It's my life, you're just along for the ride!

After kindly asking a group of Canadian miners for a sample of some water theyd struck, a team of scientists who had been investigating similar finds discovered that the fluid they were looking at may have been sealed up for 1.5 billion years.And thats just the lower limit. The decaying radioactive atoms in the potential primordial soup told them that this cache of water the oldest ever discovered could actually have been waiting patiently in that rock for anywhere up to 2.5 billion years.But this prehistoric time capsule isnt just toting stale water, its also full of hydrogen which, as luck may have it, acts as food for certain microorganisms. Even better—the rock is able to supply a steady flow of hydrogen into its cozy little crevice, which may just have been enough to sustain at least some form of life for all this time.So should it contain the descendants of ancient microbes—which it very well may—not only do we have a perfectly preserved specimen of ancient life, but well also be able to glean a better idea of how we evolved. Because the potential life held within has been so isolated, it would have most likely evolved in distinctly different ways from our own microbial ancient ancestors.

via Oldest Water Cache Ever Discovered May Hold 1.5 Billion-Year-Old Life.

Flying sick was a bad choice. Your congested ears refuse to pop and now you’re stuck on a cross-country flight, cruising at 30,000 feet of ear-splitting agony. Here’s how to fix it.

Under Pressure

The surface of the Earth is covered in a thick atmospheric soup. Though only a fraction of the density of our oceans, the atmosphere behaves much the same way. Just as water pressure increases the deeper you go, air pressure increases the closer you get to sea level. In both cases, that’s because as you go deeper, you’ve got more and more air/water above pushing down on you.

We’ve evolved to be able to shrug off the weight of the atmosphere and our ability to hear actually requires it. See, sound waves are transmitted from the outer ear to the inner ear through the eardrum. This thin vibrating membrane acts as a barrier to liquids but allows atmospheric reverberations to pass through, however this requires that the air pressure on both sides of the eardrum be roughly equal.

via Why Your Ears Pop (And What to Do If They Don’t).