263
Dark oxygen made by deep sea 'batteries'
(www.bbc.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
263 points (98.5% liked)
World News
38492 readers
3494 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Seems monumental, I'm curious about more specific properties of the metal.
Seems like a valuable resource from a video game that charges science fiction energy drives.
It's funny the title is "defies knowledge of the deep ocean", given how often it's proven humans have so little knowledge of the deep ocean in the first place.
The article is being pretty hyperbolic. There's no mystery here, this is just something which happens if you put two different metals together. It's nothing more or less than a crude battery, just like the ancestors of the AA battery the article kept harping on about.
This discovery could be important for people studying the climate on very early Earth, people studying early life, and the ecology of the deep sea today.
That last one is particularly troubling, though. If this is widespread, then this might be a major source of what little oxygen is down there. If so, then taking those nodules away (like a lot of people are keen to do, since some of the metals they're made of are valuable) could destroy an entire ecosystem.
More research is required
I mean the article is being hyperbolic I think to try and sway opinion away from thinking it's a good idea to mine these nodules.
We have a bunch of billionaires who are suddenly excited to go full Dune on the ocean floor for scraps of metal that aren't currently on owned land and will fuck up the ecology just because it will finally make them more wealthy.
If it seems like there is grand mysteries and a impact on us instead of just all the low lying marine life it might get people to say it's a bad idea and public opinion will get them to stop.
It's just a shame that Shame doesn't work as well as it used to to control people.
Do you understand how the metal becomes a battery and how it can work consistently to split hydrogen and oxygen?
How it's naturally charged and recharged?
Not OP, and I could be completely wrong on how these specific things work, but it seems to me like they work as a rudimentary voltaic pile:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaic_pile
Take a look at the diagram, and imagine a metal alloy or even little bits of metal close to each other, and imagine the electrolyte is seawater.
It's a super basic accidental nature battery.
Just wait until you hear about basic accidental nature nuclear reactors... And no, I'm not joking.
SCIENCE, BITCH!
I would expect it to work like a galvanic anode.