# On Drinking Ancient (viz, Millions Of Years Old) Water Trapped In Rocks **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 17, 2018, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-drinking-ancient-viz-millions-of-years-old-water-trapped-in-rocks/806834 "2018-01-17T16:13:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-drinking-ancient-viz-millions-of-years-old-water-trapped-in-rocks/806834/1 "2018-01-17T16:13:52Z")
In [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn9Od4oP8D0&t=235s), two guys break open a quartz geode (or whatever the proper word is) and find a few milliliters of water inside. They test it on a petri dish, and one guy drinks it. **The Petri Dish Test:** The guys were astounded when their tests revealed some bacterial growth. I am equally astounded, as I don’t see how the water in there could have been anything but sterile. Best I can figure is that the sample got degraded when the hammer passed through it, or when the cotton swab was dipped into it. Is my thinking correct on this? **Drinking It:** The guy was barely able to get his tongue into it, but he seemed underwhelmed by the taste. In [another video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-9GUNgIWfw) a guy manages to get a splash or so of geode water into his mouth and is equally underwhelmed. So am I safe to assume that drinking ancient water trapped in rocks is safe? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-drinking-ancient-viz-millions-of-years-old-water-trapped-in-rocks/806834/2 "2018-01-17T16:24:02Z")
Quartz is not completely impermable to water - so the water may not have been in there forever. Quartz rocks such as flints explode in beach fires because of the water content inside the matrix of the mineral - it can take years to dry out. There are bacteria that live right inside of rocks, but I don’t know if there are any that can get inside of an intact quartz geode - contamination seems a possibility - the waterjet guys are fun, but hardly rigorous. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-drinking-ancient-viz-millions-of-years-old-water-trapped-in-rocks/806834/3 "2018-01-17T16:31:29Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > **The Petri Dish Test:** The guys were astounded when their tests revealed some bacterial growth. I am equally astounded, as I don’t see how the water in there could have been anything but sterile. Best I can figure is that the sample got degraded when the hammer passed through it, or when the cotton swab was dipped into it. Is my thinking correct on this? Almost certainly. I watched the video, thinking that they might have taken some basic but inadequate precautions against contamination. Instead, they did absolutely everything they could to ensure contamination, including handling it with bare hands, breaking it open with dirty tools, and **licking the outside of the geode**. Besides, the sorts of bacteria that live deep underground are going to have specialized and exotic metabolisms, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to grow on agar plates with standard media. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-drinking-ancient-viz-millions-of-years-old-water-trapped-in-rocks/806834/4 "2018-01-18T01:52:25Z")
Somebody should have told these guys about the 1860 experiments of Louis Pasteur, where he proved that microbes did not ‘spontaneously generate’, but were introduced into the liquid from the air. ---
**Author:** ![OldOlds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a3d4f5/32.png) [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-drinking-ancient-viz-millions-of-years-old-water-trapped-in-rocks/806834/5 "2018-01-18T03:18:22Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > Almost certainly. I watched the video, thinking that they might have taken some basic but inadequate precautions against contamination. Instead, they did absolutely everything they could to ensure contamination, including handling it with bare hands, breaking it open with dirty tools, and **licking the outside of the geode**. > > Besides, the sorts of bacteria that live deep underground are going to have specialized and exotic metabolisms, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to grow on agar plates with standard media. Well, they might well grow on standard media, but next step would be to ID the organism, which would tell you whether it was likely contamination. And organism normally associated with human skin likely came from, well, not the rock. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-drinking-ancient-viz-millions-of-years-old-water-trapped-in-rocks/806834/6 "2018-01-18T03:31:54Z")
Well not millions, but 10s of thousands of years old organisms have been found before trapped in crystals ([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/18/newly-discovered-weird-life-forms-may-offer-clue-life-mars/amp/](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/18/newly-discovered-weird-life-forms-may-offer-clue-life-mars/amp/)) ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-drinking-ancient-viz-millions-of-years-old-water-trapped-in-rocks/806834/7 "2018-01-19T15:19:40Z")
I believe the possibility was pointed out by God to a famous guy and a bunch of his losing-hope wannabe ex-pats in a desert. Who also, I might add, proved shockingly inadequate following procedure.