Dark Oxygen:
Scientists who recently discovered that metal lumps on the dark seabed make oxygen, have announced plans to study the deepest parts of Earth’s oceans in order to understand the strange phenomenon.
- Dark Oxygen is the oxygen that is being produced thousands of feet below the ocean, without any light or photosynthesis.
- Until now, it was thought that oxygen was created only through photosynthesis, a process that requires sunlight.
- Oceanic plankton, drifting plants, algae, and some bacteria are the primary elements attributed to the production of oxygen in the ocean.
- All these organisms are capable of photosynthesis.
- However, in this case, oxygen is not being produced by plants. It comes out of polymetallic nodules that are similar in resemblance to lumps of coal.
- These nodules, made up of metals like manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, and lithium, can generate oxygen through electrochemical activity even in the absence of light.
- They split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.
