bobbycaputo:

World’s Oldest Flowing Water Found In Canadian Mine

Gas that bubbles out of the floor in a deep mine has a chemical composition that can provide the food source for microbes living in deep ancient fluids underground. (Credit: J Telling/Handout)

Scientists have made an amazing discovery deep inside the Canadian Shield - one that goes back billions of years.

It’s a reservoir of water located in a mine in Timmins, Ontario, that is the oldest free-flowing water ever found.

Canadian and British scientists say it’s been trapped there for 1.5 billion to 2.64 billion years (back when oxygen breathing life first appeared on the planet), and hasn’t come into contact with Earth’s atmosphere since.

“It’s exciting on about five different levels,” said Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Toronto who was involved in the discovery.

“It’s like finding another world,” she told The Globe & Mail.

It’s believed the water was once on the surface, perhaps in an ocean that disappeared, and then seeped through the ground where it became trapped.

Scientists found it 2.4 kilometres underground in a copper and zinc mine. They say the water is rich in dissolved gases such as methane and hydrogen - two elements that support life, and in theory, could have helped some types of micro-organisms survive.

(Continue Reading)

(h/t nturlbruntt)

This is beyond cool.  

This is how it happens, no foolin’

domics:

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

(skip day)

Mmmm, maple turkey

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends

nationalpost:

Bank of Canada bans image of Asian woman from $100 bill
The Bank of Canada has purged an image of an Asian-looking woman from its new $100 banknotes after focus groups raised questions about her ethnicity.

The original image intended for the reverse of the plastic polymer banknotes, which began circulating last November, showed an Asian-looking woman scientist peering into a microscope. The image, alongside a bottle of insulin, was meant to celebrate Canada’s medical innovations.

But eight focus groups consulted about the proposed images for the new $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 banknote series were especially critical of the choice of an Asian for the largest denomination.

“Some have concerns that the researcher appears to be Asian,” says a 2009 report commissioned by the bank from The Strategic Counsel, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act. (Peter J. Thompson/National Post)

And that matters because….?  What the hell is wrong with people.  

I miss these mountains so much.  I hope someday I live among them again.  Nothing felt more like home that being in the rock solid arms of those mountains.  

Ok this is ridiculous, I need a U.S. mailing address.

nationalpost:

Remember the Canadian dollar bill? Ever seen one before? It’s been 25 years since we traded them in for the loonie.

Remember them, I still have some of them!

nparts:

How a road trip to Canada in the ’80s inspired Richard Ford’s latest novel
“I loved that landscape,” Richard Ford says. “What struck me was how different it was from just where I was living at the time, across the border in [Missoula] Montana. It didn’t shock me, it pleased me, in a way. There was something about the landscape up in Saskatchewan … that I had such an affinity for. I think it just settled on me in a profound way.

“When an American — this American, anyway — is in Canada, you’re very aware that you’re in a completely different place,” he adds. (Illustration by Steve Murray)

(via nationalpost)