Source: USA TODAY

“Old” might not top the list of the adjectives you’d use to describe water, but that could very well change after reading this story: Scientists say they’ve found water whose age clocks in at no less than 1.5 billion years, making it the oldest cache to have ever been discovered. As the BBC explains, the only water to top it is “minute quantities” contained in some rock minerals.

Gold miners in Timmins, Ontario, were the ones who uncovered the water while drilling into bedrock; NPR reports that the team behind the discovery had been requesting such samples from a number of mines; a trio of dating techniques revealed this particular water to be remarkable — between 1.5 billion and 2.6 billion years old.

The BBC reports the water likely didn’t begin its ancient life 1.5 miles beneath the surface: It would have seeped from above ground through the earth, eventually becoming trapped.

The fluids that we see now are actually preservations of ancient oceans,” a geochemist involved in the study explains. But that may not be the most interesting part: The water, which contains a good deal of hydrogen, could hold ancient life, too, and the scientists are currently testing samples to see if that’s the case. And if it is, that could fuel hope that the same kind of life persists on Mars, which was once covered in oceans as well.

Newser is a USA TODAY content partner providing general news, commentary and coverage from around the Web. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

When it comes to the fate of the 350 residents of Newtok, Alaska, the Guardian pulls no punches: “Exile is inevitable,” it writes. That’s because their coastal village, located about 480 miles west of Anchorage, is in the process of being washed into the Bering Sea.

As the Guardian explains in an in-depth look at the town, the Ninglick River flows past three of Newtok’s sides on its path to the sea, and it’s been chipping away at the village at a rate that’s only grown more aggressive due to climate change (more than 100 feet of shoreline gone some years), which has been linked to melting permafrost and dwindling protective sea ice.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveyed the village and offered no break to the gloom: It concluded that seawalls or other protective measures wouldn’t work, and that Newtok’s highest point could be underwater in just four years, by 2017.

The villagers must leave (a tribal administrator tells Alaska Public Radio relocation has been a major town talking point for the last three decades), leading the Guardian to dub them “America’s first climate change refugees.”

The villagers selected a new site 9 miles away, but moving the town there could cost $130 million, and relocation efforts have yet to truly get off the ground. And while Newtok may be first to disappear, it likely won’t be last: A decade-old GAO report found 184 Native villages in Alaska could be at risk.

Newser is a USA TODAY content partner providing general news, commentary and coverage from around the Web. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

There has long been a slight problem with the declaration of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world — there was no proof it actually existed. Now, an Oxford University researcher says she’s tracked down evidence the garden did indeed grow in what is now Iraq, just some 300 miles north of where legend placed it.

Stephanie Dalley spent roughly two decades pinpointing its location, which she has identified as being located 300 miles from Babylon in Nineveh, and built by an entirely different king — an enemy one at that, reports the Guardian.

Though the story went that Babylonia’s King Nebuchadnezzar constructed the gardens to appease his homesick wife, Dalley asserts that it was instead Assyria’s King Sennacherib behind them. Using her expertise in the region’s ancient language, Dalley translated a number of Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman texts, and found what the Independent describes as “four key pieces of evidence.”

Among them: indications that Nineveh may have been seen as a “new Babylon” after the Assyrians conquered the Babylonians in 689 BC, studies of the topography near the respective locations, and signs that the historians who wrote about the gardens a few centuries later actually visited locations near Nineveh.

The Guardian also reports that, by Dalley’s translation, a 7th-century BC Assyrian inscription that had been woefully deciphered about a century ago revealed Nineveh was home to an intricate system of waterways that would have transported water 50 miles to the gardens. Recent digs have uncovered signs these aqueducts existed, notes the Guardian, which says the dangerous nature of the area has prevented much exploration of it.

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Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

An Indian daredevil who made it into the Guinness Book of World Records died Sunday while repeating a version of his stunt, reports the BBC. Sailendra Nath Roy entered the record books in 2011 after traveling the farthest recorded distance on a zip line … using his hair.

He attempted to cross the Teesta River via ponytail and zip line once again, in front of hundreds of onlookers in West Bengal. But Roy became stuck just shy of halfway through the 600-foot journey, reports India Today, after his hair got stuck in the line’s wheeler; within 45 minutes he was dead.

Though Roy wore a life jacket, he apparently didn’t arrange for emergency aid.

“He was desperately trying to move forward. He was trying to scream out some instruction. But no one could follow what he was saying,” said a photographer at the scene.

In fact, India Today reports that spectators, unaware of what was happening, continued to clap as he struggled. He eventually lost consciousness and died of a massive heart attack, according to doctors. Rescuers were able to remove him from the line after about 45 minutes. A sad coda: A friend tells the BBC that Roy had told his wife, who was worried for his safety, this would be his last stunt. In 2008, he pulled the nearly 39-ton Darjeeling toy train using his ponytail.

Newser is a USA TODAY content partner providing general news, commentary and coverage from around the Web. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.