[HN Gopher] 'Dark oxygen': a deep-sea discovery that has split s...
___________________________________________________________________
'Dark oxygen': a deep-sea discovery that has split scientists
Author : pseudolus
Score : 116 points
Date : 2025-03-17 10:40 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| bpx51 wrote:
| While I can't vouch for this study's accuracy, deep-sea mining
| companies will find a way to discredit any research that opposes
| their interests. Marine ecosystems are already under significant
| stress, and these mining operations will certainly accelerate the
| damage that's already happening.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| According to the article, this new discovery(?) actually go
| _against_ their interest.
|
| Either that, or lots of missing links and details...
| robaato wrote:
| Indeed which is why they are discrediting it ;)
| rswail wrote:
| The company that funded the study are disavowing/discrediting
| the results.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There isn't a smoking gun that some specific dire consequence
| will happen from deep sea mining but it fits with
| Greenpeace's argument that we have little understanding of
| the deep ocean and there _could_ be consequences.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Sure there could be consequences. That literally applies to
| basically everything. So I don't buy that argument. You
| really need to quantify in some sense what the consequences
| could be and how likely they are.
| bognition wrote:
| I'll bite...
|
| We've learned a ton in the last few decades about how
| interconnected and complicated ecosystems can be.
| Likewise we've learned that the deep ocean isn't
| disconnected from the surface. The two send resources,
| energy, and bio mass to each other.
|
| Additionally, we are extremely reliant on the ocean in so
| many ways and ecological collapse of the ocean would be
| catastrophic for our planet.
|
| So while yes we don't have a smoking gun that says "deep
| sea mining is going to destroy the planet" we are being
| pretty cavalier playing with things we do not understand.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Oke, how do you suppose we do anything then? Humanity
| doesn't understand the majority of processes we are
| involved in. If you are arguing for understanding prior
| to engaging in an activity them we might as well stop
| modern society.
| bognition wrote:
| There's a huge difference between doing nothing and
| proceeding with caution. In circumstances where the risk
| of failure is low, we can afford to take big risks.
|
| However, when the risks are huge, there is a merit to
| proceeding with caution.
|
| There's tons of prior art here when it comes to exploring
| new building materials, new pharmaceuticals, etc...
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I agree we should always proceed with caution and that is
| exactly what I see happening here. Research is ongoing to
| determine possible effects. Instead of throwing up our
| hands and disallowing it.
| Borg3 wrote:
| Its very simple. REDUCE the FUCKING SCALE. Until you
| educate yourself about action and consequences of that
| action. Examples are very simple:
|
| Everyone bitch about CO2 problem. Oh noes, we produce it
| so much, planet cannot absorb it... BINGO. If you cannot
| recycle CO2 itself, leave it to the planet, it does it
| very well. Unfortunately, humans pushed they industrial
| operation to the extreme, planet is no longer able to
| absorb exceed CO2. Cycle is broken, we have a problem.
|
| The shalow thinking of people annoys me a lot. The main
| driver is greed, not wellbeing of humans (except tiny
| group of super rich of course).
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| We are currently in a mass extinction event, Insect
| populations are dropping like rocks and Ocean currents
| have been upended.
|
| Modern society is quite literally disrupting these
| ecosystems, and you're suggesting we should continue
| fucking around with them before understanding the
| consequences of our actions?
|
| We don't perform medicine like we did in the 19th
| century, cutting undesirable people open and seeing what
| happens, why should we do that on ecosystems when we know
| better?
|
| I for one would rather the ocean continue to produce
| oxygen over some owner of a deep sea mining firm get
| rich.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| As I understand it very very likely to cause dead zones.
| Ignoring the role these nodules play, the way I
| understand the mining works is it has huge combines
| crawling the ocean floor and kicking up huge plumes of
| dust to extract out the nodules. This:
|
| A) kills all marine life that might be present on the
| ocean floor which is a huge disruption to a fragile
| ecosystem where everything is even more tightly
| interconnected
|
| B) disorients and kills marine life in large area through
| the massive dust clouds that get created by the combined
| kicking up that dust
|
| The problem with putting the onus on those concerned with
| this activity is it's completely backwards. The risk is
| great enough that we don't want profit driven activity
| going full steam to try to manifest those risks first and
| try to deal with consequences later. There is reasonable
| concern that this will cause huge disruptions to the
| ecosystem even before we get to the potential that these
| modules are why there's oxygen down there to begin with.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Very little life exists at the ocean floor, since there
| are very few life sustaining resources there.
|
| That means that killing that life in an area has very
| little effect of the rest of the ocean eco system.
|
| The mining is a one time event, and once it's completed
| in an area, life will return, and that eco system will be
| as it was.
|
| I live in a city. Building it destroyed some wilderness
| to give half a million people somewhere to live. I think
| that was a very good thing.
| sepositus wrote:
| > I live in a city. Building it destroyed some wilderness
| to give half a million people somewhere to live. I think
| that was a very good thing.
|
| This is likely going to be the point of disagreement.
| Depending on where someone falls in the spectrum, their
| beliefs can range anywhere from humans are bad and should
| die to protecting and growing human life at all costs.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| True. And to me, as a human, the "humans are bad" crowd
| are an enemy and need to be fought and defeated.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Mostly that crowd is just concerned with humans' tendency
| to shoot ourselves in the foot when we don't understand
| something.
|
| There used to be this place called the "fertile crescent"
| where humans grew a lot of food. But they didn't
| understand how certain irrigation techniques caused salt
| to build up in the soil, so they accidentally turned it
| into a desert.
|
| We don't understand this oxygen source in the deep ocean.
| It seems likely that we're, again, about to shoot
| ourselves in the foot.
|
| The belief is not that humans are evil, it's that humans
| are unskilled in dangerous ways and that it's worth
| slowing down to cultivating those skills before we cause
| unnecessary harm to ourselves.
| sepositus wrote:
| This is more or less my view. However, when I say the
| "humans are bad" group, I mean the people basing their
| decisions purely on emotion or virtue and who are usually
| incapable of coming up with such a nuanced view. The same
| goes for the other extreme.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| So you think certain humans _are_ bad.
| antonvs wrote:
| Humans aren't bad in moderation. But 8 billion of us, and
| growing, consuming ever more resources, are pretty
| objectively bad.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Not to mention, you could build _up_ instead of _out_ and
| get more or less the same results with less disruption to
| natural ecosystems
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Very little life exists at the ocean floor, since there
| are very few life sustaining resources there.
|
| I think that this isn't true even in light of our current
| known science; but our understanding of what "life
| sustaining resources" are is something that can only grow
| with time--certainly we've often found in the past life
| in places that we thought were utterly inhospitable to it
| --and so we cannot meaningfully say that little life
| exists for this reason. And it can be dangerous to
| sacrifice life even when we think we understand it very
| well, unless we are sure that we completely understand
| its role in the ecosystem, or, rather, how its removal
| from one part of the ecosystem will affect our part of
| the ecosystem--which we (almost?) definitely don't.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| We've explored the deep ocean. Far from every spot, but
| enough to know the big picture. There is some life there
| but not much. Because there is very little resources to
| sustain life. It's pretty much just whatever scraps fall
| down from near the surface.
|
| Now, of course mining the sea floor will disrupt the
| local eco systems. It might take decades or longer for
| those to heal. To me that's fine in the big picture.
|
| A big exception is underwater volcanoes, which have
| enormously vibrant eco systems, and may even be where
| life on Earth originated. This is because the volcanoes
| supply tons of heat energy and minerals. No one is
| thinking of mining those.
|
| Either way, this video is quite informative, and doesn't
| even fully agree with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
| =vFaWgAXax1Q&ab_channel=60Min...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > We've explored the deep ocean. Far from every spot, but
| enough to know the big picture. There is some life there
| but not much. Because there is very little resources to
| sustain life. It's pretty much just whatever scraps fall
| down from near the surface.
|
| 26.1% of the ocean floor is mapped. By comparison, 100%
| of the Moon surface and 99% of the Mars surface is
| mapped. Less than 5% of the ocean has actually been seen
| by humans. I don't know what makes you think we have
| enough to know the big picture, but to me that seems like
| a very small portion. And certainly not enough to really
| understand the lifecycle that's going on down there.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You're technically right, of course.
|
| And one example of your point is when people first took a
| look at underwater volcanoes a few decades ago and found
| worlds of life no one had even imagined.
|
| Then again, on a practical level, any ocean floor area
| humanity might mine would be carefully studied
| beforehand. That's needed to know where and how to mine,
| if nothing else.
|
| So I'll claim that anywhere we'd mine we'd have a very
| good view of what life would be affected how. There could
| still be a Martian UFO base on the ocean floor 20 miles
| away, of course, but that wouldn't be affected.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > Then again, on a practical level, any ocean floor area
| humanity might mine would be carefully studied
| beforehand. That's needed to know where and how to mine,
| if nothing else.
|
| And if they discover life you're thinking they'll stop
| the mining? Or will your next argument be "Oh but
| actually that's not a lot of life" or "it's OK if that
| life dies out".
|
| This is a very wise quote that applies to relying on good
| faith actions:
|
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something,
| when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
|
| From another commentor:
|
| > 1. There is a lot of animal life in the deep ocean
| where these modules are present and absent where they are
| not
|
| So it's pretty clear if anything that today we already
| know these nodules are likely relevant to deep ocean life
| in some way we don't fully understand yet.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > Very little life exists at the ocean floor, since there
| are very few life sustaining resources there.
|
| You are making such a confident definitive statement
| about a part of our earth that is less accessible than
| outer space. Absence of evidence is decidedly not an
| evidence of absence here. We barely understand anything
| about the ocean floor and the deep ocean around it. We
| should not be going full steam with industrialization
| until we have a better grasp of how things work there.
| This is a once way gate where on the other end of it
| could be the consequential equivalent of just having a
| nuclear war.
|
| Think about it this way - until recently people believed
| there was no oxygen in the deep ocean. That's clearly not
| true. And they thought there was no life but if I recall
| correctly there actually is or at least is a good reason
| to believe there might be and reason to believe it's
| critical in the overall cycle supporting all the other
| life that lives in the deep ocean.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| You really don't! If someone wants to try to do a new
| thing for their own benefit that affects or depends on a
| shared resource it is their responsibility to establish
| that it isn't going to fuck us all.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| The point is that there is no way to do that. You can
| only do some research and say probably ya or probably na.
| I don't think harvesting precious metals is just for
| someones own benefit. This benefits everyone.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| No there are far far more degrees of certainty available
| to us than just those. How much certainty is appropriate
| for which decisions is itself part of the domain of
| expertise here, a matter of research & informed
| discernment all on its own.
|
| "This benefits everyone" has long been the battle cry of
| rentseekers and resource overexploiters. It may be
| technically correct in some narrow dispersed sense but
| come on. I benefit much more from a functioning ocean
| ecosystem than I do from a 0.0003% boost to the economy
| or whatever.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| How?
| thwarted wrote:
| Tragedy of the Commons Ruins Everything Around Me.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| How about we apply the same yardsticks to the alleged
| benefits?
| intrasight wrote:
| This article is garbage from the get-go.
|
| "long-established view that life was made possible ..."
|
| My understanding is that the consensus view is now that life
| began either in the deep sea or was transported here from
| another planet.
| pfdietz wrote:
| My understanding is that tenuous hypotheses are a poor
| basis for a supposed "consensus".
|
| What we have with origin of life is a bunch of "maybe it
| worked this way" ideas, with no good way to test them.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| This is true. Commercial interests have been waiting for the
| day when they could start mining the seafloors globally for
| these nodules. I was in college ~40 years ago and it was a
| topic of discussion back then. The technology to conduct the
| seafloor mining was not available though everyone knew that the
| day would come when it became feasible if industry required
| these minerals. Someone would work on solving the problems of
| access and recovery. The processing part was already done.
|
| No one wondered how it would disturb the seafloor since so
| little was known about the deep sea environment back then.
|
| The nodules were going to be the answer to mineral shortages
| that would naturally occur as you deplete all the economically
| recoverable deposits in your own country or as deposits in
| friendly countries become unavailable due to geopolitical
| changes. Countries that have little mineral wealth of their own
| but do have a coastline that gives them access to deep water
| could benefit by opening their offshore areas to seafloor
| mining.
|
| I think the discovery or the notion that oxygen could be
| produced in the deep sea by processes acting on or with these
| nodules is not unusual. Extremophile organisms able to live in
| anoxic conditions in total darkness on the seafloor should
| surprise no one. It also should surprise no one that some of
| the organisms may have evolved to produce oxygen as a by-
| product of their interaction with mineralized rocks.
|
| It's a big ole beautiful world out there and we don't
| understand a lot about it. It seems unlikely that in 4.5
| billion years nothing has evolved to fill that niche.
| Personally I think it's bacteria all the way down.
| adolph wrote:
| > Commercial interests have been waiting for the day when
| they could start mining the seafloors globally for these
| nodules.
|
| For all the folks thinking about Project Azorian[0], I
| recently read "Blind Man's Bluff"[1] and recommend it for the
| larger context of oceanic subsurface reconnaissance.
|
| 0. https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/exhibit/project-azorian/
|
| 1. https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-
| Espionage/...
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Speaking of book recommendations, Pulitzer-winning author
| Richard Powers wrote a terrific (Booker-nominated) novel
| about the ocean, "Playground"[0].
|
| 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playground_(novel)
| rmah wrote:
| This would be true if there were any actual deep-sea mining
| companies. But there aren't, so it's irrelevant.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| Not all risk that can't be quantified is unacceptable.
| AngryData wrote:
| But we already know strip mining is absolutely horrible on the
| surface of earth, especially when water is running through the
| mine tailings, and this would be strip mining while in the
| water which already makes it worse before we even get to other
| unknowns. I think the onus should be the people that want to
| mine to show that it isn't likely to cause problems before they
| start mining it.
| coriny wrote:
| > This cast doubt on the long-established view that life was made
| possible when organisms started producing oxygen via
| photosynthesis, which requires sunlight, about 2.7 billion years
| ago.
|
| So ... life began because it started producing oxygen via
| photosynthesis? I think they oopsed the word "multicellular" or
| "complex". A low-grade article and a long shot of a theory, but
| maybe not impossible.
| brabel wrote:
| Yeah... it seems to me that this kind of circular reasoning has
| become widely acceptable by people lately, they seem to lack
| some basic understanding of logic or something.
|
| Sometimes, it works, like when there's a feedback loop and X
| causes Y which makes X stronger, causing more of Y... but in
| this case, they're saying "organisms (literally life) started
| producing oxygen, which originated life". I would agree with
| you they mean "originated complex life" but they repeat the
| claim later: "Deep-sea discovery calls into question the
| origins of life," the Scottish Association for Marine Science
| said...".
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's thought that the most common habitable environment in
| the universe is in underground oceans which are generic in
| outer solar system and probably interstellar bodies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_oceanography
|
| It's easy to believe you could get bacteria in that kind of
| place with an ecosystem like
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent
|
| but without energy input from sunlight it is hard to believe
| you could get more complex organisms or ecosystems, but if
| you had some oxygen from chemistry that might make a
| difference.
| knowitnone wrote:
| "but without energy input from sunlight it is hard to
| believe you could get more complex organisms or ecosystems"
| Where did you pull this from? Why couldn't complex
| organisms form without sunlight?
| wongarsu wrote:
| Earth is a glowing ball of magma and semi-liquid stone,
| with a tiny solid crust where it has cooled off. There is
| plenty of energy there in heat, nuclear decay, elements
| that could chemically react and release energy, etc.
|
| On this sun-blasted surface life that uses sunlight can
| outcompete anything that doesn't use it. But that doesn't
| mean those other energy sources aren't viable on their own
| dsign wrote:
| Some editors want to simplify everything a lot. I can heard
| the hypothetical editor in this case: "aerobic life" ->
| "what's aerobic? Too complicated Joe. I'm gonna red-pen it.
| Write just 'life'. See? Better, right? Now, Joe, does
| everybody know that organisms are clumps of church organs?
| Maybe you want to put a footnote somewhere?"
| datavirtue wrote:
| These nodules are so hot right now.
| rswail wrote:
| The Metals Company should have taken the advice of Sir Humphrey
| Appelby in Yes Minister,
|
| "Minister, two basic rules of government:
|
| Never look into anything you don't have to.
|
| And never set up an enquiry unless you know in advance what its
| findings will be."
| lukan wrote:
| I hate it, that this is likely good advice.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Fiction: an exoplanet research company stumbles upon ruins of
| an ancient alien civilization, investigates it with profit and
| power in mind, then accidentally releases some ancient evil
| that plunges galaxy into war.
|
| Reality: an exoplanet development company stumbles upon ruins
| of an ancient alien civilization, and quickly paves it over
| before anyone else notices, because there's nothing worse for a
| real estate developer than having to wait for a green light
| from archaeologists.
| elcritch wrote:
| Plus a strip mall with Waffle Houses and 7-11's would be the
| universes best defense anyways!
| Kostchei wrote:
| twist, 30 years later the aliens tunnel up from under the
| concrete
| tecleandor wrote:
| Building a mall on an alien burial ground site. What could
| possibly go wrong.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Ah, you want to the Murderbot Diaries. It's got both of those
| two things in spades.
| jofer wrote:
| ^ This x1000. Everyone should read those! And the world
| needs more murderbot.
|
| "As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure."
|
| "I was having an emotion, and I hate that."
|
| "I liked the imaginary people on the entertainment feed way
| more than I liked real ones, but you can't have one without
| the other."
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| More fictional, tortured, powerful robots freed of their
| Asimovian restraints should opt to fuck off and watch
| soap operas instead of choosing to take revenge on the
| humans who so wronged them.
| no_wizard wrote:
| >an exoplanet research company stumbles upon ruins of an
| ancient alien civilization, investigates it with profit and
| power in mind, then accidentally releases some ancient evil
| that plunges galaxy into war
|
| The Protheans warned us. Thats all I'm gonna say on the
| matter.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I was thinking more of the Shadows of Z'ha'dum - a planet
| whose name actually sounds like the name of some foreign
| mall. "Let's all go to Z'ha'dum after school! _cheering_ ".
| raducu wrote:
| Can't they prove or disprove by just getting some ocean water
| in a tank, adding those metal balls to it and observing if any
| oxygen is produced or not?
| Miraltar wrote:
| You have to keep this tank sealed or the water gets slightly
| oxygenated by contact with air, you have to keep it in the
| dark and at stable temperature or other reactions could
| disrupt your experiment. How do you measure the oxygenation
| without introducing potential error in this context ? You
| can't just make an instrument appear in the middle of the
| tank. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29429385
| Peritract wrote:
| This is the beginning of the plot in [The
| Trench](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trench_(novel)). It's
| unlikely that the rest of the plot will play out, but always
| interesting when the real world starts connecting with SF.
| causal wrote:
| The worst part of any kind of dredging is that it's effectively
| done blind. There is no way to know if you're bulldozing a unique
| ecosystem, an undiscovered species, or a small deep-sea reef. A
| lot will remain forever undiscovered if we destroy large swaths
| of the sea bed for some short-term energy needs.
| jmclnx wrote:
| If so could this be in our future ? It is from 45 years ago,
| still a good story
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1189676.The_Nitrogen_Fix
|
| Seems these days, we are heading straight into a disaster with no
| one in power trying to stop it. What is one more path to
| extinction :)
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| No it can't. That book is science fiction and not even hard
| sci-fi.
| acc_297 wrote:
| The paper:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8
| TSiege wrote:
| This is a subject that will likely hinge on politics and
| commodity markets, but the science is very clear as is occam's
| razor
|
| 1. There is a lot of animal life in the deep ocean where these
| modules are present and absent where they are not
|
| 2. Those organisms depend on oxygen to function
|
| 3. Polymetallic nodules taken from the deep ocean have been shown
| in lab conditions to create enough of an electric charge to split
| H2O into H2 and O2
|
| 4. Areas where polymetallic nodules have been removed decades ago
| haven't recovered even on a microorganism level
|
| 5. These nodules individually take *millions* of years to form
|
| From these conclusions we can safely assume that removing them
| would decimate these ecosystems on a timescale that's longer than
| evolution of the genus Homo. Put another way it would be as if we
| cut down a forest knowing it would take millions of years for
| individual trees to regrow. It is a crime against the planet to
| remove these nodules
| whatshisface wrote:
| These nodules aren't even that valuable. It's not like they're
| full of Platinum group metals...
| kurthr wrote:
| Privatize profits. Socialize costs.
|
| If you're in international waters, you can destroy whatever
| you want and even at low marginal return, if you can scale
| fast enough the total ROI can be good. The solution to
| pollution is dilution (of regulatory barriers)!
| refulgentis wrote:
| I've been following this for years and am somewhat
| ambivalent to either outcome.
|
| I feel the need to warn anyone reading that this is an
| overwrought reaction to an overwrought reaction to a, well,
| very opinionated take.
|
| There's a reason why there's 5 papers as refutations, and
| no one will even go on the record, even just for a news
| article that'll play well to general public grousing, to
| even devil's advocate for the original paper
|
| I'm glad institutions have and are taking their time with
| this, to the point we're being steadily brought along,
| publicly, as we investigate the possibilities and perhaps
| even discover new things along the way.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| What is the source of the electricity generation? Presumably,
| given how slowly the nodules form, they must be acting as a
| catalyst/not be being consumed, so what energy source are they
| using?
| TSiege wrote:
| They believe it's due to the metals that make up the nodules
| creating differences in electrical charge along their surface
| and perhaps between nodules. For an in depth explanation see
| below
|
| https://eos.org/articles/metallic-nodules-create-oxygen-
| in-t...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8
| MostlyStable wrote:
| So it appears that the authors actually don't know.
| Specifically they say:
|
| Whereas questions remain concerning this potential
| mechanism (such as the identity of the energy source(s),
| longevity of DOP, catalytic stabilities, electrochemical
| conditions on exposed versus buried nodules surfaces and
| the influence of different chemistries within the nodule
| layers
|
| And after reading their explanation for why they discount
| microbial sourcing of the oxygen, I am inclined to join
| other commenters in their skepticism. Given no good
| mechanistic understanding, I think they are being too quick
| to rule out microbes. That's not to say that they are
| wrong, just that I think their current evidence isn't
| strong enough to support the claims they are making
| (admittedly this is a completely subjective assessment)
| doodlebugging wrote:
| How do the nodules form? I'm not sure of the mechanism but
| I can speculate that it may be that they form as a result
| of biological action of microorganisms which take in
| seawater and secrete heavy metals. Colonies of these
| microorganisms could coalesce to the point where their
| presence is indicated by the presence of these nodules.
|
| Perhaps using thin sections of the nodules will provide a
| clue about their origin and whether they are a biological
| type of sedimentary deposit or something that occurs due to
| chemical or electrochemical diagenesis of existing
| sediments or alteration of suspended particulates in the
| water column.
|
| It's interesting that they are only found in areas where
| the seafloor is oxygenated according to the EOS article
| linked and quoted below.
|
| >Nodule provinces are not typically found in low-oxygen
| areas, she said. "However, there could be microenvironments
| where oxygen is depleted and dark oxygen production enables
| certain microbes, protozoa, or fauna."
|
| If it is being produced down there, something is using it.
| Everything is part of a cycle and works in concert with all
| the other parts keep the wheels turning. If we remove
| enough parts the cycle ends.
|
| I think we need to understand the role these nodules play
| in their environments before commercial interests start
| crowing the familiar "national security interests" argument
| to allow them to bypass any scrutiny.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| An interesting side question, but not relevant to the
| argument.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Couldn't we re-seed these areas with artificial nodules? Could
| we seed areas w/o previous nodules to create new areas for
| undersea life? Is there a project doing this yet?
| 14 wrote:
| Sounds like we need to find a way to recreate these metal rocks
| in a lab and start seeding parts of the ocean with them.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Give it 10 years and the companies involved will have pushed so
| much disinformation suddenly it will be "drill baby drill"...
|
| We all knows how it goes, it won't stop until the planet is
| destroyed.
| bell-cot wrote:
| I'm smelling a random junk-science "result", which happens to
| push a lot of people's buttons:
|
| > The research that gave rise to the dark oxygen discovery was
| partly funded by a Canadian deep-sea mining business, The Metals
| Company, that wanted to assess the ecological impact of such
| exploration.
|
| > It has sharply criticized the study by marine ecologist Andrew
| Sweetman and his team as plagued by "methodological flaws".
|
| > Michael Clarke, environmental manager at The Metals Company,
| told AFP that the findings "are more logically attributable to
| poor scientific technique and shoddy science than a never before
| observed phenomenon."
|
| EDIT: That is followed by other biting criticisms. The strongest
| one amounts to: The nodules have been sitting there for millions
| of years. Any sort of electrochemical process that was _actually_
| making oxygen in them would have run out of energy long, long
| ago.
| jofer wrote:
| I'm a marine geophysicist by background, just to give some
| context on why I'm starting this by griping about journals.
| Before I start trashing Nature Geoscience, I'd like to point out
| that this is an open access article and I give the broader Nature
| organization a lot of credit for their recent moves in that
| direction.
|
| See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8 for the
| paper. It's quite short, and very much a geochemistry and/or
| geomicrobiology paper, so I am not the best person to really
| comment on it.
|
| Now for a bit of ragging on the journal... The fact that this is
| in Nature Geoscience says a lot. I have an abysmally low opinion
| of that journal after seeing the first crop of papers published
| in it (it's fairly new). Lots of things that just didn't pass
| basic sanity checks of "is this physically plausible?". Hopefully
| it's improved... So far it's been "here's all the wacky crap that
| got rejected from Nature and couldn't be published in a reputable
| domain-specific journal".
|
| Right now I treat it as a journal that has no clue how to pick
| peer reviewers. Therefore, stuff gets published that really
| shouldn't make it through peer review. While this _probably_
| isn't one of those papers, I have trouble trusting Nature
| Geoscience to have picked relevant reviewers.
|
| Despite having worked a lot on related topics, I don't know
| enough about deep marine ecosystems to really peel things back.
| With that said, we know there are plenty of different
| microorganisms that can produce oxygen in these circumstances. It
| seems odd to me to dismiss biological production immediately.
| Even if these samples were fully "poisoned" and that really did
| kill all microbes, why would electrolysis be the dominant source
| of oxygen for the entire ecosystem? Microbes are a lot easier to
| explain... But I am likely missing something critical there.
|
| That's a key part of why I I'm focusing on the journal it's in.
| Based on previous publications, I have trouble trusting Nature
| Geoscience to have picked good peer reviewers on this. If it
| holds up, it should have been in Nature. I suspect it was
| rejected from Nature for some fairly fundamental reasons and then
| got through much lighter reivew in Nature Geoscience...
|
| But I hope I'm wrong!
|
| There are a lot of zany ideas that are unlikely but also aren't
| impossible. Those are pretty common and quite fun. Occasionally,
| they're correct. Much more frequently, they're not. But they make
| for a lot of interesting discussion and are incredibly important
| science. I hope this fits into that category.
|
| I'm sorely tempted to ask a friend of mine who works on these
| exact types of microbes what she thinks of this... It'll make for
| an interesting discussion at least!
| jofer wrote:
| And with that said, while I'm relatively pro deep sea mining,
| we simply don't know enough about deep marine ecosystems to
| balance risks. Every societal action has environmental impacts.
| You can't avoid them, and your existence in a technological
| society comes with a ton of deliberate environmental harm.
| What's important is to properly balance society's needs with
| the fundamental harm that our society's existence causes. Deep
| sea mining _could_ be a good way of doing that.
|
| But we can't balance impact when we have so little information
| about the ecosystems at risk here. We just don't know enough.
|
| Marine science as a whole is very expensive, but desperately
| needs continued funding and is critical for a variety of
| reasons. It's often said, but we really do know more about the
| surface of Mars than we know about the surface of our own
| planet. We have to keep funding ocean science for a huge
| variety of reasons.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Polymetallic nodules obviously will have electric potentials that
| could maybe electrolyze water slowly, but... whence the energy?
| Do the metals in the polymetallic nodules mix better -thus
| reducing the electric potential- as they electrolyze water? Do
| they oxidize? If they oxidize, how much of the oxygen they
| produce goes to oxidizing them, and how much is made available to
| the local biome?
|
| (When you extract energy from a magnet it loses its
| magnetization. I imagine something similar must happen here.)
|
| How long does it take for these nodules to form, and how long
| does it take for any process to render them no longer able to
| electrolyze water?
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I know nothing about the topic, but this comes to mind: the
| mechanical energy of moving water. When I rub a comb through my
| hair in low humidity conditions, I can generate sparks. It
| doesn't seem implausible that water flowing past some alloy
| might cause some small fraction of H2O rubbing against it to
| split via some electrical or chemical process.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| From TFA: This cast doubt on the long-established
| view that life was made possible when organisms started
| producing oxygen via photosynthesis, which requires
| sunlight, about 2.7 billion years ago. "Deep-sea
| discovery calls into question the origins of life," the
| Scottish Association for Marine Science said in a press
| release to accompany the publication of the research.
|
| What the heck?! It's like "science" journalists aren't even
| trying anymore. If you don't understand the topic well enough to
| spot nonsense like this, you shouldn't be covering science.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-20 23:01 UTC)