• Zachariah@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    About half the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean. But, before this discovery, it was understood that it was made by marine plants photosynthesising - something that requires sunlight.

    Here, at depths of 5km, where no sunlight can penetrate, the oxygen appears to be produced by naturally occurring metallic “nodules” which split seawater - H2O - into hydrogen and oxygen.

    Several mining companies have plans to collect these nodules, which marine scientists fear could disrupt the newly discovered process - and damage any marine life that depends on the oxygen they make.

    • acockworkorange
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      3 months ago

      I can almost bet that the nodules are the substrate for a bacterium that thrives and facilitates that chemosynthesis.