'Dark oxygen': a deep-sea discovery that has split scientists

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

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.

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?

> 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.

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."

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.

The paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8

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!

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 :)

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.

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.

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.