Ancient New York Ocean Dating Back 390 Million Years Ago Discovered Hidden in Rocks [Study]

Ancient water trapped inside rocks in the ocean once covered New York 390 million years ago, according to a new study spearheaded by scientists from the United States.

The ancient New York ocean revealed that a small amount of ancient seawater was hidden inside an iron pyrite framboid.

The scientific team then analyzed the liquid pocket and determined its salt matched the composition of the ancient ocean.

Previous research has shown that water can be trapped in holes within rocks either in the form of solid, liquid, or gas.

Water molecules, which includes hydrogen, can also be included in the gravel.

This geological phenomenon reportedly supports the assertion of scientists that large amounts of water exist under Earth's surface, locked inside crystal structure of mineral structure in the mantle.

If rocks can hold samples from ancient oceans for almost 400 years, the new study's authors perceive that we could also safely store hydrogen fuel, addressing water or fuel crises in some countries, particularly in drought-stricken regions.

In recent years, extreme weather events like heat waves and drought, due to climate change and global warming, have dried up some natural water reservoirs.

Ancient New York Ocean

The study was published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters and will be available on December 1.

Excerpts from the new paper suggests that researchers from the Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, and their colleagues resolved paleo seawater signatures in miniscule amounts by using the atom probe tomography (APT) process.

The paper's research team offered new insight that the geochemistry of ancient environments can be discovered through structural and chemical analyses of nano-sized features inside minerals.

The team presented the recent developments through APT, allowing the observation of fluid inclusions trapped within a pyrite and visualization of the chemical characterization of remnant sea water.

Hydrogen Storage

One significant impact of the study could be acquiring further knowledge on how to safely store hydrogen fuel or other explosive gases in rocks or underground, according to Newsweek.

For now, the explosive element can be stored as a compressed gas but is dangerous.

The study's lead author and scientist, Sandra Taylor, told Newsweek that the work shows the existence of tiny defects in minerals even at the nanometer level.

Meanwhile, co-author Daniel Gregory, a geologist from the University of Toronto in Canada, told the American news platform that after analyzing the mineral pyrite using APT, the yielded data were more complex than the team has anticipated.

A separated study about Earth's rocks containing hidden oceanwater was published in the journal Science in June 2014; wherein another team of US-based researchers that there is evidence of stored water at depths between 410 to 660 kilometers (250 and 410 miles) in a rocky layer of the Earth's mantle.

The 2014 study said water is transported into the mantle along with minerals during a geological process called as plate tectonics.