Discovery in the Deep Sea: ‘It’s Dark Oxygen’

The established belief that on Earth only three processes and organisms are capable of producing oxygen may come to an end. K photosynthesis of plants, phytoplankton and marine algae, as well as photosynthesis of cyanobacteria. Now they are joined by a group of rocks sunken into the seabed, which create “dark oxygen”.

This is the conclusion reached by the group researchers led by Andrew K. SweetmanScottish Association of Marine Science and chemist Franz Geiger, Northwestern University. The study was published in a prestigious journal Naturecasts doubt on the origin of life on our planet, which could have been under water.

It was Sweetman who first discovered the presence a strange phenomenon that was happening on an underwater mountain range known as Clarion-Clipperton. A place at a depth of 4000 meters in the Pacific Ocean. which has recently attracted the attention of the mining industry due to the presence of minerals and rare earth elements.

There they are distributed over an area of ​​more than a million square kilometers. lots of rocks and stonesconsisting of metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper, lithium and manganeseThey are the so-called “polymetallic nodules”a kind of natural mineral deposits. And it was there that the specialists’ sensors recorded the presence of oxygen.

Broken sensors?

Something that made them think so these sensors were brokensince previous studies of the deep sea have shown that there oxygen was depleted rather than produced. “However, over the course of 10 years, these strange oxygen readings kept popping up” says Sweetman, who admits they had to recalibrate their sensors. After analyzing years of data, they thought, “There’s something innovative and unthinkable going on there.”

About 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth Great oxidation, a process in which large amounts of oxygen are added to the atmosphere.. This caused an explosion of subsequent life, which was at first somewhat cyanobacteria who have developed the ability to use sunlight to trigger a chemical reaction release oxygen into the atmosphereAnother relatively “new” way to achieve this goal is water electrolysisby means of which it is decomposed into two elements (hydrogen and oxygen; H₂OR) by means of electric current.

This process was discovered by man Just 200 years ago this could have been happening since the beginning of time in the deep oceans. “We believe that an electrochemical process can provide part of the oxygen production that we saw– Sweetman assures. To get an answer, he contacted chemist Franz Geiger from Northwestern University (USA).

In one of his previous works, Geiger showed that Rust combined with salt water can generate electricityAt the center of all this is the question of whether these polymetallic nodules found on the seafloor can generate enough electricity to produce oxygen. And indeed, through a process called “sea electrolysis”.

Sweetman then sent Geiger several kilograms of these nodules. One day in his laboratory he discovered that “Just 1.5 volts, the same voltage as a regular AA battery, is enough to split seawater.”. His team found voltages as high as 0.95 volts with the nodes they received. When they grouped them together, they saw that it was even higher. “We seem to have found natural “geobattery”“This is the basis for a possible explanation for the formation of dark oxygen in the ocean,” the chemist explains.

Discovery and new risk

The problem now is related to the purposes that can be given to these nodules. According to the expert, the mass of these nodules will be enough to meet global energy demand for decades to comeso that underwater mining companies can set their targets for them. “The polymetallic nodules that produce this oxygen contain metals that They play a key role in the production of batteries for our cars and mobile phones.— says Geiger.

The chemist also warns that extracting these materials could deplete this oxygen source and disrupt the marine ecosystem.“They could suffer if these metal nodules are exploited on a massive scale.” And, what’s more, he remembers what happened in the mined areas of the 1980s, which have yet to recover their biodiversity. “In 2016 and 2017, marine biologists visited areas that were exploited in the 1980s and found that and bacteria did not recover in these areasHowever, in unmined areas, marine life thrives.”

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