( CNN ) -- If you discovered water that could be millions or billions of years old , would you taste it ? Barbara Sherwood Lollar does it all the time . She 's a geologist in the department of Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto , and collaborated with other researchers on analyzing water found in a Canadian mine in Timmins , Ontario . They published the findings in the journal Nature in May , showing that the water is between 1.5 and 2.6 billion years old -- meaning it has been totally isolated for that long . Lollar dipped the tip of her finger in this water and tested it with her tongue . She found the ancient sample `` very salty and bitter -- much saltier than seawater . '' But while this may sound horrifying , geologists often use their own senses in sampling , she said . It 's not just for fun : They 're working in dark environments with multiple fractures of water , and they know the waters they want to analyze further are the saltiest , as they 're likely to be the oldest . `` If you 're a geologist who works with rocks , you 've probably licked a lot of rocks , '' she said . Ancient water found in Canadian mine . It takes more than a taste test to figure out how old water is , however . `` We can get a sense of antiquity by looking at things like salinity of the water , and more particularly , looking at oxygen and hydrogen in the water molecule itself , '' she said . Scientists looked at the amounts of noble gases in the water -- helium is one , for example -- and which isotopes were present . These are signatures of the approximate age of water . This research has implications for what life may exist on other planets . `` Equally on somewhere like Mars , any life that formed could have found its way into similar pockets of water in the Martian crust , and our work shows that these pockets of water can survive and provide a place for the life to have survived long after the surface of Mars lost its water and became sterile , '' said Chris Ballentine , professor of geochemistry at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and senior author on the study , said in an e-mail . Miners have known about the presence of deep salty waters for some time in Canada , Finland and South Africa . Mining literature even mentions it in the 1880s -- but it flew under the radar of scientists until recently . At a different Canadian mine , Lollar and colleagues went to investigate these waters . They discovered that the chemistry was similar to the kinds of waters found in hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean . They also saw that the high salinity of these waters was a result of the chemical reactions going on between the rocks and the water . `` This results in water that 's full of the kind of energy that can support life , '' she said . In a South African gold mine , Lollar and colleagues found microbial communities at 1.7 miles deep , living off of dissolved hydrogen in these waters . The waters themselves on the order of tens of millions of years old . That work inspired them to return to Canada , to the Timmins mine , because they theorized that even older waters might flow there , based on the age and geology of the rocks . Down in the mine , it 's `` dark , dusty , very noisy and hot , '' Ballentine said . The ancient water found there is a natural phenomenon ; it 's not there because of the mines . `` It 's just that the mines allow us to get down there and get at them , '' Lollar said . `` They 're our equivalent of the deep sea submarines . '' The waters themselves are flowing , bubbling out of fractures in the rock , or boreholes that intersect with the fractures . The next step is to estimate the age of other deep waters all over the planet , so that they can compare and contrast what they may find in terms of life that lives far underground in these packets of water . They are still in the process of looking for life in the samples from the Timmins mine ; working up this data is `` painstaking work , '' she said . Ballentine said the water is not drinkable , but admitted , `` the water is crystal clear when it first comes out of the rock and looks very tempting . '' Lollar is quick to deny full-on drinking these ancient waters -- she 's literally just talking about putting the tip of her finger to the tip of her tongue . `` It 's scientifically too valuable to waste like that , '' she said . See also : Ancient Tennessee cave paintings show deep thinking by Natives . Follow Elizabeth Landau on Twitter at @ lizlandau and for more science news follow @ CNNLightYears .
Barbara Sherwood Lollar is a geologist studying ancient water in mines . Water that she and her colleagues believe may be a billion years old . They are investigating the possibility that the water supports microbial life .