Chapter 1: What is the significance of the dark oxygen discovery at the abyssal seafloor?
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Missä se on? Ei täältä kaapelista löydä mitään. Parasta ennen 2012. Puna ja ei, ei. Äiti, missä on hillo? DNA vei sun hillot. Miten niin DNA vei? Pitäis mun syödä näitä lettuja jolloin sinapilla? Nyt pitää, kun DNAn uusiin liittymiin kuuluu turvallinen nettiselaus. Se estää ihmisiä menemästä sun huijaussivustoille. Kirottua DNA. DNA huoleton on uuden ajan liittymä turvallisella nettiselauksella.
Onks tää oikein? Ai mikä? No tää on mun palkka. Tääl on enemmän liksaa kuin viime kuussa. Ne on ne korotukset. Ai mitkä? Eiks sä muista kun mä ja varmaan kymmenet tuhannet muut ihmiset lakkoili palkankorotusten puolesta. Tuleeks ne kaikille? Joo, melkein. Mulla tulee ens kuussa. No ihan. Hienoa. Ole hyvä vaan. Terveisin teollisuusliitto. Pidä puolesi. Liity ammattiliittoon. SAK.fi. Parempi palkkapäivä.
Back in 2024, on a drizzly summer day, an email landed in my inbox. It was a tip-off about a new study that was about to be published in a big journal. I'm a science journalist, I get sent lots of new research every week. But the subject line grabbed me. It said, evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor.
So I opened it and read an extraordinary claim. Oxygen had been discovered two and a half miles down, produced at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. In complete darkness. In a place where it couldn't possibly be made. School science textbooks tell us that oxygen is made by plants in sunlight. And there's no sunlight at the seabed 4,000 meters down.
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Chapter 2: Who is Andrew Sweetman and what role does he play in this research?
So this was a tantalizing claim. If true, it could upend hundreds of years of scientific knowledge. Everything we know about how oxygen, that vital ingredient for life, is made. So I reported on it.
as did much of the world's media. Scientists say they've discovered a source of oxygen deep in the Pacific Ocean that they never knew existed. About half of the oxygen in the air we breathe comes from the seas, and until now it was thought to be made exclusively by marine plants using sunlight. But a year and a half on, some scientists have serious doubts, and I still have so many questions. Top of that list? Is dark oxygen real? No.
So I've come back to it, to investigate. And what I've discovered is much more than an interesting scientific claim. I want to tell you about what I've found. It's a story about a scientific surprise. This is like someone finding anti-gravity, or it was going to be a very controversial thing to get out there. A story of swirling controversy. You don't need to judge whether it's wrong, because it's already from the start impossible.
A story that collides head on with a billion dollar mission to mine metals in the deep sea. There's enough basically to replace every car on the planet with an electric vehicle at the moment. It's a row about science that became personal. We've been called fraudsters. It's harassment. It's vilification. And a story about how mysterious the deep ocean is. This is Dark Breath. I'm Victoria Gill.
I want to start at the beginning. Meet Andrew Sweetman, professor of seafloor ecology. He's the scientist at the centre of all this. I find him in a building packed with deep sea research equipment at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban, northwest Scotland. Over here we have two of our 13 deep ocean landers. These are what are called seafloor respirometers. And this one has just arrived actually.
Olen melko iloinen, että olemme täällä ja eivät ole säällä tänään, koska täällä on melko kivaa. Tervetuloa Skotlandiin novemberiin.
Andrews deep sea landers are basically autonomous chemistry labs that carry scientific equipment to the seabed. The key bit of equipment on the lander is a chamber that clamps down and encloses a section of the seafloor so that samples and measurements can be taken from inside it. That's what Andrew and his team were using when they first registered a strange signal two and a half miles down on the Pacific seabed back in 2013.
Jos yhdistelmäämme kohdallaan ja laitamme sensoon, voimme määritellä, kuinka paljon oksidoita te tai minä teette. Ja se on se, mitä me yritämme tehdä maanpohjaan. Ja kun instrumentti tuli takaisin, syrjintät olivat vain vahvistuneita. Se oli kuin kun katsoit kohdallaan hyvin kylmän sodan, joka oli vain kivetty ja sitten aloittanut. Katsoin sen ja ajattelin, että se ei ole oikein. Miksi se ei ole oikein?
Koska se näyttäisi, että syrjinnän samppuja olivat supersaturaatioita gasin kanssa. Se ei ollut CO2. Me löysimme myöhemmin, että se oli oksigen. Oksigen oli tuotettu? Kyllä. Ja mitä ajattelit? Ajattelin, että olen todennäköisesti tehnyt jotain väärää, tai nämä samppuja ovat kompromissoineet jossain tavalla.
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Chapter 3: What methods are used to investigate dark oxygen production?
They would send them back a couple of months later saying, everything's fine, we've checked them. Then, in 2021, it happened again. Another scientist on that research trip was Andrews then PhD student, Daniela de Jonga.
So when we got the data on the vessel, I showed him the graphs and Andrew was looking at the screen and he said, oh, that's great, the sensors are working because I can see the curves going down, which is a classical sort of oxygen consumption curve like you would expect. But then I said, no, actually this is showing that the oxygen is going up.
Sanoin hänelle, että laittakaa sensoreita kiviin, koska emme voi luottaa niistä. Ja hän teki. Jokainen sensori kosti noin 10 000 euroa, eli 30 000 euroa kiviin. Sitten aloitin käyttämään toisen metodin, jonka olin saanut.
Pääasiassa minun tekeminen oli kemiallisesti tarkistaa oksigen määrää. Andrew ja Daniela tekevät seuraavan kokemuksen lauluksella. He analysoivat laulukkoa, jonka saatiin sisällä ympäristöön. Pitäkää sinne, koska metodi on tärkeä. Kun laulukko on sisällä sisällä sisällä sisällä sisällä sisällä sisällä sisällä sisällä sisällä,
Andrew then took each of those seawater samples and used a method called titration to measure the concentration of oxygen in each one. I just remember that it was getting more silent and silent at the back of the lab. Just seeing him sit with his hand on his forehead, just, I don't know, looking very intense. There might have been some swearing involved. And suddenly I realized that with two independent measurements we were seeing oxygen go up.
Up until this point, Andrew had dismissed the strange oxygen phenomenon again and again. You saw the oxygen going up and you disregarded that. I disregarded that for about nine years.
Miksi olit välttämättömyyttä viiden vuoden aikana? Miksi sinulle tämä oli niin epäonnistunut? Koska ainoa tapa, josta tiedän, että oksidon voisi tuoda, oli fotosyntesitys. Tiedät, kuvaus on sanomassa. Fotosyntesitys, foto, ilma. Ja 4 kilometrin sydäntässä ei ole mitään ilmaa. Miksi viiden vuoden aikana välttämättömyyttä? Mitä muuttaa ajattelua?
Silloin meillä oli kaksi määräystä, jotka sanoivat samaa asiaa. Joten tämä ei ollut sensoorisuus. Ensimmäinen asia, jota sanoin Daniin, ei kuitenkaan kertoa, miksi. Sanoin, että voitko ottaa sensoorisuudet pohjaan.
So Andrew and his team had seemingly made a huge discovery. Oxygen somehow being produced in complete darkness at the seafloor. But they didn't feel jubilant. We tried to think through all these sort of method issues that could potentially be there and tried to work through them all. But none of that explained what we were seeing.
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Chapter 4: What controversies arise from the dark oxygen claim?
Deep sea mining companies want the metals in these nodules to power the green economy. It's been called a trillion dollar race to mine metals on the seafloor. There's enough basically to replace every car on the planet with an electric vehicle at the moment.
That's Michael Clark, environmental manager for The Metals Company, a Canadian deep sea mining operation. The Metals Company has a permit to explore and do research in the Clarion-Clipperton zone. In the future they want to mine there. When Andrew Sweetman made his dark oxygen discovery in 2021, he was working for Michael and The Metals Company.
Jos TARF-osioiden on todellinen, se on suuri tutkimus. Se on suurta osiota, joka ei ole koskaan tutkittu ennen. Se ei ole liittynyt fotosynteseen. Se on suuri. Jos teet näitä kuvaamia, sinun täytyy olla hyvin vahva tarina. Sinun täytyy olla paljon evidenssiä, että mekanismi, jota suunnittelee, on tuotettu vahvasti evidenssiä. Emme usko, että se paperi antaa tarpeeksi evidenssiä, jotta voimme tehdä näitä kuvaamia.
And they claim that there's more information to add to what was published in Andrew's study. We actually have access to all the data that was collected during those offshore campaigns. And the paper that was presented in Nature Geoscience omits a lot of information that actually undermines the dark auction theory.
We'll get more into the detail of the scientific debate later, but Michael says that other researchers have studied the Clarion-Clipton zone and found no evidence of dark oxygen being produced. He argues that Andrew Sweetman's claim is simply flawed science. I am very defensive about our science program. I want this to be very, very high quality science. And when I see people who are associated with us, who we've actually funded, not producing high quality science, I will call that out. I think that's part of my job.
Michael says Andrew Sweetman left the project early and that the metals company then engaged a third party to go back out to the same area with more sophisticated landers. That third party, he says, found no dark oxygen. The dark oxygen discovery made headlines around the world. And with that global coverage came intense scrutiny from other scientists. Some shared critiques of Andrew and his team online.
But what started as a debate about science then took on a darker, more personal tone. The things that have been said online, said on social media about this study, the group of scientists...
We've been called fraudsters. It's gone way beyond that. It's harassment, it's vilification. At the end of the day, we are just humble scientists that have found something that doesn't fit the narrative, and we're just trying to figure out what's going on.
Andrew Sweetman and his team drew criticism from scientists and non-scientists alike. Comments have appeared on social media questioning the research and the conclusions, but I've also seen comments about the competence and the integrity of Andrew and his team. Some posts I've read on social media platforms, including LinkedIn and Reddit, have used terms like fabricating science, shoddy and even fraud to describe his claim of dark oxygen production.
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Chapter 5: How does deep sea mining relate to the dark oxygen debate?
So this could allow for permits to be issued to mine the seabed in areas that President Trump describes as, I quote, beyond national jurisdiction, that is, outside US waters. The metals company has already spent hundreds of millions developing technology to suck up deep sea nodules and bring them to the surface, and to study the potential impact of mining.
Joten mitä tiedämme ympäristön vaikutuksesta ympäristön ympäristön ympäristön ympäristön ympäristön ympäristön
Nodulit tarvitsevat miljoonaa tai enemmän vuotta. Se on professori Lisa Levin. Hän on tutkijana Scripps Institution of Oceanography Kaliforniassa Yhdysvalloissa. Olimme uskoneet, että syvällä maailmalla, jossa on yksinkertaisia vaikeuksia ja täysi taivaus, oli ilman elämää.
Kuukausia tutkimuskysymyksiä, joita joitain on käsitellyt metsäympäristöjen kautta, on nyt näyttänyt, että se ei ole niin. Ja me edelleen oppimme deep oceanin ja siitä, mitä komersiaaliset metsäympäristöt voivat tehdä siihen. Tämä on Michael Clarke, ympäristöntekijä Metals Companyn jälleen.
Se on käsittelyympäristö, jossa on aina vaikutuksia, mutta konservatiivisesta biologisesta näkökulmasta minulle on mielenkiintoista mennä suurimmalle eläimelle, jossa on vähemmän eläimellä, koska se on vähemmän eläimellä metsässä kuin rauhassa Indoneesassa, ja ainakin tutustua sellaiseen.
Michael's point is that we need these resources, and so they should come from a place where they'll cause the least environmental damage, the seafloor rather than the rainforest. Lisa Levin thinks the claim of dark oxygen production is emblematic of just how little we know about how life in the deep ocean actually works.
It really is one of our last relatively pristine frontiers. I think that we are not yet ready to destroy them. Until we better understand what it is we would be giving up. That's why scientists like Andrew Sweetman want to study the deep, dark seafloor. Every rock that we turn over, every animal that we find may be a new species. It's a no-brainer to me. I want to work there.
So let's get back to Andrew's work and to the science. One of the things I want to understand here is whether dark oxygen is actually possible. How could metallic seafloor nodules be producing it? So this is where things get a bit fuzzy. We have not ruled out that there's some sort of microbial process going on.
The other idea we have is that there may be some sort of water oxidation or electrochemical reaction. It's a hypothesis, and I would just want to say that yet again, it's a hypothesis, it needs to be tested, and we are starting to test that now. The oxidation hypothesis is that somehow metallic ingredients in the nodules react with seawater, and that one of the products of that reaction is oxygen, the O in H2O.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of dark oxygen findings for future scientific research?
If Per Hall is right, then the evidence proposed for dark oxygen production would be no evidence at all, just contamination. Another scientist we spoke to takes issue with the theories that explain how dark oxygen could be produced. I'm professor Angel Cuesta. I'm a professor at the University of Aberdeen in chemistry, and my area of expertise is electrochemistry. It's the kind of processes that power batteries, amongst many other things. My opinion is that
The explanation they give for the process makes no scientific sense. Angel believes Andrew's hypothesis about the sea nodules, that they could act like batteries and split water into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis, is thermodynamically impossible, that it would violate the laws of nature. I like to compare this with a round stone on the top of a hill, and if you leave that stone loose, it will roll down the hill. But you would never see a stone at the bottom of a hill going uphill. That would never happen.
That's the same thing with chemical reactions. And in the case of water, hydrogen and oxygen combining to produce water, that's going downhill. Taking water and splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen, that's going uphill. And then you would need to identify where that energy is coming from.
Like Perhal, Engel doesn't discount that there could be dark oxygen production in the deep sea, but he thinks that Andrew Sweetman's hypothesis for the mechanism behind it is simply wrong. Any hypothesis that you put forward should be first of all possible. It might be wrong, but it has to be possible. This hypothesis does not even reach the point of being possible. You don't need to judge whether it's wrong, because it's already from the start impossible.
Both Per Hall and Angel Cuesta joined a group of scientists, including some from the metals company, to publish a critique of the dark oxygen discovery in a journal called Frontiers in Marine Science. Back on his boat in heavy rain, Andrew Sweetman tells me he has two decades of experience deploying and gathering data all over the world using deep sea landers.
We've been using landers for 20 years. This isn't just one lander, this is multiple landers. There's hundreds of these things that have been sold. They've been deployed hundreds of times. The manufacturer has never seen any problems with bubbles. We've used them many, many times and have never had any problems with bubbles. Andrew says it was only years of repeated experiments that convinced him that this phenomenon was real.
I ignored this for nine years, and it was only when this data repeatedly kept showing up with multiple instruments, and then I would go off to another area, for example in the Atlantic or the Arctic, using the same equipment, and I wouldn't see it, that I went, well, I'm obviously doing this right, so what's going on? Because it's probably not me, and it's probably not the equipment.
So the criticism hasn't made you doubt yourself? As a scientist you will never be 100% certain, but I'm 99% sure that this is happening. For Daniela de Jonga, who was a key part of Andrew's research team on that all-important 2021 expedition, the challenge of studying the deep ocean can leave any discovery, especially one as extraordinary as dark oxygen, open to being questioned.
Ongelma työskentelemisessä syvällisissä ympäristöissä on se, että et voi vain mennä ylös ja katsoa. Esimerkiksi jos on metsä ja joku sanoo, että siellä on iso jäi, joka on luonnollinen neongreeni, niin voit mennä metsään ja katsoa itseäsi.
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