The weather in front of the rock

Scientists can always come up with new tricks when they study the earth. This time, in order to study the ice age ocean, they squeezed the stone out of the juice.

Twenty thousand years ago, the temperature of the earth was much lower than it is now. Although the last ice age, which lasted 65,438+million years, is coming to an end, nature does not want human beings to welcome "spring" comfortably. At that time, most parts of North America, Northern Europe and Asia were covered by huge ice sheets, such as new york, Berlin and North China.

In order to find out the last ice age, scientists have found many ways, such as studying the secrets of the ice age by observing coral fossils and seabed sediments.

In order to make a breakthrough in scientific research, a group of scientists invented a new method. They discovered a limestone deposit 20,000 years ago, squeezed the juice out of it with a hydraulic press, and recovered seawater 20,000 years ago.

In the latest issue of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, a research report was published, which introduced the method of stone juicing.

At the bottom of the Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean, researchers drilled many cores from limestone sediments. In a recent operation, they found that a piece of limestone contained sediments from 20,000 years ago, so they salvaged the limestone onto the boat, then sliced the rock like toast, put the fragments into a hydraulic press, and squeezed out every drop of residual water in the stone.

When they began to study these "water in the stone", the researchers were surprised to find that it was very salty, much more salty than the Indian Ocean today. After more tests, scientists think these waters are very special. Judging from the specific elements and isotopes that make up water, they are completely different from today's seawater.

In fact, the sea from which these "water in the stone" comes is saltier, colder and contains more chlorine, which is exactly the same as that in the last ice age. At that time, the ice sheet froze a lot of seawater, which made the sea level lower than the current sea level by tens of meters.

If the "water in the stone" sample is credible enough, scientists will have a new understanding of the ocean from the ice age to today, which will help mankind to establish a new climate model. Once a mature, reliable and efficient climate model is established, we can predict the future of the earth in a short time, which is very valuable for agriculture and military.

Toilet reading point of view: "water in the stone" is a good thing, just like the unpolluted "virgin water" in the lake deep underground in Antarctica, which is the original data of the earth. With the original data, combined with the current earth environment, we can analyze the laws of climate change, predict the weather at the beginning and control the weather in the next step.

References:

Journal of Geochemistry and Cosmic Chemistry