About 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered by water, but most of it is salty. A surprising amount of freshwater in underground aquifers, and not just under dry land.
Researchers have suspected for almost 50 years that pockets of freshwater sit buried under the seafloor, far off the coast. They just couldn’t prove how big these zones really were. Now they can.
A team of 40 scientists from 13 countries pulled up sediment cores from below the Atlantic, off the coast of New England. What they found backs up the old hunch in a big way.