
and the hydrogen and sulfate that these
microbes ate
though we have not opened the bottle dr
sherwood lawler has assured us that the
water smells like
sulfate and that it tastes extremely
salty as this ancient water has about
three to ten times the salinity of
seawater
a little over a year ago dr sherwood
lawler approached ingenium about a
possible transfer of a sample of this
water to the national collection
in addition to the water sample ingenium
also received the following
a field kit case a sample of the type of
rock that the chemolithotrophic
literally rock eating microbes in the
water eat and
several items that were used in the
collection and analysis of the water
sample
including a glove that protected a
researcher's hand
a field conductivity probe that measures
total salinity
and a notebook that is typical of what
is used in the field where dr sherwood
lawler and her team recorded details of
sample locations
flow rates and field measurements such
as temperature
ph and salinity considering all of the
elements of this acquisition lot
together
allows us to think about some of the
ways in which we relate to water
and to the natural world more broadly
what do we know
how do we learn what are we going to do
with this knowledge
in the upcoming years we at ingenium
will endeavor to find many ways to work
with different communities and publics
in order to understand
and interpret this water what does it
mean when the anthropocene
the geological era in which we are
currently living that is defined by
humans impact on the environment
is confronted by a remnant of something
that bears ancient witness
what messages are swirling around this
tiny bottle
Download a set of videos showing the water swirling (ZIP)
For further information, or to coordinate any media requests, please reach out to:
Christine Clouthier, Media Relations
613-410-5943
cclouthier@IngeniumCanada.org