Seafloor Oxygen Threatens Evolutionary Stories

The unexpected discovery of abiotic
oxygen on the ocean floor could
undermine Darwinian scenarios

One corollary of Murphy’s Law quips,
“All great discoveries are made by mistake.”
Scientists weren’t looking for what they found.

According to evolutionary storytelling plots, life originated when there was no oxygen on earth, because oxygen is hostile to prebiotic molecules trying to get together into proteins, fats, and nucleic acids. Having an oxygen-free environment helped, but the hurdle of probability was far worse. Somehow, it happened, without purpose or design.

Miller’s experiment only got some amino acids when oxygen was studiously excluded from the apparatus.

Long after microbes happened along, they diversified into the kingdoms Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya. Then when eukaryotic algae discovered photosynthesis, oxygen rose rapidly in a “Great Oxygenation Event” that allowed complex organisms to evolve (see 13 June 2024). ‘Go forth and multiply,’ their goddess Lady Luck commanded, and the rest is Darwinian history. Too bad for the Darwinians. A new discovery causes two major problems with this story, threatening to blow away the fogma.

Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor (Sweetman et al., Nature Geoscience, 22 July 2024). These authors dub abiotic oxygen on the seafloor “dark oxygen” because it forms within rocks in the dark, having nothing to do with life. The discovery of this process came as a surprise. They knew about rocks on the abyssal ocean floor called metallic nodules because of their ubiquity and their potential for lucrative mining of their rare earth minerals.

What they didn’t know is that these nodules emit oxygen. Controlled experiments ruling out life showed a net increase of oxygen being produced from the nodules. The oxygen is produced by electrolysis between minerals, they say:

Given high voltage potentials (up to 0.95 V) on nodule surfaces, we hypothesize that seawater electrolysis may contribute to this dark oxygen production.

Everyone knows that water contains oxygen (H₂O) but it takes energy to release it. That kind of oxygen, bound up in water molecules, is not a threat to origin-of-lifers. But if there was plentiful molecular oxygen (O₂) in the sea, however—where many origin-of-lifers believe life got its start—that oxygen would make quick work destroying any prebiotic molecules trying to come together.

“So-called polymetallic nodules are potato-size lumps of oxides of iron and manganese that also contain precious metals like cobalt and rare earth elements. (Image credit: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2019 Southeastern U.S. Deep-sea Exploration),” from Live Science article. It appears that vast fields of these rocks could produce significant oxygen from the beginning.

Discovery of ‘dark oxygen’ from deep-sea metal lumps could trigger rethink of origins of life (22 July 2024, Live Science). Reporter Sascha Pare puts the matter delicately to her Darwinian readers: the discovery “could trigger a rethink” of “origins of life” (meaning, the godless, atheistic stories about where life came from). She passes that hot potato to Sweetman.

The discovery of dark oxygen 13,000 feet (4,000 m) below the waves, where no light can penetrate, challenges scientists’ belief that Earth’s oxygen is only naturally produced through photosynthesis (and through oxidizing ammonia, but this results in tiny amounts that are immediately consumed). That, in turn, raises new questions about the origins of life on Earth roughly 3.7 billion years ago, Sweetman said.

Sweetman then quickly changes the subject to the origins of aerobic life (oxygen-breathing life). But aerobic life was not the first life in the evolutionary saga. The presence of oxygen in Earth’s deep oceans would threaten any prebiotic molecules trying to self-organize. Neither reporter nor scientist takes up that issue.

“For aerobic life to begin on the planet, there has to be oxygen and our understanding has been that Earth’s oxygen supply began with photosynthetic organisms,” he said. “But we now know that there is oxygen produced in the deep sea, where there is no light. I think we therefore need to revisit questions like: where could aerobic life have begun?”

The potential consequences of this “rethink” could ripple throughout other consensus scenarios. What does this do to the mythical Great Oxygenation Event if oxygen was being produced on the seafloor from the beginning? If this oxygen was released into the atmosphere (and it seems hard to keep a gas under the sea) then it also threatens the origin-of-lifers who postulate that life began on the surface. Myths about Darwin’s warm little pond, the Miller experiment, and other land-based scenarios would perish with oxygen around.

Whether hypothesized at deep sea vents or on the earth’s surface, evolutionary stories about the origin of life are threatened by oxygen.

Maybe the abiotic oxygen is restricted to rare places, a critic might say. That’s not an option; “So-called polymetallic nodules are common on the ocean’s abyssal plains,” Pare states. What will Darwin storytellers do with this unexpected finding? Will it call for drastic revisions of their narratives about the history of life on earth? And could this discovery also impact climate models?

We know from experience what they will likely do: change the subject. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Come up with theory rescue devices in obscure journals (example). Censor the Darwin deniers. Double down and push the consensus narrative even harder.

It’s up to Darwin skeptics to take this empirical finding made by observation and measurement, calculate the amount of oxygen present from the beginning, explore the implications for evolution, and if the finding is as bad for Darwinism as we think, never let the materialists forget it. The godless origin of life issue is a tipping point for materialists. If oxygen falsifies the story of life’s origin by unguided material processes, none of the rest of the narrative matters.