Scientists say they found oxygen where it shouldn’t be. Now, the hunt is on for more answers

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A startling discovery was announced in July It appears that the mineral rocks were producing oxygen At the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where light could not penetrate, it was a scientific bombshell.

Preliminary research indicated that potato-sized, mineral-rich nodules, found mostly 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) below the surface in the Clarion-Clipperton area, released an electrical charge, splitting seawater into oxygen and hydrogen through electrolysis. This unprecedented natural phenomenon challenges the idea that oxygen can only be produced from sunlight through photosynthesis.

Andrew Sweetman, a professor at the Scottish Marine Science Society in the UK, who was behind the discovery, is embarking on a three-year project to further investigate ‘dark’ oxygen production. Sweetman and his team use custom-made platforms equipped with sensors that can be deployed at depths of up to 11,000 meters (36,089 feet). The Nippon Foundation is funding the $2.7m (£2.2m) research project, which was announced on Friday.

The Nippon Foundation and the Scottish Marine Science Society announce the launch of the research project at a press conference at Scotland House. Shown (from left) are Nick Owens and Andrew Sweetman of SAMS and Yohei Sasakawa, President of the Nippon Foundation. - Alex Rumford/SAMS/Nippon Foundation

The Nippon Foundation and the Scottish Marine Science Society announce the launch of the research project at a press conference at Scotland House. Shown (from left) are Nick Owens and Andrew Sweetman of SAMS and Yohei Sasakawa, President of the Nippon Foundation. – Alex Rumford/SAMS/Nippon Foundation

The detection of dark oxygen has revealed how little is known about the deep ocean and living organisms Clarion Clipperton areaOr CCZ in particular. The area is being explored to extract rare minerals found in deep-sea rock nodules. The latter are formed over millions of years, and minerals play a major role in new and green technologies.

“Our discovery of dark oxygen was a paradigm shift in our understanding of the deep sea and perhaps life on Earth, but it raised more questions than answers,” Sweetman, head of his institution’s Seafloor Ecology and Biogeochemistry group, said in a news release. He releases. “This new research will enable us to investigate some of these scientific questions.”

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Sweetman said the initial goal of the new project is to determine whether dark oxygen production is replicated in other areas of the CCZ where nodules can be found and then uncover exactly how the oxygen is produced.

He added that understanding this phenomenon better could also help space scientists find life beyond Earth.

Oxygen in unexpected places

It’s difficult to produce oxygen without the constant energy that comes from sunlight, but other scientists have also encountered unexpected oxygen molecules in remote, light-deprived places. Dark oxygen production may be a broader phenomenon that has been overlooked, Sweetman said.

Emil Ruff, a microbiologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Detection of oxygen in freshwater samples In Alberta, tens to hundreds of meters below the Canadian prairies, a discovery he and co-authors from the University of Calgary and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reported in a report. Study published in June 2023. In some cases, dark oxygen has been isolated from the atmosphere above Earth for more than 40,000 years.

If oxygen is not continuously added to the environment (by trees and plants, for example), it will eventually disappear.

“After 40,000 years or 30,000 years (separate from surface processes), there’s no real reason to think there should be any oxygen left. Because oxygen is such a delicious electron acceptor, it’s usually chemically oxidized or microbially oxidized,” Ruff said. “So what was he doing there?”

Like Sweetman, Ruff said he initially thought atmospheric oxygen had contaminated his samples, which were drawn from 14 aquifers. Given the age of the samples, any oxygen would have long since reacted with other substances and disappeared.

After working patiently in the laboratory and field, Ruff eventually discovered that microbes in water produce oxygen. Microbes appear to have developed a mysterious but elegant trick that allows them to produce molecules in the absence of light.

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Through a series of chemical reactions, the microbes break down soluble compounds called nitrites, molecules made up of one nitrogen atom and two oxygen atoms, to produce molecular oxygen in a process known as decomposition. The microbes also had the ability to use oxygen to consume methane in the water for energy.

Furthermore, Ruff found that the amount of oxygen produced was sufficient to sustain other oxygen-dependent microbial life in the groundwater.

“Nature constantly surprises us,” he said. “There are a lot of things where people say, ‘Oh, that’s impossible,’ and then it turns out that’s not the case.”

To study dark oxygen further, Ruff and his team traveled to a 3-kilometer-deep (9,500-foot) mine in South Africa in August, to sample water that had been trapped in rocks for 1.2 billion years.

A team of scientists searches for microbes at a study site in a 3 km (9,500 ft) deep mine in South Africa. Researchers are studying brines isolated in rocks from 1.2 billion years ago that are teeming with life and investigating how oxygen was produced in this ancient ecosystem. - Taro Kido

A team of scientists searches for microbes at a study site in a 3 km (9,500 ft) deep mine in South Africa. Researchers are studying brines isolated in rocks from 1.2 billion years ago that are teeming with life and investigating how oxygen was produced in this ancient ecosystem. – Taro Kido

Scientists already knew that the water in the mine contained oxygen molecules, but it was unclear how they were formed. He added that Ruff and his colleagues are still studying the samples they took, but they have two hypotheses about how oxygen molecules are produced.

The site is mined for gold and uranium, a radioactive mineral. Radiolysis, the splitting of water molecules through radioactivity, is one possible way to produce oxygen without sunlight. Alternatively, oxygen production could involve microbes in processes similar to those found in groundwater in Canada.

The new project will also seek to understand whether any microbial interactions played a role in producing dark oxygen on the seafloor, Sweetman said Friday. In particular, the project will look at how hydrogen is released during oxygen production by mineral nodules and whether hydrogen has been used as an energy source for microbial communities discovered in parts of the deep ocean.

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“I think we don’t have the full mechanism yet and we will need a lot of time to figure it out,” he said.

Ruff said he hopes to collaborate with Sweetman and other scientists involved in dark oxygen research to understand how the chemical signature of oxygen generated by seawater electrolysis differs from that generated by microbes or radioactive analysis.

Dark oxygen and the search for extraterrestrial life

Sweetman said NASA officials are interested in research on dark oxygen production because it could inform scientific understanding of how life might persist on other planets without direct sunlight.

The space agency wants to conduct experiments to understand how much energy is required to produce oxygen at the higher pressures that occur Enceladus and EuropeHe added that the icy moons of Saturn and Jupiter, respectively. These moons are among the targets being searched for the possibility of life.

Deep-sea mining companies aim to extract the cobalt, nickel, copper, lithium and manganese found in the nodules for use in solar panels, electric car batteries and other green technology. Some companies objected to Sweetman’s research.

Critics say deep-sea mining could cause irreversible damage to the pristine underwater environment. Disable the carbon storage method In the ocean, contributing to the climate crisis.

The metals company said it did so I made a refutation For Nature Geoscience, the journal that Publish original research. The company said the submission is undergoing peer review but has not yet been published.

Sweetman said he was aware of the critical reaction and would respond “through peer-reviewed channels.”

“We are completely convinced that this is an actual process taking place at the bottom of the sea,” he said.

Sweetman also said it would be wise to postpone exploitation of resources on the seafloor until the ecosystem is better understood.

The USGS has not observed any electrical phenomena in the iron-manganese nodules examined so far, said Amy Gartman, a research oceanographer and head of the Global Marine Minerals Project at the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center in Santa Cruz, California. She was not involved in Sweetman’s or Ruff’s research.

“Researchers are currently trying to replicate the phenomena reported by Sweetman et al,” she said. “Scientific research is a process and it may take some time before a definitive answer is reached.”

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