Deep-Ocean Minerals Generate Oxygen at 13,000 Feet Below Surface

Space Daily ^ | Jul 23, 2024 | Clarence Oxford

[Salman]

An international team of researchers, including a chemist from Northwestern University, has discovered that metallic minerals on the deep-ocean floor can produce oxygen at depths of 13,000 feet.

This finding challenges the traditional belief that only photosynthetic organisms, such as plants and algae, generate Earth's oxygen. The discovery suggests oxygen can also be produced at the seafloor, supporting aerobic sea life in complete darkness.

The study will be published on Monday, July 22, in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) discovered this "dark oxygen" during ship-based fieldwork in the Pacific Ocean. Franz Geiger from Northwestern University led the electrochemistry experiments that potentially explain this phenomenon.

"For aerobic life to begin on the planet, there had to be oxygen, and our understanding has been that Earth's oxygen supply began with photosynthetic organisms," said Sweetman, head of the Seafloor Ecology and Biogeochemistry research group at SAMS. "But we now know that there is oxygen produced in the deep sea, where there is no light. I think we, therefore, need to revisit questions like: Where could aerobic life have begun?"

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[SunkenCiv]

Wow, someone got rid of some old stuff. Anyway, here’s one from off-site:

Israeli research identifies an algal strain that can help make green hydrogen on an industrial scale
https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/mutant-algae-strain-green-hydrogen/

Gorte was once working on a fuel cell fueled with gasoline. There used to be references to his work around here, I couldn’t find any. That’s probably due to those being somewhere lower in the thread, anything past page one doesn’t typically show up in search engine results.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sYw7ApEAAAAJ&hl=en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Gorte#Fuel_cells

https://search.brave.com/search?q=ray%20gorte%20fuel%20cell&spellcheck=0

[TexasGator]

“Sorry, my bad. I thought photocatylitic water splitting occured naturally. “

In your post you referred to “Sunlight alone”. That is not photocatalytic water splitting.

Actually, the addition of a catalyze only speeds up a reaction. Sunlight can breakdown water but it is an extremely slow reaction.