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Scientists know that methane is released from the mouths of the deep sea, but its source has long been a mystery.
Now, a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in the United States, might have the answer. The analysis of 160 rock samples from the world's oceans provides evidence, they say, of the formation and abundance of abiotic methane – methane formed by chemical reactions not involving organic material.
Nearly every sample contains an assemblage of minerals and gases that form when seawater, traversing the deep oceanic crust, is trapped in olivine heated with magma, a rock mineral, the researchers wrote in a published article. in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
When the mineral cools, the water trapped inside undergoes a chemical reaction, a process called serpentinisation, which forms hydrogen and methane.
"Here is a source of chemical energy created by geology," said co-author Jeffrey Seewald.
On Earth, methane from the depths may have played a crucial role in the evolution of primitive organisms living in hydrothermal vents located at the bottom of the sea, adds Seewald. And elsewhere in the solar system, methane produced by the same process could be a source of energy for basic life forms.
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