Team discovers ‘dark oxygen’ on the seafloor

Children are always asking “Why?” As they first experience things, they want to get more information. But as children grow in adults, they often do something new that challenges their experience and understanding.

This happened to me when I discovered the source of oxygen production in the deep sea – but ignored it for nine years.

In 2013, I was in 2013 to measure the seaflor carbon cycling in the Clarian-Cliparton Zone of the Pacific Ocean. I deployed a lander system (a remote-powered platform used to carry scientific devices) to a depth of 4,000 meters and returned with bubbles inside it. This was highly unusual, so two years later, when we returned to the same site, I took some optodes (oxygen sensors) with me.

These are designed to measure oxygen consumption, but instead they were showing me oxygen production, exactly the opposite of what I was expecting. Instead of asking why I was getting these results, I rejected the reading as a result of a faulty sensor.

We are all taught very quickly in our education that oxygen is generated only through photosynthesis and it requires lighting in low supply at a distance of thousands of meters from the sea surface. This took me to 2021, when I measured oxygen production with another method, that I realized that we found something extraordinary: dark oxygen- oxygen that originates without sunlight.

In the summer of 2024, my team and I published our findings In the journal Nature geology,

The discovery of dark oxygen has shifted our understanding of deep sea and potential life on earth. But we still do not know how to ensure how this oxygen arises, and to what extent, and whether it is important for ecological ecosystem of deep sea where this happens.

In our paper, we suggest that the source can be polymetallic nodules, rock-like structures made of many different metals including manganese, structures that can create a difference in electrical capacity when interacting with seawater.

We proposed that they could produce enough voltage to divide seawater into hydrogen and oxygen. A new Chinese study It is just shown that oxygen can be produced when they are becoming manganese nodules.

Why more ‘questions’ questions

This year we will examine some of these scientific questions. If we show that the production of oxygen is possible in the absence of photosynthesis, then this discovery will change the method as we see the possibility of life on other planets as well.

In fact, we are already interacting with NASA experts, who believe that dark oxygen can reopen our understanding of how life can lead to life on other ocean worlds such as Encladus and Europe, the moon which has ice layers that limit sunlight penetration to the sea below.

We are also in the process of analyzing the ability of dark oxygen in the Central Pacific Ocean and developing purpose-made and autonomous landers, or rigs. This will be the first time of the UK that takes a sample below a depth of 6,000 meters.

These vehicle experts will take instrumentation to a depth of 11,000 meters, which exceeds pressure One metric ton per square centimeter (It is equal to 100 elephants Sitting at your top,

We will check if hydrogen has been released during the construction of dark oxygen, and whether it is used as an energy source for abnormally large community of microbes in parts of the deep ocean. We also want to find out how climate change can affect biological activity in deep sea.

This project is the first of its kind to directly detect these processes. Will be able to study deep sea in my team Handle ZoneAn area that reaches a depth of 6,000–11,000 meters and creates about 45% of the entire ocean. This habitat is filled with trenches of deep ocean, still deemed bad.

The discovery of dark oxygen is clearly possible implications for the deeper sea mining industry. Deep-C mining removes polymetallic nodules that contain metals such as manganese, nickel and cobalt, which are required to produce lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones.

We do not yet know how such an industry will be affected by seabed, but in the coming years our research should help answer many questions and perhaps better inform that seabed should be protected more than deep sea mining. One thing is sure: whatever we find, I will try and feed the feeling of enthusiasm like my child and “Why?”

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