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'Dark oxygen': a deep-sea discovery that has split scientists

142 points by pseudolus 2y ago

bpx51 2y ago
While I can't vouch for this study's accuracy, deep-sea mining companies will find a way to discredit any research that opposes their interests. Marine ecosystems are already under significant stress, and these mining operations will certainly accelerate the damage that's already happening.
- j16sdiz 2y ago
  According to the article, this new discovery(?) actually go _against_ their interest. Either that, or lots of missing links and details...
  - robaato 2y ago
    Indeed which is why they are discrediting it ;)
  - rswail 2y ago
    The company that funded the study are disavowing/discrediting the results.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    There isn’t a smoking gun that some specific dire consequence will happen from deep sea mining but it fits with Greenpeace’s argument that we have little understanding of the deep ocean and there could be consequences.
    - rowanG077 2y ago
      Sure there could be consequences. That literally applies to basically everything. So I don't buy that argument. You really need to quantify in some sense what the consequences could be and how likely they are.
      - bognition 2y ago
        I'll bite... We've learned a ton in the last few decades about how interconnected and complicated ecosystems can be. Likewise we've learned that the deep ocean isn't disconnected from the surface. The two send resources, energy, and bio mass to each other. Additionally, we are extremely reliant on the ocean in so many ways and ecological collapse of the ocean would be catastrophic for our planet. So while yes we don't have a smoking gun that says "deep sea mining is going to destroy the planet" we are being pretty cavalier playing with things we do not understand.
        rowanG077 2y ago
        Oke, how do you suppose we do anything then? Humanity doesn't understand the majority of processes we are involved in. If you are arguing for understanding prior to engaging in an activity them we might as well stop modern society.
        bognition 2y ago
        There’s a huge difference between doing nothing and proceeding with caution. In circumstances where the risk of failure is low, we can afford to take big risks. However, when the risks are huge, there is a merit to proceeding with caution. There’s tons of prior art here when it comes to exploring new building materials, new pharmaceuticals, etc…
        rowanG077 2y ago
        I agree we should always proceed with caution and that is exactly what I see happening here. Research is ongoing to determine possible effects. Instead of throwing up our hands and disallowing it.
        Borg3 2y ago
        Its very simple. REDUCE the FUCKING SCALE. Until you educate yourself about action and consequences of that action. Examples are very simple: Everyone bitch about CO2 problem. Oh noes, we produce it so much, planet cannot absorb it... BINGO. If you cannot recycle CO2 itself, leave it to the planet, it does it very well. Unfortunately, humans pushed they industrial operation to the extreme, planet is no longer able to absorb exceed CO2. Cycle is broken, we have a problem. The shalow thinking of people annoys me a lot. The main driver is greed, not wellbeing of humans (except tiny group of super rich of course).
  - intrasight 2y ago
    This article is garbage from the get-go. "long-established view that life was made possible ..." My understanding is that the consensus view is now that life began either in the deep sea or was transported here from another planet.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      My understanding is that tenuous hypotheses are a poor basis for a supposed "consensus". What we have with origin of life is a bunch of "maybe it worked this way" ideas, with no good way to test them.
      - intrasight 2y ago
        The scientific method is based around theories and building consensus. Not sure why you or anyone else would refer to it as "tenuous" unless you haven't been following the research.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        They're tenuous because there's very little reason for a skeptical person to believe any of it. It's conjecture piled on conjecture with a lot of handwaving. The fundamental problem of Origin of Life is unsolved.
- doodlebugging 2y ago
  This is true. Commercial interests have been waiting for the day when they could start mining the seafloors globally for these nodules. I was in college ~40 years ago and it was a topic of discussion back then. The technology to conduct the seafloor mining was not available though everyone knew that the day would come when it became feasible if industry required these minerals. Someone would work on solving the problems of access and recovery. The processing part was already done. No one wondered how it would disturb the seafloor since so little was known about the deep sea environment back then. The nodules were going to be the answer to mineral shortages that would naturally occur as you deplete all the economically recoverable deposits in your own country or as deposits in friendly countries become unavailable due to geopolitical changes. Countries that have little mineral wealth of their own but do have a coastline that gives them access to deep water could benefit by opening their offshore areas to seafloor mining. I think the discovery or the notion that oxygen could be produced in the deep sea by processes acting on or with these nodules is not unusual. Extremophile organisms able to live in anoxic conditions in total darkness on the seafloor should surprise no one. It also should surprise no one that some of the organisms may have evolved to produce oxygen as a by-product of their interaction with mineralized rocks. It's a big ole beautiful world out there and we don't understand a lot about it. It seems unlikely that in 4.5 billion years nothing has evolved to fill that niche. Personally I think it's bacteria all the way down.
  - adolph 2y ago
    > Commercial interests have been waiting for the day when they could start mining the seafloors globally for these nodules. For all the folks thinking about Project Azorian[0], I recently read "Blind Man's Bluff"[1] and recommend it for the larger context of oceanic subsurface reconnaissance. 0. https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/exhibit/project-azorian/ https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/exhibit/project-azorian/ 1. https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/dp/1610393589 https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/...
    - chrisweekly 2y ago
      Speaking of book recommendations, Pulitzer-winning author Richard Powers wrote a terrific (Booker-nominated) novel about the ocean, "Playground"[0]. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playground_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playground_(novel)
- rmah 2y ago
  This might be true if there were any actual deep-sea mining companies. By which I mean companies that actually do deep-sea mining and not just talk about doing it. Second, someone else asserted that the study was funded by one of these "deep sea mining" companies. So who the hell knows?
tiahura 2y ago
[flagged]
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  Unless the take was "china invented the virus" (which is trivially and googleably false) I don't see how anyone in the west would care given that the we engage in the same (edit: actually, much more reckless and misanthropic) behavior. Unless it's just racism, of course. But then again nobody has ever accused the west of avoiding hypocrisy. Just pity the terrified-but-patriotic simpletons who buy this shit, mock the evil assholes who start this shit credibility, and move on with your life without nightmares of a boogieman who will drink your blood because... just because, ok!??
  - hurutparittya 2y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by "invented", but as far as I know the Chinese lab leak theory is still widely accepted as credible and supported by many facts.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ForTheKidz 2y ago
      Ok but why would anyone care if they aren't calling for a shutdown of growth-of-function research? There's nothing essentially qualitatively different about China that make them more evil or less competent. Hence the comment about racism. Even if they did intend it as a weapon, they certainly could not have predicted how badly we would bungle the response. The complete lack of serious protest against growth-of-function research has led me to conclude this is almost pure racism/fearmongering/arrogance/special interests driving this narrative. This is just naked propaganda and there's zero substance to it. just "covid=china=bad".
  - tiahura 2y ago
    You don’t understand why people would be concerned about being lied to and gaslit about the origin of the pandemic? China’s negligence cost the world somewhere around 13 to 17 trillion dollars according to estimates by the World Bank and IMF.
flanked-evergl 2y ago
Not all risk that can't be quantified is unacceptable.
- deleted 2y ago
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- AngryData 2y ago
  But we already know strip mining is absolutely horrible on the surface of earth, especially when water is running through the mine tailings, and this would be strip mining while in the water which already makes it worse before we even get to other unknowns. I think the onus should be the people that want to mine to show that it isn't likely to cause problems before they start mining it.
aaron695 2y ago
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coriny 2y ago
> This cast doubt on the long-established view that life was made possible when organisms started producing oxygen via photosynthesis, which requires sunlight, about 2.7 billion years ago. So ... life began because it started producing oxygen via photosynthesis? I think they oopsed the word "multicellular" or "complex". A low-grade article and a long shot of a theory, but maybe not impossible.
- brabel 2y ago
  Yeah... it seems to me that this kind of circular reasoning has become widely acceptable by people lately, they seem to lack some basic understanding of logic or something. Sometimes, it works, like when there's a feedback loop and X causes Y which makes X stronger, causing more of Y... but in this case, they're saying "organisms (literally life) started producing oxygen, which originated life". I would agree with you they mean "originated complex life" but they repeat the claim later: "Deep-sea discovery calls into question the origins of life," the Scottish Association for Marine Science said...".
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    It’s thought that the most common habitable environment in the universe is in underground oceans which are generic in outer solar system and probably interstellar bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_oceanography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_oceanography It’s easy to believe you could get bacteria in that kind of place with an ecosystem like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent but without energy input from sunlight it is hard to believe you could get more complex organisms or ecosystems, but if you had some oxygen from chemistry that might make a difference.
    - knowitnone 2y ago
      "but without energy input from sunlight it is hard to believe you could get more complex organisms or ecosystems" Where did you pull this from? Why couldn't complex organisms form without sunlight?
    - 2y ago
datavirtue 2y ago
These nodules are so hot right now.
rswail 2y ago
The Metals Company should have taken the advice of Sir Humphrey Appelby in Yes Minister, "Minister, two basic rules of government: Never look into anything you don't have to. And never set up an enquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be."
- lukan 2y ago
  I hate it, that this is likely good advice.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Fiction: an exoplanet research company stumbles upon ruins of an ancient alien civilization, investigates it with profit and power in mind, then accidentally releases some ancient evil that plunges galaxy into war. Reality: an exoplanet development company stumbles upon ruins of an ancient alien civilization, and quickly paves it over before anyone else notices, because there's nothing worse for a real estate developer than having to wait for a green light from archaeologists.
  - elcritch 2y ago
    Plus a strip mall with Waffle Houses and 7-11’s would be the universes best defense anyways!
  - Kostchei 2y ago
    twist, 30 years later the aliens tunnel up from under the concrete
    - tecleandor 2y ago
      Building a mall on an alien burial ground site. What could possibly go wrong.
  - CobrastanJorji 2y ago
    Ah, you want to the Murderbot Diaries. It's got both of those two things in spades.
Planktonne 2y ago
This is the beginning of the plot in [The Trench](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trench_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trench_(novel)). It's unlikely that the rest of the plot will play out, but always interesting when the real world starts connecting with SF.
causal 2y ago
The worst part of any kind of dredging is that it's effectively done blind. There is no way to know if you're bulldozing a unique ecosystem, an undiscovered species, or a small deep-sea reef. A lot will remain forever undiscovered if we destroy large swaths of the sea bed for some short-term energy needs.
jmclnx 2y ago
If so could this be in our future ? It is from 45 years ago, still a good story https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1189676.The_Nitrogen_Fix https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1189676.The_Nitrogen_Fix Seems these days, we are heading straight into a disaster with no one in power trying to stop it. What is one more path to extinction :)
- flanked-evergl 2y ago
  No it can't. That book is science fiction and not even hard sci-fi.
acc_297 2y ago
The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8
TSiege 2y ago
This is a subject that will likely hinge on politics and commodity markets, but the science is very clear as is occam's razor 1. There is a lot of animal life in the deep ocean where these modules are present and absent where they are not 2. Those organisms depend on oxygen to function 3. Polymetallic nodules taken from the deep ocean have been shown in lab conditions to create enough of an electric charge to split H2O into H2 and O2 4. Areas where polymetallic nodules have been removed decades ago haven't recovered even on a microorganism level 5. These nodules individually take *millions* of years to form From these conclusions we can safely assume that removing them would decimate these ecosystems on a timescale that's longer than evolution of the genus Homo. Put another way it would be as if we cut down a forest knowing it would take millions of years for individual trees to regrow. It is a crime against the planet to remove these nodules
- whatshisface 2y ago
  These nodules aren't even that valuable. It's not like they're full of Platinum group metals...
  - kurthr 2y ago
    Privatize profits. Socialize costs. If you're in international waters, you can destroy whatever you want and even at low marginal return, if you can scale fast enough the total ROI can be good. The solution to pollution is dilution (of regulatory barriers)!
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      I've been following this for years and am somewhat ambivalent to either outcome. I feel the need to warn anyone reading that this is an overwrought reaction to an overwrought reaction to a, well, very opinionated take. There's a reason why there's 5 papers as refutations, and no one will even go on the record, even just for a news article that'll play well to general public grousing, to even devil's advocate for the original paper I'm glad institutions have and are taking their time with this, to the point we're being steadily brought along, publicly, as we investigate the possibilities and perhaps even discover new things along the way.
dev1ycan 2y ago
Give it 10 years and the companies involved will have pushed so much disinformation suddenly it will be "drill baby drill"... We all knows how it goes, it won't stop until the planet is destroyed.
bell-cot 2y ago
I'm smelling a random junk-science "result", which happens to push a lot of people's buttons: > The research that gave rise to the dark oxygen discovery was partly funded by a Canadian deep-sea mining business, The Metals Company, that wanted to assess the ecological impact of such exploration. > It has sharply criticized the study by marine ecologist Andrew Sweetman and his team as plagued by "methodological flaws". > Michael Clarke, environmental manager at The Metals Company, told AFP that the findings "are more logically attributable to poor scientific technique and shoddy science than a never before observed phenomenon." EDIT: That is followed by other biting criticisms. The strongest one amounts to: The nodules have been sitting there for millions of years. Any sort of electrochemical process that was actually making oxygen in them would have run out of energy long, long ago.
jofer 2y ago
I'm a marine geophysicist by background, just to give some context on why I'm starting this by griping about journals. Before I start trashing Nature Geoscience, I'd like to point out that this is an open access article and I give the broader Nature organization a lot of credit for their recent moves in that direction. See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8 for the paper. It's quite short, and very much a geochemistry and/or geomicrobiology paper, so I am not the best person to really comment on it. Now for a bit of ragging on the journal... The fact that this is in Nature Geoscience says a lot. I have an abysmally low opinion of that journal after seeing the first crop of papers published in it (it's fairly new). Lots of things that just didn't pass basic sanity checks of "is this physically plausible?". Hopefully it's improved... So far it's been "here's all the wacky crap that got rejected from Nature and couldn't be published in a reputable domain-specific journal". Right now I treat it as a journal that has no clue how to pick peer reviewers. Therefore, stuff gets published that really shouldn't make it through peer review. While this _probably_ isn't one of those papers, I have trouble trusting Nature Geoscience to have picked relevant reviewers. Despite having worked a lot on related topics, I don't know enough about deep marine ecosystems to really peel things back. With that said, we know there are plenty of different microorganisms that can produce oxygen in these circumstances. It seems odd to me to dismiss biological production immediately. Even if these samples were fully "poisoned" and that really did kill all microbes, why would electrolysis be the dominant source of oxygen for the entire ecosystem? Microbes are a lot easier to explain... But I am likely missing something critical there. That's a key part of why I I'm focusing on the journal it's in. Based on previous publications, I have trouble trusting Nature Geoscience to have picked good peer reviewers on this. If it holds up, it should have been in Nature. I suspect it was rejected from Nature for some fairly fundamental reasons and then got through much lighter reivew in Nature Geoscience... But I hope I'm wrong! There are a lot of zany ideas that are unlikely but also aren't impossible. Those are pretty common and quite fun. Occasionally, they're correct. Much more frequently, they're not. But they make for a lot of interesting discussion and are incredibly important science. I hope this fits into that category. I'm sorely tempted to ask a friend of mine who works on these exact types of microbes what she thinks of this... It'll make for an interesting discussion at least!
- 2y ago
renewiltord 2y ago
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- Pulcinella 2y ago
  Hard to determine comment accuracy. Industry will manufacture false claims in order to stop environmentalism because they believe in material wealth over all else.
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Also true. That is the information space we currently inhabit. Easy to forget the faked species called the snail darter, invented to be endangered to try to stop a dam being built.
cryptonector 2y ago
Polymetallic nodules obviously will have electric potentials that could maybe electrolyze water slowly, but... whence the energy? Do the metals in the polymetallic nodules mix better -thus reducing the electric potential- as they electrolyze water? Do they oxidize? If they oxidize, how much of the oxygen they produce goes to oxidizing them, and how much is made available to the local biome? (When you extract energy from a magnet it loses its magnetization. I imagine something similar must happen here.) How long does it take for these nodules to form, and how long does it take for any process to render them no longer able to electrolyze water?
- tasty_freeze 2y ago
  I know nothing about the topic, but this comes to mind: the mechanical energy of moving water. When I rub a comb through my hair in low humidity conditions, I can generate sparks. It doesn't seem implausible that water flowing past some alloy might cause some small fraction of H2O rubbing against it to split via some electrical or chemical process.
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    There's the magnetohydrodynamic effect, which can be used for propulsion[1], guess the reverse should generate electricity? edit: Hunch correct[2]. Off course requires magnetic field, and while naturally magnetized rocks exist AFAIK, not sure how strong they are. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator
MarkusQ 2y ago
From TFA: This cast doubt on the long-established view that life was made possible when organisms started producing oxygen via photosynthesis, which requires sunlight, about 2.7 billion years ago. "Deep-sea discovery calls into question the origins of life," the Scottish Association for Marine Science said in a press release to accompany the publication of the research. What the heck?! It's like "science" journalists aren't even trying anymore. If you don't understand the topic well enough to spot nonsense like this, you shouldn't be covering science.

142 points by pseudolus 2y ago

While I can't vouch for this study's accuracy, deep-sea mining companies will find a way to discredit any research that opposes their interests. Marine ecosystems are already under significant stress, and these mining operations will certainly accelerate the damage that's already happening.

j16sdiz 2y ago
According to the article, this new discovery(?) actually go _against_ their interest. Either that, or lots of missing links and details...
- robaato 2y ago
  Indeed which is why they are discrediting it ;)
- rswail 2y ago
  The company that funded the study are disavowing/discrediting the results.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  There isn’t a smoking gun that some specific dire consequence will happen from deep sea mining but it fits with Greenpeace’s argument that we have little understanding of the deep ocean and there could be consequences.
  - rowanG077 2y ago
    Sure there could be consequences. That literally applies to basically everything. So I don't buy that argument. You really need to quantify in some sense what the consequences could be and how likely they are.
    - bognition 2y ago
      I'll bite... We've learned a ton in the last few decades about how interconnected and complicated ecosystems can be. Likewise we've learned that the deep ocean isn't disconnected from the surface. The two send resources, energy, and bio mass to each other. Additionally, we are extremely reliant on the ocean in so many ways and ecological collapse of the ocean would be catastrophic for our planet. So while yes we don't have a smoking gun that says "deep sea mining is going to destroy the planet" we are being pretty cavalier playing with things we do not understand.
      - rowanG077 2y ago
        Oke, how do you suppose we do anything then? Humanity doesn't understand the majority of processes we are involved in. If you are arguing for understanding prior to engaging in an activity them we might as well stop modern society.
        bognition 2y ago
        There’s a huge difference between doing nothing and proceeding with caution. In circumstances where the risk of failure is low, we can afford to take big risks. However, when the risks are huge, there is a merit to proceeding with caution. There’s tons of prior art here when it comes to exploring new building materials, new pharmaceuticals, etc…
        rowanG077 2y ago
        I agree we should always proceed with caution and that is exactly what I see happening here. Research is ongoing to determine possible effects. Instead of throwing up our hands and disallowing it.
        Borg3 2y ago
        Its very simple. REDUCE the FUCKING SCALE. Until you educate yourself about action and consequences of that action. Examples are very simple: Everyone bitch about CO2 problem. Oh noes, we produce it so much, planet cannot absorb it... BINGO. If you cannot recycle CO2 itself, leave it to the planet, it does it very well. Unfortunately, humans pushed they industrial operation to the extreme, planet is no longer able to absorb exceed CO2. Cycle is broken, we have a problem. The shalow thinking of people annoys me a lot. The main driver is greed, not wellbeing of humans (except tiny group of super rich of course).
- intrasight 2y ago
  This article is garbage from the get-go. "long-established view that life was made possible ..." My understanding is that the consensus view is now that life began either in the deep sea or was transported here from another planet.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    My understanding is that tenuous hypotheses are a poor basis for a supposed "consensus". What we have with origin of life is a bunch of "maybe it worked this way" ideas, with no good way to test them.
    - intrasight 2y ago
      The scientific method is based around theories and building consensus. Not sure why you or anyone else would refer to it as "tenuous" unless you haven't been following the research.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        They're tenuous because there's very little reason for a skeptical person to believe any of it. It's conjecture piled on conjecture with a lot of handwaving. The fundamental problem of Origin of Life is unsolved.
doodlebugging 2y ago
This is true. Commercial interests have been waiting for the day when they could start mining the seafloors globally for these nodules. I was in college ~40 years ago and it was a topic of discussion back then. The technology to conduct the seafloor mining was not available though everyone knew that the day would come when it became feasible if industry required these minerals. Someone would work on solving the problems of access and recovery. The processing part was already done. No one wondered how it would disturb the seafloor since so little was known about the deep sea environment back then. The nodules were going to be the answer to mineral shortages that would naturally occur as you deplete all the economically recoverable deposits in your own country or as deposits in friendly countries become unavailable due to geopolitical changes. Countries that have little mineral wealth of their own but do have a coastline that gives them access to deep water could benefit by opening their offshore areas to seafloor mining. I think the discovery or the notion that oxygen could be produced in the deep sea by processes acting on or with these nodules is not unusual. Extremophile organisms able to live in anoxic conditions in total darkness on the seafloor should surprise no one. It also should surprise no one that some of the organisms may have evolved to produce oxygen as a by-product of their interaction with mineralized rocks. It's a big ole beautiful world out there and we don't understand a lot about it. It seems unlikely that in 4.5 billion years nothing has evolved to fill that niche. Personally I think it's bacteria all the way down.
- adolph 2y ago
  > Commercial interests have been waiting for the day when they could start mining the seafloors globally for these nodules. For all the folks thinking about Project Azorian[0], I recently read "Blind Man's Bluff"[1] and recommend it for the larger context of oceanic subsurface reconnaissance. 0. https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/exhibit/project-azorian/ https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/exhibit/project-azorian/ 1. https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/dp/1610393589 https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/...
  - chrisweekly 2y ago
    Speaking of book recommendations, Pulitzer-winning author Richard Powers wrote a terrific (Booker-nominated) novel about the ocean, "Playground"[0]. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playground_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playground_(novel)
rmah 2y ago
This might be true if there were any actual deep-sea mining companies. By which I mean companies that actually do deep-sea mining and not just talk about doing it. Second, someone else asserted that the study was funded by one of these "deep sea mining" companies. So who the hell knows?

tiahura 2y ago

[flagged]

ForTheKidz 2y ago
Unless the take was "china invented the virus" (which is trivially and googleably false) I don't see how anyone in the west would care given that the we engage in the same (edit: actually, much more reckless and misanthropic) behavior. Unless it's just racism, of course. But then again nobody has ever accused the west of avoiding hypocrisy. Just pity the terrified-but-patriotic simpletons who buy this shit, mock the evil assholes who start this shit credibility, and move on with your life without nightmares of a boogieman who will drink your blood because... just because, ok!??
- hurutparittya 2y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "invented", but as far as I know the Chinese lab leak theory is still widely accepted as credible and supported by many facts.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ForTheKidz 2y ago
    Ok but why would anyone care if they aren't calling for a shutdown of growth-of-function research? There's nothing essentially qualitatively different about China that make them more evil or less competent. Hence the comment about racism. Even if they did intend it as a weapon, they certainly could not have predicted how badly we would bungle the response. The complete lack of serious protest against growth-of-function research has led me to conclude this is almost pure racism/fearmongering/arrogance/special interests driving this narrative. This is just naked propaganda and there's zero substance to it. just "covid=china=bad".
- tiahura 2y ago
  You don’t understand why people would be concerned about being lied to and gaslit about the origin of the pandemic? China’s negligence cost the world somewhere around 13 to 17 trillion dollars according to estimates by the World Bank and IMF.

flanked-evergl 2y ago

Not all risk that can't be quantified is unacceptable.

deleted 2y ago
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AngryData 2y ago
But we already know strip mining is absolutely horrible on the surface of earth, especially when water is running through the mine tailings, and this would be strip mining while in the water which already makes it worse before we even get to other unknowns. I think the onus should be the people that want to mine to show that it isn't likely to cause problems before they start mining it.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

coriny 2y ago

> This cast doubt on the long-established view that life was made possible when organisms started producing oxygen via photosynthesis, which requires sunlight, about 2.7 billion years ago. So ... life began because it started producing oxygen via photosynthesis? I think they oopsed the word "multicellular" or "complex". A low-grade article and a long shot of a theory, but maybe not impossible.

brabel 2y ago
Yeah... it seems to me that this kind of circular reasoning has become widely acceptable by people lately, they seem to lack some basic understanding of logic or something. Sometimes, it works, like when there's a feedback loop and X causes Y which makes X stronger, causing more of Y... but in this case, they're saying "organisms (literally life) started producing oxygen, which originated life". I would agree with you they mean "originated complex life" but they repeat the claim later: "Deep-sea discovery calls into question the origins of life," the Scottish Association for Marine Science said...".
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  It’s thought that the most common habitable environment in the universe is in underground oceans which are generic in outer solar system and probably interstellar bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_oceanography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_oceanography It’s easy to believe you could get bacteria in that kind of place with an ecosystem like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent but without energy input from sunlight it is hard to believe you could get more complex organisms or ecosystems, but if you had some oxygen from chemistry that might make a difference.
  - knowitnone 2y ago
    "but without energy input from sunlight it is hard to believe you could get more complex organisms or ecosystems" Where did you pull this from? Why couldn't complex organisms form without sunlight?
  - 2y ago

datavirtue 2y ago

These nodules are so hot right now.

rswail 2y ago

The Metals Company should have taken the advice of Sir Humphrey Appelby in Yes Minister, "Minister, two basic rules of government: Never look into anything you don't have to. And never set up an enquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be."

lukan 2y ago
I hate it, that this is likely good advice.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
Fiction: an exoplanet research company stumbles upon ruins of an ancient alien civilization, investigates it with profit and power in mind, then accidentally releases some ancient evil that plunges galaxy into war. Reality: an exoplanet development company stumbles upon ruins of an ancient alien civilization, and quickly paves it over before anyone else notices, because there's nothing worse for a real estate developer than having to wait for a green light from archaeologists.
- elcritch 2y ago
  Plus a strip mall with Waffle Houses and 7-11’s would be the universes best defense anyways!
- Kostchei 2y ago
  twist, 30 years later the aliens tunnel up from under the concrete
  - tecleandor 2y ago
    Building a mall on an alien burial ground site. What could possibly go wrong.
- CobrastanJorji 2y ago
  Ah, you want to the Murderbot Diaries. It's got both of those two things in spades.

Planktonne 2y ago

This is the beginning of the plot in [The Trench](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trench_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trench_(novel)). It's unlikely that the rest of the plot will play out, but always interesting when the real world starts connecting with SF.

causal 2y ago

The worst part of any kind of dredging is that it's effectively done blind. There is no way to know if you're bulldozing a unique ecosystem, an undiscovered species, or a small deep-sea reef. A lot will remain forever undiscovered if we destroy large swaths of the sea bed for some short-term energy needs.

jmclnx 2y ago

If so could this be in our future ? It is from 45 years ago, still a good story https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1189676.The_Nitrogen_Fix https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1189676.The_Nitrogen_Fix Seems these days, we are heading straight into a disaster with no one in power trying to stop it. What is one more path to extinction :)

flanked-evergl 2y ago
No it can't. That book is science fiction and not even hard sci-fi.

acc_297 2y ago

The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8

TSiege 2y ago

This is a subject that will likely hinge on politics and commodity markets, but the science is very clear as is occam's razor 1. There is a lot of animal life in the deep ocean where these modules are present and absent where they are not 2. Those organisms depend on oxygen to function 3. Polymetallic nodules taken from the deep ocean have been shown in lab conditions to create enough of an electric charge to split H2O into H2 and O2 4. Areas where polymetallic nodules have been removed decades ago haven't recovered even on a microorganism level 5. These nodules individually take *millions* of years to form From these conclusions we can safely assume that removing them would decimate these ecosystems on a timescale that's longer than evolution of the genus Homo. Put another way it would be as if we cut down a forest knowing it would take millions of years for individual trees to regrow. It is a crime against the planet to remove these nodules

whatshisface 2y ago
These nodules aren't even that valuable. It's not like they're full of Platinum group metals...
- kurthr 2y ago
  Privatize profits. Socialize costs. If you're in international waters, you can destroy whatever you want and even at low marginal return, if you can scale fast enough the total ROI can be good. The solution to pollution is dilution (of regulatory barriers)!
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    I've been following this for years and am somewhat ambivalent to either outcome. I feel the need to warn anyone reading that this is an overwrought reaction to an overwrought reaction to a, well, very opinionated take. There's a reason why there's 5 papers as refutations, and no one will even go on the record, even just for a news article that'll play well to general public grousing, to even devil's advocate for the original paper I'm glad institutions have and are taking their time with this, to the point we're being steadily brought along, publicly, as we investigate the possibilities and perhaps even discover new things along the way.

dev1ycan 2y ago

Give it 10 years and the companies involved will have pushed so much disinformation suddenly it will be "drill baby drill"... We all knows how it goes, it won't stop until the planet is destroyed.

bell-cot 2y ago

I'm smelling a random junk-science "result", which happens to push a lot of people's buttons: > The research that gave rise to the dark oxygen discovery was partly funded by a Canadian deep-sea mining business, The Metals Company, that wanted to assess the ecological impact of such exploration. > It has sharply criticized the study by marine ecologist Andrew Sweetman and his team as plagued by "methodological flaws". > Michael Clarke, environmental manager at The Metals Company, told AFP that the findings "are more logically attributable to poor scientific technique and shoddy science than a never before observed phenomenon." EDIT: That is followed by other biting criticisms. The strongest one amounts to: The nodules have been sitting there for millions of years. Any sort of electrochemical process that was actually making oxygen in them would have run out of energy long, long ago.

jofer 2y ago

I'm a marine geophysicist by background, just to give some context on why I'm starting this by griping about journals. Before I start trashing Nature Geoscience, I'd like to point out that this is an open access article and I give the broader Nature organization a lot of credit for their recent moves in that direction. See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8 for the paper. It's quite short, and very much a geochemistry and/or geomicrobiology paper, so I am not the best person to really comment on it. Now for a bit of ragging on the journal... The fact that this is in Nature Geoscience says a lot. I have an abysmally low opinion of that journal after seeing the first crop of papers published in it (it's fairly new). Lots of things that just didn't pass basic sanity checks of "is this physically plausible?". Hopefully it's improved... So far it's been "here's all the wacky crap that got rejected from Nature and couldn't be published in a reputable domain-specific journal". Right now I treat it as a journal that has no clue how to pick peer reviewers. Therefore, stuff gets published that really shouldn't make it through peer review. While this _probably_ isn't one of those papers, I have trouble trusting Nature Geoscience to have picked relevant reviewers. Despite having worked a lot on related topics, I don't know enough about deep marine ecosystems to really peel things back. With that said, we know there are plenty of different microorganisms that can produce oxygen in these circumstances. It seems odd to me to dismiss biological production immediately. Even if these samples were fully "poisoned" and that really did kill all microbes, why would electrolysis be the dominant source of oxygen for the entire ecosystem? Microbes are a lot easier to explain... But I am likely missing something critical there. That's a key part of why I I'm focusing on the journal it's in. Based on previous publications, I have trouble trusting Nature Geoscience to have picked good peer reviewers on this. If it holds up, it should have been in Nature. I suspect it was rejected from Nature for some fairly fundamental reasons and then got through much lighter reivew in Nature Geoscience... But I hope I'm wrong! There are a lot of zany ideas that are unlikely but also aren't impossible. Those are pretty common and quite fun. Occasionally, they're correct. Much more frequently, they're not. But they make for a lot of interesting discussion and are incredibly important science. I hope this fits into that category. I'm sorely tempted to ask a friend of mine who works on these exact types of microbes what she thinks of this... It'll make for an interesting discussion at least!

2y ago

renewiltord 2y ago

[flagged]

Pulcinella 2y ago
Hard to determine comment accuracy. Industry will manufacture false claims in order to stop environmentalism because they believe in material wealth over all else.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Also true. That is the information space we currently inhabit. Easy to forget the faked species called the snail darter, invented to be endangered to try to stop a dam being built.

cryptonector 2y ago

Polymetallic nodules obviously will have electric potentials that could maybe electrolyze water slowly, but... whence the energy? Do the metals in the polymetallic nodules mix better -thus reducing the electric potential- as they electrolyze water? Do they oxidize? If they oxidize, how much of the oxygen they produce goes to oxidizing them, and how much is made available to the local biome? (When you extract energy from a magnet it loses its magnetization. I imagine something similar must happen here.) How long does it take for these nodules to form, and how long does it take for any process to render them no longer able to electrolyze water?

tasty_freeze 2y ago
I know nothing about the topic, but this comes to mind: the mechanical energy of moving water. When I rub a comb through my hair in low humidity conditions, I can generate sparks. It doesn't seem implausible that water flowing past some alloy might cause some small fraction of H2O rubbing against it to split via some electrical or chemical process.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  There's the magnetohydrodynamic effect, which can be used for propulsion[1], guess the reverse should generate electricity? edit: Hunch correct[2]. Off course requires magnetic field, and while naturally magnetized rocks exist AFAIK, not sure how strong they are. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator

MarkusQ 2y ago

From TFA: This cast doubt on the long-established view that life was made possible when organisms started producing oxygen via photosynthesis, which requires sunlight, about 2.7 billion years ago. "Deep-sea discovery calls into question the origins of life," the Scottish Association for Marine Science said in a press release to accompany the publication of the research. What the heck?! It's like "science" journalists aren't even trying anymore. If you don't understand the topic well enough to spot nonsense like this, you shouldn't be covering science.