

1 Billion-Year-Old Water Tastes 'Terrible' - antr
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/confirmed-1-billion-year-old-water-tastes-terrible/276946/

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clarkmoody
The headline gets your attention, but after reading the article, it makes
perfect sense that water soaking up minerals from a rock for a billion years
would taste pretty bad.

A very interesting find for the sake of scientific inquiry though.

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untog
In the UK, there is an old Roman Bathhouse available as a tourist attraction.
Along with your ticket, you get a chance to taste the water that comes from
the same hot springs that powered the baths.

It is unbelievably disgusting. But watching the reactions of the people trying
it is a source of endless fun.

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scrumper
I grew up near it (it's in a city called Bath, appropriately). It was a
regular on the school trip circuit for us. Calling it a 'bathhouse' is
accurate but sells it a bit short: it's an almost perfectly preserved complex:
if you put a towel rack up you could open it for business tomorrow. To my
mind, it rivals Pompeii in conveying an impression of Roman life.

It's well worth a trip for any non-Brits finding themselves in London on
business: just a 2 hour train ride from Paddington station.

~~~
greghinch
I will add, if you have access to a car, a great overnight trip (stay near by
the night before) from London is to do the early morning, pre-opening
Stonehenge visit (book it a bit in advance and you can get right up to the
stones with hardly anyone around) and then head over to Bath for lunch and the
afternoon.

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beat
I find it amusingly ironic that an article about bad taste and billion-year-
old water is in "The Atlantic".

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mathattack
Go figure.

I would be afraid of what might be growing in the water, but I guess that
level of salt would kill most anything.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
-as we know it.

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jdpage
In which case it would probably die upon entering the human body, as it would
find us miserably hypotonic.

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mathattack
Which one of us would find the other more toxic?

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diggan
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who like to taste different things
that other people would see as weird. I mean, if I found something
extraordinary like water on Mars, my first though would be "How does it
taste?".

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snorkel
Kudos to her. Whatever makes science interesting, go for it. Maybe combine
this with a gross-out reality show concept called "Eating the Earth" where
competing geologists dare each other to eat that.

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sukuriant
So, she drank some of the water and is now postulating that it might have life
in it?

Uhm... well, I assume this article has been written so long since the event
happened that we know she didn't contract some terrible disease that mutated
in there.

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takluyver
Anything able to live in there has never had a chance to infect any
vertebrate, so it's unlikely that it would be able to infect a mammal.
Mutation alone won't do the trick with no selective pressure for virulence.

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Apocryphon
Suddenly, I am reminded of the Rifters trilogy by Peter Watts. Available free
to read thanks to Creative Commons:
[http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm](http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm)

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magic5227
I love how that as smart and scientific as we are as a civilization, we're
still just primates deep down.

"We found 1 billion year old water! ... I want to drink it so bad."

~~~
joshguthrie
"When all you have is 1 billion year old water, everything looks like a
glass."

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joezydeco
_" Now onto the bigger questions: Is there life in this billion-year-old
water?"_

I'm guessing a Hollywood screenwriter is already working on the answer to this
question.

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cclogg
I can already see the trailer: loud Inception-esque BRAAAHHM sounds,
black/desolate landscape, shot on Red in 3D, weird syrupy water turns out to
be alien goop... etc...

Oh, and throw in a robotic Fassbender!

... wait... I think I saw this movie last summer ;)

~~~
mikeash
That just means you'll see it again soon.

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mesozoic
This reminds me of a sci movie about zombie infection or some such. This is
always how it starts, finding some strange liquid, tasting it, spreading a
plauge our bodies aren't adapted to etc.

