A mechanism of photosynthesis which does not involve biomolecules

Standard biology teaches us that photosynthesis is needed to produce oxygen, which is the basic prerequisite of life. Besides complex biological apparatus this requires photons, which provide the needed energy. At the bottom of the ocean there is very dark and this might form a bottleneck for the evolution of life. Now it has been found that at the bottom of ocean mineral deposits known as polymetallic nodules can generate oxygen in absence of photons (see this). They contain combinations of cobalt, copper, lithium, and manganese and the size of the nodule can be that of a human hand. The initiation of electrolysis splitting water to hydrogen and oxygen needs only 1.5 eV voltage in seawater. This means that one has a battery. It was found that the nodules involve voltage as high as .95 eV.

The nodules could make possible electrolysis and splitting of water. They could make it possible to overcome the hen and egg problem due the fact that a complex biomolecular apparatus is needed for photosynthesis but this apparatus cannot exist in primordial biology.

In the TGD Universe, multicellular life would have evolved in underground oceans and bursted to the surface in the Cambrian explosion for about 450 million years ago (see for instance this), which in the TGD Universe was caused by the expansion of the Earth radius by a factor 2 in a rather short period of time. TGD indeed predicts that the cosmic expansion of astrophysical objects occurs as short bursts. This explains why the astrophysical objects comove in expansion but do not expand themselves .

A heavy objection against this vision is that there are no photons in underground oceans so that photosynthesis is not possible. I have proposed that the light arriving as dark photons - ordinary photons but with a large value of effective Planck constant h_eff - from the Earth's core (the temperature is nearly the same as in the solar corona) could have provided the metabolic energy. Also solar photons arriving as dark photons along monopole flux tubes could have provided the energy.

It seems that also the polymetallic nodules could generate photons and make possible the splitting of water. What could be the mechanism making this possible? It must be added that also electrolysis, thought to represent ancient physics, is not a well-understood phenomenon. Remarkably, "cold fusion" was discovered in electrolytes (for the TGD view see this and this) . The voltages used in electrolysis are in eV range and in atomic physics length scales they correspond to ridiculously weak electric fields. How can they cause the ionization essential for electrolysis?

1. In the Pollack effect (see this), the irradiation of water in the presence of the gel phase generates a voltage, and therefore produces a battery. This battery also makes possible electrolysis and the splitting of water producing oxygen. Pollack effect is not understood in the framework of standard chemistry.
2. The TGD explanation is that in the Pollack effect one fourth of the protons of water are transformed to dark photons and kicked to monopole flux tubes. This creates a negatively charged region called exclusion zone (EZ). This would generate a charge separation giving rise to the voltage. Photons would provide the needed energy to transform ordinary protons to dark protons with a larger value of h_eff and therefore larger energy.

   It has become gradually clear that what matters is energy. Therefore the Pollack effect can be realized in several ways. In particular, the formation of molecules as bound states of atoms can provide the needed energy: no photons would be needed (see this and this ).

   In particular, the reverse Pollack effect, that is dropping of dark protons from the monopole flux tubes back to ordinary protons, is also possible and would liberate ordinary photons needed in the splitting of water. This could also provide the photonic energy needed in photosynthesis and could provide a temporary storage of metabolic energy needed in photosynthesis and in the storage of energy to ATP (see this).

3. If this can happen in the nodules, the photosynthesis could have evolved in underground oceans via the fusion of atoms to molecules and completely without external light source.

See for instance the article Expanding Earth Hypothesis and Pre-Cambrian Earth or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.