Will wonders never cease?

Marine bacteria have the capacity to take up and capture carbon dioxide with the help of sunlight, say researchers at Kalmar University in Sweden in collaboration with colleagues in Spain, Australia, and Russia.

This can be compared to a simple form of photosynthesis, where marine bacteria use energy from sunlight to absorb carbon dioxide. It was previously known that bacteria in oxygen-starved lakes can have this capacity, but it's new knowledge that bacteria in the open seas can do so as well. This challenges earlier knowledge that algae are the only organisms that capture carbon dioxide in the surface water exposed to sunlight. It remains unknown just how much carbon dioxide is captured by these bacteria.

"Even if it turns out that only a tiny fraction of carbon dioxide is captured by the bacteria, this can have an enormous impact, since more than 100 million tons of carbon dioxide is captured daily by algae through photosynthesis in the oceans. Bacteria may prove to take up millions of tons. We need to study this more," . . .

I'm ignorant enough not to find this surprising. One thing I do know is that I don't know very much, and have come to suspect that no one else does either. There was a time when I thought that my betters knew what was going on, and that in principle I could know too if I only worked at it long enough. That was naive of me.