Dark oxygen discovered in the deep sea in groundbreaking study

A world staff of scientists has found that oxygen is being produced by potato-shaped metallic nodules hundreds of ft under the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

The findings, which had been printed Monday within the Nature Geoscience journal, defy the scientific consensus of how oxygen is produced — and will even power a radical rethink of the origins of advanced life on Earth.

Alongside implications for ocean science, the analysis raises contemporary considerations in regards to the dangers of deep-sea mining.

A staff of scientists led by professor Andrew Sweetman on the U.Okay.’s Scottish Affiliation for Marine Science discovered that oxygen is being produced in full darkness roughly 4,000 meters (13,100 ft) under the ocean’s floor.

It was beforehand thought that solely residing organisms corresponding to vegetation and algae may use power to create the planet’s oxygen by a course of known as photosynthesis, which requires daylight.

“For cardio life to start on the planet, there needed to be oxygen and our understanding has been that Earth’s oxygen provide started with photosynthetic organisms,” Sweetman mentioned.

“However we now know that there’s oxygen produced within the deep sea, the place there isn’t a mild. I feel we due to this fact must revisit questions like: the place may cardio life have begun?”

“Darkish oxygen” was found whereas researchers carried out ship-based fieldwork within the Pacific Ocean. The staff sampled the seabed of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an abyssal plain between Hawaii and Mexico, to evaluate the doable impacts of deep-sea mining.

Researchers analyzed a number of nodules and located many had been carrying a “very excessive” electrical cost, which they mentioned may result in the splitting of seawater into hydrogen and oxygen by a course of known as seawater electrolysis.

“By means of this discovery, we’ve got generated many unanswered questions and I feel we’ve got rather a lot to consider by way of how we mine these nodules, that are successfully batteries in a rock,” Sweetman mentioned.

He added that additional analysis into “darkish oxygen” manufacturing can be needed.

The examine was partly funded by Canadian deep-sea mining agency The Metals Co., which goals to mine in an space of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone by late 2025.

In a press release to CNBC, The Metals Co. criticized the examine’s findings and mentioned it might publish a rebuttal in the end.

The controversial apply of deep-sea mining includes utilizing heavy equipment to take away useful minerals and metals — corresponding to cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese —that may be present in polymetallic nodules on the ocean ground. The tip makes use of of those minerals are wide-ranging and embrace electrical automobile batteries, wind generators and photo voltaic panels.

Scientists have warned that the total environmental impacts of deep-sea mining are laborious to foretell.

Environmental marketing campaign teams, in the meantime, say that the apply can’t be performed sustainably and can inevitably result in ecosystem destruction and species extinction.

“The invention {that a} course of related to polymetallic nodules is producing oxygen, in an space focused by the deep-sea mining trade, gives additional assist on the pressing want for a moratorium,” mentioned Sofia Tsenikli, deep-sea mining international marketing campaign lead for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, a nongovernment environmental group.

“This analysis emphasizes simply how a lot we nonetheless have to find and be taught in regards to the deep sea and raises extra questions on how deep-sea mining may impression deep-sea life and processes,” Tsenikli mentioned Monday.

Correction: The Clarion-Clipperton Zone is an abyssal plain between Hawaii and Mexico. An earlier model misspelled its identify.