Comments by "Kevin Street" (@Kevin_Street) on "We Just Discovered \"Dark\" Oxygen on Earth - Breakthrough Explained" video.

Your concerns are well made. It does seem unlikely that: - the natural process of precipitation just happened to form working batteries - those batteries could stay charged after literal millions of years discharging into the water And the scientists themselves say they didn't find a high enough voltage for electrolysis. But I still find this discovery incredibly exciting! It seems the nodules really do act like batteries, since they did actually measure a voltage difference across them. As for where the energy comes from, maybe the process is partly biological? Maybe there are organisms inside the nodules (bacteria most likely) that provide the tiny extra charge that makes electrolysis happen? And maybe it's these organisms that keep the potential difference going over millions of years.
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