Mysterious ‘Dark Oxygen’ Discovered at Bottom of Ocean Stuns Scientists
Chugging quietly away in the dark depths of Earth’s ocean floors, a spontaneous chemical reaction is unobtrusively creating oxygen, all without the involvement of life.
This unexpected discovery upends the long-standing consensus that it takes photosynthesizing organisms to produce the oxygen we need to breathe.
Stunned scientists.
A lot of that these days.
Indeed … and they remain stunned (since 2008). So far no one has explained how Saturn’s moon Titan has acquired more hydrocarbons than earth … said hydrocarbons were only supposed to be created by decayed vegetation according to conventional wisdom.
Titan Has More Oil Than Earth
By Space.com Staff published February 13, 2008
https://www.space.com/4968-titan-oil-earth.html
There is a big, big difference between methane and octane.
There is methane and ethane all over the place. Long chain hydrocarbons, like the ones we use for gasoline and diesel, not so much.
Articles like that are click-bait sensationalist nonsense.
Titles like that work well on the simple minded.
That might be because you have a limited understanding of the significance of abiotic hydrocarbons and how they become biotic hydrocarbons.
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-rewriting-textbook-fossil-fuels-technologies.html
That may be because you as well cannot understand the salient differences between long chain and hydrocarbons vs methane and ethane.
Aren’t most of them stunned? Like those that keep coming up with solutions for global warming etc.
It won’t take long for some other more dedicated scientist to come up with a reason to cover those ports or holes in the ocean floor to stop the O2 pollution.
And don’t forget that whatever the finding, it will still be man’s use of biofuels.
It’s all our fault.
True science is dead, like the rest it has been politicized for the most part…this will somehow be connected to the climate hoax.
Politics aside, this is some cool and exciting stuff.
Somewhere, a Liberal is reading this and wondering how they can tax this.
…and subsequently regulate and subsidize!
Impossible. All THE SCIENCE is settled. Just ask Fauci.
Sensationalist clapatrap for the feeble-minded.
You could have linked to the actual paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8
…but you chose to link to some BS MSM article.
Why is that?
Settle down.
Big fan of MSM BS, I see.
Either that or a white knight.
Neither is a good look.
>This unexpected discovery upends the long-standing consensus that it takes photosynthesizing organisms to produce the oxygen we need to breathe.
This isn’t true though.
1. Oxygen isn’t being ‘created’ – its being liberated from the chemical compound it was bound into.
2. *Most* of the free oxygen in the atmosphere is because of life liberating oxygen (which is very reactive) from the compounds it is bound faster than it binds. With no chlorophyll life there would be vastly less oxygen in the atmosphere – but not *none*. Left to its own devices oxygen will react with other materials and . . . oxidize them. But most any high-energy (such as heat) event will liberate it again – until it then reacts with something else.
There would be very little if not indetectable amounts. Oxygen is highly reactive and reacts to just about everything.
In astronomy finding free oxygen on a planet is a proxy for finding life.
I read that in 2020 scientists thought they had developed a new method for detecting oxygen on other planets. Nothing since that I can find. If you have a link I would be grateful.
Giving “the Amazon rain forest are the lungs of the planet” meme a good swift kick in the nuts.
The Earth’s biggest oxygen producer is the ocean…always has and always will.
Roughly half of the oxygen produced on Earth is from the ocean. Most of that is consumed by marine life.
And the other 50%?
The ocean doesn’t produce oxygen as much as liberates it. Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe. Humans are formed mostly of oxygen, not carbon. When we die we give that oxygen back.
Algae in the ocean produces oxygen, a lot of it.
Obviously, if roughly 50% is produced in the ocean, the rest is pretty much produced on land, by plants.
That depends on those carbon budget calculations that have been heavily politicized. Plants can only net produce oxygen if they don’t decay. Since almost all plant material eventually burns or rots, they net produce almost no oxygen.
There goes the Amazon meme.
Non-marine life.
I think writers that use the words “stunned” and “in shock” should be stunned and undergo actual shock so they can get an idea of how over the top their articles are. You can die of shock.
Yup. Click-bait sensationalist nonsense for the feeble-minded.
And China will be mining those metal nodules in 5 years.
Similar to the long-standing lie about hydrocarbon fuels being “fossil fuels”.
I guess there were a lot of dinosaurs on Jupiter’s moon Titan. What else could explain the massive methane seas there?
…amd yet another who doesn’t understand the difference between methane and long-chain hydrocarbons.
For God’s sake, don’t let the Black Lives Matter people hear about “long-chain hydrocarbons”, they’ve got enough grievances as it as.
buffalo farts.
I’ll take this with a grain of salt. The latest enviro project has been trying to lower the “greenhouse” gases produced by structured agriculture (corn fields and the like). Poof…oh look, we don’t require photosynthesis to create oxygen. These fields of food are a detriment to our society.
Eat your bugs, peons.
learning how billions of barrels of bunker C wind up a mile and a half under the ocean in huge completely sealed volumes, under usual expected levels that drive it back up the hole gulp gulp gulp, of pressure for however million yeras . . . . .
induced me to toss the notion its from rotted dinosaur tissue.
they refused for instance to explain the biology of decomposition.
l noew believe it was merely an intro to the kiddies to the process of swallowing everything without question.
l now belive, and cite the atmosphere of Neptune with its methane, that ‘fossil fule’ is in fact a misnomer.
swamp gas just doesnt cut it. it has to be mostly geological, and ramifications therefore a possibility there is far more deeper down than we have up to now used.
tip of the hat to Steve yes l just noticed your post.
l posed the Neptune methane question as earl as around 1982 i was in my 2nd place, a neighbor was a letter carrier.
Another who doesn’t understand the difference between methane and long-chain hydrocarbons.
Man, this thread is really bringin’ out the flat-earther types.
aint me that has to.
its the ones claiming methane comes from swamp gas.
and it does. just not all of it in fact l would guess because it cant accumululate only a teensie amount in various pockets.
all the rest geological. anybody do any sort of radioactive dating on methane?
anything of that nature?
fossil fuel or fossil fool?
take your long/short chain arguement to my grade school teachers.
methane ain’t oil.
Well it didn’t come from above.. That means it came below?.. A little hollow earth fart?.. LOLs.. Or maybe sea creature fart.. A chemical reaction we are unaware of.. This is a big deal..
Its just electrolyzing water. You can do it in your kitchen with a battery.
You can do sea creature farts in your kitchen with a battery, too. At least, that’s how I accounted for it at the time.
Somewhat depressing to see so many fools who think that because methane is a hydrocarbon, there must be oil on Neptune or Jupiter.
Methane is natural gas. Its a very simple molecule. You can find it all over the universe. It has one carbon atom.
Diesel, for example has chains of 9-25 carbon atoms. These long-chain hydrocarbons do not form naturally.
All these people who failed basic organic chemistry. SMH.
Wait, wait… is this another “Be afraid. Be very afraid” moment?
Is this just going to lead to another multi-trillion theft of taxpayer dollars?
metallic nodules on the sea bottom were big news when I was an undergraduate, lo these fifty years ago. Not going to stand on my head and spit nickels out my bung over news this old. Get back to me when something new actually happens.
in one case the sea bottom nodules was a cia cover story whereby Howard Hughes built a ship custom design ‘Glomar’ something to raise a sunne soviet nuke sub. l saw the pbs documentary. one of the misslies slid out the launch tube as they grappled it.
l was still finding out just how much media is bs let alone suspect.
I remember seing this as a kid in science magazines, the nodules were going to be mined by special ships etc.
It turned out to be a CIA cover story to snag that Soviet sub. They did grab a hold of it but it broke in half and sank if memory serves.