{"id":242286,"date":"2025-12-20T05:52:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T05:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/242286\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T05:52:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T05:52:12","slug":"extraordinary-claims-require-extraordinary-evidence-evaluating-nodule-associated-dark-oxygen-production-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/242286\/","title":{"rendered":"Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: Evaluating Nodule-associated Dark Oxygen Production (opinion)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                                    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Extraordinary-Claims-Require.jpg\" alt=\"Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: Evaluating Nodule-associated Dark Oxygen Production (opinion)\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n                                                                                                            Polymetallic nodules, also called manganese nodules, on the floor of the Pacific Ocean; surprising new research suggests deep sea rocks are capable of producing oxygen without help from plants or the sun. Photo via Wikimedia Commons\/Geomar Bilddatenbank\/ROV KIEL 6000, GEOMAR                                                                                                    <\/p>\n<p><strong>Editor\u2019s note: this is a response to <a href=\"https:\/\/astrobiology.com\/2024\/08\/oxygen-produced-in-the-deep-sea-raises-questions-about-extraterrestrial-life.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Oxygen Produced In The Deep Sea Raises Questions About Extraterrestrial Life<\/a>, Boston University 27 August 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dark oxygen production (DOP) broadly encompasses all light-independent pathways that produce oxygen (Ruff et al., 2024), including microbial and abiotic processes such as radiolysis of water (Gutsalo, 1970; Sauvage et al., 2021), chlorite dismutation (Xu and Logan, 2003), nitric oxide dismutation (Ettwig et al., 2012) and, water lysis via methanobactins (Dershwitz et al., 2021).<\/p>\n<p>Recently, Sweetman et al. (2024) claim to present evidence for a novel form of DOP occurring at the abyssal seafloor, which they attribute to seawater electrolysis driven by polymetallic nodules. Although transient, the reported rates (1.7\u201318 mmol O2 m-2 d-1) are substantial\u2014equivalent to 0.5\u2013180% of gross community production measured in the Equatorial Pacific (10\u2013365 mmol O2 m-2 d-1; Stanley et al. (2010)), a region recognized among the most photosynthetically productive in the open-oceans (Rousseaux and Gregg, 2013).<\/p>\n<p>If real, nodule-associated DOP would constitute the discovery of an entirely new source of oxygen, and could challenge the long-standing paradigm that the abyssal seafloor functions exclusively as an oxygen sink (Glud, 2008; Smith et al., 2018; J\u00f8rgensen et al., 2022). Henceforth, throughout this paper, we use the term DOP exclusively to refer to the nodule-associated process of oxygen production claimed by Sweetman et al. (2024), rather than the broader suite of established light-independent oxygen-producing pathways.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/journals\/marine-science\/articles\/10.3389\/fmars.2025.1721853\/full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: Evaluating Nodule-associated Dark Oxygen Production<\/a>, Frontiers (opinion)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Astrobiology<\/p>\n<p>                                                                            <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/keith_cowing.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager\/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na\u2019Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he\/him) \ud83d\udd96\ud83c\udffb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Polymetallic nodules, also called manganese nodules, on the floor of the Pacific Ocean; surprising new research suggests deep&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-242286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115750341808691131","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}