Timothy Birdnow

The ocean depths are an alien world, no question. I don't see how this is possible. I assume some form of chemosynthesis is involved. But chemosynthesis usually releases sulphur, not oxygen.

The more we learn the more we realize how little we know.

This from Fascinating. Again, science is never settled.

Scientists discover that in certain places in the ocean Oxygen levels rise instead of falling as they go deeper. And it is produced by material or nodules found on the ocean floor.

"Now researchers have discovered that these valuable nodules do something remarkable: they produce oxygen and do so without sunlight. "This is a totally new and unexpected finding,” says Lisa Levin, an emeritus professor of biological oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who was not involved in the research. The oxygen gas on planet Earth is typically understood to come from living organisms that convert sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and sugar. The idea that some of the gas may come from these inanimate minerals and be produced in total darkness "really strongly goes against what we traditionally think of as where oxygen is made and how it's made,” says Jeffrey Marlow, a microbiologist at Boston University and a co-author of the study, which was published on Monday in Nature Geoscience."

Bizarre Mineral Clumps Make ‘Dark Oxygen’ on Deep Seafloor
scientificamerican.com

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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