“A massive freshwater aquifer off the US Northeast coast, first detected in the 1970s, has now been sampled directly for the first time. This latest expedition should help determine whether the aquifer could one day serve as a usable water supply and offer clues about similar formations hidden elsewhere in the world,” reports The Doomslayer.
The Associated Press reports:
Deep in Earth’s past, an icy landscape became a seascape as the ice melted and the oceans rose off what is now the northeastern United States. Nearly 50 years ago, a U.S. government ship searching for minerals and hydrocarbons in the area drilled into the seafloor to see what it could find.
It found, of all things, drops to drink under the briny deeps — fresh water.
This summer, a first-of-its-kind global research expedition followed up on that surprise. Drilling for fresh water under the salt water off Cape Cod, Expedition 501 extracted thousands of samples from what is now thought to be a massive, hidden aquifer stretching from New Jersey as far north as Maine…
In months of analysis ahead, the scientists will investigate a range of properties of the water, including what microbes were living in the depths, what they used for nutrients and energy sources and what byproducts they might generate; in other words, whether the water is safe to consume or otherwise use.
