Oxygen is critical for life to exist. Most life on Earth will be killed by a lack of oxygen within a billion years. Green plants are a big source of oxygen. Another, mysterious source of oxygen has been discovered at the bottom of the ocean. “Potato-shaped metallic nodules deep under the Pacific Ocean produce oxygen in complete darkness, challenging previous assumptions about oxygen production.”
Nature reports:
Something is pumping out large amounts of oxygen at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, at depths where a total lack of sunlight makes photosynthesis impossible.
The phenomenon was discovered in a region strewn with ancient, plum-sized formations called polymetallic nodules, which could play a part in the oxygen production by catalysing the splitting of water molecules, researchers suspect. The findings are published in Nature Geoscience.
‘We have another source of oxygen on the planet, other than photosynthesis,’ says study co-author Andrew Sweetman, a sea-floor ecologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban, UK — although the mechanism behind this oxygen production remains a mystery. The findings could also have implications for understanding how life began.”
Oil Price.com notes that this discovery
could lead to a reconsideration of the origins of complex life on Earth.
The findings from a team of researchers led by Professor Andrew Sweetman at the U.K.’s Scottish Association for Marine Science, show that oxygen is being produced at around 4,000 metres below the surface of the ocean in complete darkness. This contradicts previous scientific assumptions that only living organisms, including plants and algae, can use energy to create oxygen through photosynthesis, using sunlight for the reaction.
Sweetman explained, “For aerobic life to begin on the planet, there had to be oxygen and our understanding has been that Earth’s oxygen supply began with photosynthetic organisms.” He added, “But we now know that there is oxygen produced in the deep sea, where there is no light. I think we therefore need to revisit questions like: where could aerobic life have begun?”
