When researchers discovered evidence of “dark oxygen” last year, the news spread around the world, but the biggest challenge ...

The study indicates oxygen can be produced on the seafloor, where no light reaches, in order to support the oxygen-breathing (aerobic) sea life living in complete darkness.

Photosynthetic organisms such as plants, plankton and algae use sunlight to produce oxygen that cycles into the ocean depths, but previous studies conducted in the deep sea have shown that oxygen is ...

To investigate dark oxygen further, Ruff and his team traveled to a 3-kilometer-deep (9,500-foot-deep) mine in South Africa in August to sample water that had been trapped in the rock for 1.2 ...

To investigate dark oxygen further, Ruff and his team traveled to a 3-kilometer-deep (9,500-foot-deep) mine in South Africa in August to sample water that had been trapped in the rock for 1.2 ...

Sweetman is bullish about the prospects of finding dark oxygen production. “I know it’s happening. We have found this now in six places. I know we are going to find it," he says.

Understanding dark oxygen Through a series of experiments, the researchers ruled out biological processes such as microbes and zoned in on the nodules themselves as the phenomenon’s origin.

The dark oxygen findings also raise questions about the origins of life itself. "This discovery implies the possibility that aerobic [oxygen-dependent] life arose before photosynthesis evolved ...

To investigate dark oxygen further, Ruff and his team traveled to a 3-kilometer-deep (9,500-foot-deep) mine in South Africa in August to sample water that had been trapped in the rock for 1.2 ...

To investigate dark oxygen further, Ruff and his team traveled to a 3-kilometer-deep (9,500-foot-deep) mine in South Africa in August to sample water that had been trapped in the rock for 1.2 ...