What is DARK OXYGEN to rewrite the history of life!?

It is estimated that trees and dense forests produce about 28% of the world's oxygen. Do you see little? I know there are several reasons for this.

First, the plant only produces oxygen during the day when it photosynthesizes with sunlight. At night, the plant sucks up oxygen in the air again to breathe. That is the reason that it is recommended not to place plants in the bedroom. Other small amounts of oxygen are sucked in by animals that live in the forest. When trees grow old and die, they decay, microorganisms consume oxygen to break down branches, leaves, and roots into humus. When lightning strikes and causes forest fires, oxygen is consumed at a rate thousands of times that rate. It is estimated that lightning strikes cause about 10% of wildfires globally.

Thus, it can be seen that during the life cycle of a tree, most of the oxygen it produces is consumed cleanly. It leads to the fact that the amount of oxygen that the forest produces, does not use, contributes to the atmosphere in the course of a human or tree lifetime is negligible. I know it's a little hard to believe because you might think that 100% of the oxygen on planet earth comes from trees and it's not easy to change your old preconceptions with just a few words. But I have an example that I bet will make many people nod.

During the early period of the geological period known as the Carboniferous Age, 350 million years ago, plants began to become popular. Large forests grow on land and huge swamps flood low-lying areas. At that time, oxygen also made up 20% of the atmosphere, almost the same as today's levels. But it increased to 35 percent in just the next 50 million years. It shows how powerful vast forests and swamps can become oxygen pumps.

But why were trees in the Carboniferous period an oxygen pump, while today's trees only leak oxygen? The answer is that Coal Age trees do not decompose. 90% of the coal we burn today comes from the Coal Age. That's why the period between 359 and 299 million years ago is called the Carboniferous Age. The process of coal production usually begins with wood being buried at the bottom of swamps, isolated from oxygen. After millions of years, the temperature and pressure of thousands of layers of mud on top would transform the wood into what we now call coal.

Another important reason why billions of cubic meters of wood did not decompose during this period may be that bacteria and fungi capable of decomposing wood have not yet appeared. During about 50 million years of the Carboniferous Age, most of the dead trees were buried to make charcoal. The vast amount of oxygen that millions of square kilometers of forests and swamps produced in 50 million years is not used to decompose dead tree carcasses. That is why the concentration of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere skyrocketed during this era.

Back in modern times, didn't it say that trees produce only 28% of atmospheric oxygen? So where does the rest come from? Falling from the sky? Not! Fly up under the sea. The ocean covers more than 70% of the earth's surface and coincidentally, more than 70% of the oxygen in the air comes from the sea. Among the types of marine life that provide the most oxygen, phytoplankton must be mentioned. Most phytoplankton are too small for you to see with the naked eye, but when they clump together, they produce large green patches that are visible from outer space.

In terms of production, phytoplankton produces about 50% of the world's oxygen, equal to all trees and forests. But when they die, part of it will sink and be buried at the bottom of the oceans, where it is very difficult to decompose. If they don't decompose, they don't consume oxygen. This means that the amount of oxygen these organisms produce throughout their lives will not be used up and will contribute to atmospheric oxygen. If the burial of plant carcasses at the bottom of a swamp produces coal, the burial of plankton carcasses on the seabed produces oil. That explains why phytoplankton, which accounts for only half of the global photosynthetic capacity, contributes up to 72% of the oxygen in each breath you take.

Cyanobacteria are one of the first photosynthetic life forms of the earth, appearing about 3.4 billion years ago. They have been diligently pumping oxygen into the air for billions of years, enabling the first oxygen-breathing life to evolve. Or at least that's what scientists have believed for decades and that belief is about to change.

On July 22, a shocking study published in the journal Nature Geoscience claimed that scientists had discovered dark oxygen. What people call dark oxygen is no different from the oxygen that your body is using right now in terms of molecular formula or chemical properties. Nor is it cruel or conspiratorial to threaten human peace. It is called dark oxygen because oxygen, whether produced by trees on shore or plankton in the sea, is a byproduct of photosynthesis. What is called photosynthesis is because it needs sunlight. Meanwhile, dark oxygen is found at a depth of about 4,000 meters in the dense black darkness of the ocean.

Normally, most of the sunlight only penetrates the sea at a maximum depth of about 200 meters, enough for seaweed species at this depth to photosynthesize. Under ideal conditions, sunlight can penetrate up to 1000m of water. Below 1000m, everything that glows you see is not sunlight. There is no light, no photosynthesis. Without photosynthesis, the oxygen concentration gradually decreases, which is the principle. However, in a study published on July 22, a team of researchers led by Andrew Sweetman of the Scottish Society for Marine Science found oxygen emitted from mineral deposits at a depth of about 4 kilometers under the seabed.

In two days, the oxygen concentration at the test site increased to three times the baseline, that is, compared to the surrounding seafloor. This discovery permanently changed human understanding of the earth's oxygen supply and how the first oxygen-breathing life forms. In order for aerobic life to begin, oxygen is needed and our understanding is that oxygen originates from photosynthetic organisms, such as cyanobacteria as just mentioned above. But the discovery of dark oxygen has opened up a whole new possibility. A billion years after the bacteria diligently hit the pump, atmospheric oxygen levels reached 10% of modern levels, causing the Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago, poisoning and killing most ancient anaerobic microorganisms. But it also opens up opportunities for oxygen-breathing bacteria to evolve and set the stage for the multicellular life that created us today.

But if oxygen could be produced naturally on the deep seabed without light, oxygen-breathing organisms may have existed earlier than we thought, possibly even before photosynthesis appeared more than 3.4 billion years ago. More importantly, if dark oxygen is produced on our planet, does it happen on other planets? This discovery has indeed brought a whole new look at the origin of life not only on earth but in the entire universe.

What the above is called mineral deposits are actually coal-like mineral deposits called polymetallic nodules. Over millions of years, chemical processes have caused the metal to precipitate from the water and wrap around pieces of snail shells, shells, squid teeth, and shark teeth on the seafloor, creating nodules or nodules with an average diameter of 3 to 10 centimeters, that is, the size of a chicken egg or a potato. Such nodules are very common, often forming mineral deposits that cover large areas of the seabed.

The global nucleation output is estimated at 500 billion tons. They contain mainly iron and manganese, but can also contain cobalt, nickel, copper, and lithium — important and high-value metals used in the production of solar cells, electric vehicle batteries, and many other green technologies. It is estimated that the polymetallic nodule fields in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean alone are enough to meet global energy demand for decades to come. Therefore, several large-scale mining companies are aiming to salvage these precious elements from the seabed at depths of 3,000 to 6,000 meters. It is in studies of the impact of the exploitation of this mineral on the life of deep-sea organisms that dark oxygen has been found.

Specifically, in a 2013 field study at a site located in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Sweetman and his colleagues dropped a lab to enclose a small area of the seabed and a certain amount of water above it. What he expects is that the oxygen concentration in the isolated test box will gradually decrease over time, because logically, at the bottom of the deep sea, oxygen can only be consumed by organisms, not produced. The strange thing is that the result is the opposite. Initially, the team thought that their oxygen sensors were faulty because no known process could produce oxygen at that depth. But for the next 8-9 years, after many sensor calibrations, Sweetman still obtained results contrary to logic. He only really believed in it when an experiment with a completely different method was carried out in 2021 that produced the same results.

He and his colleagues decided to reconstruct what happened on the seafloor in the lab and the result was a July 22 paper. It seems that the multimetallic nodules are what are producing the oxygen that sounds dangerous. When you immerse a 1.5 V current (equivalent to a 2A battery) in seawater, it splits the H₂O water into hydrogen and oxygen. This is called electrolysis, i.e., the breakdown of water by electric current. Amazingly, the team recorded a voltage of up to 0.95 V on the surface of the single nodes. It's smaller than what is needed to electrolyze seawater, but Sweetman's team hypothesizes that when multiple nodes clump together, the voltage increases like batteries connected in series.

It seems that while looking for raw materials to produce batteries, scientists have found an environmentally friendly battery. So far, these geological batteries are the most plausible explanation for the formation of dark oxygen on the seafloor. However, it is also important to note strongly that the team's results are only hypothetical. It needs to be verified by independent experiments by other research groups before you can take it as a fact.

In the immediate future, the discovery of dark oxygen in a place where there is no light at the bottom of the ocean opens a door for us to reconsider how life began on earth. It also sends a warning signal that the mining of the ocean floor can deplete the natural oxygen supply of its inhabitants, including your Aquaman.

In fact, since the late 1970s, humans have been trying to extract hundreds of tons of manganese from an abyssal plain in the Eastern Pacific Ocean at a depth of about 5.5 kilometers using a method described as almost like harvesting potatoes on land. The mining vessels move in long and narrow strips, picking up tubercles like potatoes in a field. However, in 2016 and 2017, scientists who revisited the mining sites in the 1980s realized that they had become dead zones, where even bacteria could not be found. It suggests that sea potatoes are essential for life where there is no light on the ocean floor and that we need to be very careful when harvesting them.

What are your thoughts on finding dark oxygen? Please leave your opinion. As always, like videos to support Facts, subscribe to the channel, and ring the bell to stay up to date with the hottest scientific news. For now, hello and see you soon.