Last year a controversial discovery was made in the deepest darkest depths of the Pacific Ocean, which challenges the scientific consensus of how Oxygen is produced and even calls into question the origin of life on Earth itself.
The Scottish Association for Marine Science Press Release on this alleged discovery reads in part as follows.
Photosynthetic organisms like plants and algae use energy from sunlight to create the planet’s oxygen but new evidence, published [22 July 2024] in Nature Geoscience, has shown how oxygen is also produced in complete darkness at the seafloor 4,000 metres below the ocean surface, where no light can penetrate.
A team led by Prof. Andrew Sweetman of the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) in Oban, a partner of UHI, made the ‘dark oxygen’ discovery while on ship-based fieldwork in the Pacific Ocean.
Prof. Sweetman said: “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. 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?”
The discovery was made while sampling the seabed of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone to assess the possible impacts of deep-sea mining. This process would extract polymetallic nodules that contain metals such as manganese, nickel and cobalt, which are required to produce lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones.
In the experiments, Prof Sweetman and colleagues found nodules to be carrying a very high electric charge, which could lead to the splitting of seawater into hydrogen and oxygen in a process called seawater electrolysis. Only a voltage of 1.5 V is needed for seawater electrolysis to occur – the same voltage as a typical AA battery. The team analysed multiple nodules and recorded readings of up to 0.95 volts on the surfaces of some, meaning that significant voltages can occur when the nodules are clustered together.
The claim is that Oxygen is produced by electrolysis of sea water in these polymetallic nodules at great depths (pictured above). In the published abstract the researchers’ wrote:
Given high voltage potentials (up to 0.95 V) on nodule surfaces, we hypothesize that seawater electrolysis may contribute to this dark oxygen production.
Would this be a good discovery for the evolutionary origin of life crowd who believe life began anaerobically on a primitive Earth 4.2 billion years ago, if you believe in the latest claim of the “Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)”?
Allegedly the biggest boost to evolution of life came when organisms started producing Oxygen via photosynthesis, which requires sunlight. That was allegedly about 2.7 billion years ago. The whole question of how did light-absorbing cells, splitting water molecules and the Calvin Cycle evolved is another issue.
Since its publication all has not been quiet on the sea floor for Sweetman’s findings. Heavy debate is now in progress. The evolutionists are out to show Sweetman wrong.
Sweetman’s findings proved explosive, with many in the scientific community expressing reservations or rejecting the conclusions.
Since July, five academic research papers refuting Sweetman’s findings have been submitted for review and publication.
“He did not present clear proof for his observations and hypothesis,” said Matthias Haeckel, a biogeochemist at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany.
“Many questions remain after the publication. So, now the scientific community needs to conduct similar experiments etc, and either prove or disprove it.”
Olivier Rouxel, a geochemistry researcher at Ifremer, the French national institute for ocean science and technology, told AFP there was “absolutely no consensus on these results”.
“Deep-sea sampling is always a challenge,” he said, adding it was possible that the oxygen detected was “trapped air bubbles” in the measuring instruments.
He was also sceptical about deep-sea nodules, some tens of millions of years old, still producing enough electrical current when “batteries run out quickly”.
“How is it possible to maintain the capacity to generate electrical current in a nodule that is itself extremely slow to form?” he asked.
ScienceAlert (emphases added)
It is still an open question whether these polymetallic nodules produce Oxygen via electrolysis. What is interesting is that if it proves to be true, the old Earth geologists/evolutionists have another problem. Have they realised this and hence the “explosive” response?
How could these “batteries”, the deep-sea nodules, last so long generating a current, as long as tens of millions of years, without the power source running out? The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics tells us that there is “no free lunch”!
However if the Earth is less than 8,000 years old, as described in the Genesis account, then that objection disappears.
The origin of aerobic life is not at question either. It never depended on a source of oxygenation on the seafloor, because all ocean life was created on the fifth day of creation of the Earth, when there was plenty of water.
It is true that water molecules contain Oxygen however when God created the first life on Earth, the plant life, on the third day, He concomitantly created an atmosphere with plenty of Oxygen. He did not need to use electrolysis of ocean water to make it.
On the third day of creation there was no sunlight. The Sun was created on the fourth day. That means on the third day you already had plenty of “Dark Oxygen”.
Here is a claim by evolutionists of “Dark Oxygen” created without sunlight. But God already accomplished this on the third day of His creation. The old Earth geologists and evolutionists are now promoting essentially what they once condemned in the biblical creation account, Oxygen without sunlight, that is, produced without photosynthesis.
Ironic eh?
If this discovery proves to be true, then it is the biblical creationists who have no objection. It would mean another created design feature, one that produces Oxygen for marine life. It is consistent with the biblical history of the planet of less than 8,000 years.
Could all the controversy be then because of the tens-of-millions-of-year-assumed age of these nodules? They just couldn’t be producing Oxygen after so long! Tens of millions or billions of years? Their “batteries” would have run down already!
Another dynamo mechanism would need to be postulated to keep them charged up for tens of millions of years or more.
If, in fact, these polymetallic nodules are now continuing to produce a charge, electrolyzing sea water, that is consistent with a young Earth timescale.
Is that the reason for all the controversy?
Related Reading
- The Essential Role of Carbon in Life’s Chemistry
- The Physics of Creation | Day 3
- The Physics of Creation | Day 5
- Decarbonise the Planet, Are They Mad?
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