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Deep sea nodules could be making their own oxygen without sunlight.
It’s one of the earliest things you learn in elementary school science class—Earth’s life-sustaining oxygen is produced by plants and algae during photosynthesis using a combination of carbon dioxide and sunlight. But the recent discovery of what researchers call “dark oxygen” may upend conventional notions of how the critical element can be created–and what that might mean for the origins of life.
According to a study published in Nature Geoscience on July 22, natural mineral deposits known as polymetallic nodules located at the bottom of the ocean appear capable of generating oxygen without any source of light. These nodules are found as far as 20,000 feet below the ocean surface and range in size from particles to nodules as large as a human hand. Because they contain combinations of cobalt, copper, lithium, and manganese, they have long been eyed by large-scale mining companies as a potential untapped source of coveted metals needed to produce batteries and other electronics. But as lucrative as they may be for industrial uses, they now seem far more vital to life within ocean ecosystems.
The first indications that something strange was occuring within polymetallic nodules arrived over 10 years ago in a northeastern region of the Pacific Ocean. While on a sampling expedition in the area’s mountainous submarine ridge known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Andrew Sweetman of the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) noticed odd readings on his equipment.
“When we first got this data, we thought the sensors were faulty because every study ever done in the deep sea has only seen oxygen being consumed rather than produced,” Sweetman says in an accompanying statement. “We would come home and recalibrate the sensors, but, over the course of 10 years, these strange oxygen readings kept showing up.” After double checking the findings using a different sensor array, Sweetman and his team knew they were “onto something groundbreaking and unthought-of.”
www.popsci.com
It’s one of the earliest things you learn in elementary school science class—Earth’s life-sustaining oxygen is produced by plants and algae during photosynthesis using a combination of carbon dioxide and sunlight. But the recent discovery of what researchers call “dark oxygen” may upend conventional notions of how the critical element can be created–and what that might mean for the origins of life.
According to a study published in Nature Geoscience on July 22, natural mineral deposits known as polymetallic nodules located at the bottom of the ocean appear capable of generating oxygen without any source of light. These nodules are found as far as 20,000 feet below the ocean surface and range in size from particles to nodules as large as a human hand. Because they contain combinations of cobalt, copper, lithium, and manganese, they have long been eyed by large-scale mining companies as a potential untapped source of coveted metals needed to produce batteries and other electronics. But as lucrative as they may be for industrial uses, they now seem far more vital to life within ocean ecosystems.
The first indications that something strange was occuring within polymetallic nodules arrived over 10 years ago in a northeastern region of the Pacific Ocean. While on a sampling expedition in the area’s mountainous submarine ridge known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Andrew Sweetman of the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) noticed odd readings on his equipment.
“When we first got this data, we thought the sensors were faulty because every study ever done in the deep sea has only seen oxygen being consumed rather than produced,” Sweetman says in an accompanying statement. “We would come home and recalibrate the sensors, but, over the course of 10 years, these strange oxygen readings kept showing up.” After double checking the findings using a different sensor array, Sweetman and his team knew they were “onto something groundbreaking and unthought-of.”
‘Dark oxygen’ on ocean floor may rewrite Earth’s origins of life
Deep sea nodules could be making their own oxygen without sunlight.
www.popsci.com
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