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They used lab checks to find out microbes didn’t create the darkish oxygen. Then they took a more in-depth have a look at the lumpy potato-sized sedimentary rock formations created when metals like manganese and cobalt acquire round shell fragments, sharks’ enamel, and comparable substances generally discovered on the ocean ground.
They couldn’t discover any radioactive substances able to splitting water molecules or decomposing minerals that include oxygen, similar to manganese oxide.
An opportunity viewing of a documentary on deep-sea mining whereas in Brazil gave Sweetman an epiphany when somebody referred to the darkish lumpy formations as a battery inside a rock.
Sweetman suspected an electrochemical course of may create the oxygen they’d measured within the ocean’s depths. Electrical energy splits water molecules by a course of known as electrolysis, which Sweetman’s crew decided creates oxygen deep beneath the ocean.
Supply: Nature.com
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