last highlighted date: 2024-11-05
Highlights
- However, a recent study demonstrates that oxygen may be produced without the need for life at depths where light cannot reach.
- The authors think the nodules have the right mixture of metals and are densely packed enough for an electrical current to pass through for electrolysis, creating enough energy to separate the hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) from water (H₂O).
- Lithium and cobalt are used, for example, to make rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops and electric vehicles. Copper is vital for electrical wiring in devices like TVs and radios and for roofing and plumbing.
- Oxygen is essential to complex life as we know it. Complex life has evolved and expanded alongside photosynthesisers, which actually produce oxygen as a waste product. Yet this oxygen allows organisms’ metabolisms to be much more efficient than without it.
- Without photosynthetic bacteria, the reliance that Earth’s life has on oxygen may well have never happened, in addition to the evolutionary pathway to biodiversity as we know it.
- But this study shows that rich-nodules on the seafloor may have provided an additional source of oxygen to the biosphere - the zone of life on Earth encompassing all living organisms.