Oil is not a fossil fuel!
 

If you remember, I write occasional scientific articles which try to summarize and/or break down new or misunderstood theories in science for the City Weekly in Salt Lake City. I?ve been asked to write a short article about a new area of research that suggests that oil maybe not be a fossil fuel and that there is plenty of it for centuries to come.

I?d like to invite your comments, it appears below;

Ever since the energy crisis of the 1970s we have been hearing about how the world is about to run out of such fossil fuels as natural gas and oil, and that we must quickly develop alternative sources. The original doomsayers appear to be wrong since, thirty years on, gas-guzzling SUVs and chugging around and getting their tanks filled at rates well below what inflation has done to most other consumer prices. Still, environmentalists argue, whether fossil fuels run out next year or next decade, they are going to run out relatively soon.

Not if Cornell University?s Thomas Gold is right in his radical theory about the ?deep hot biosphere?. Miles below the surface of the earth, deeply embedded in the nooks and crannies of rocks, live primitive thermophilic (heat loving) bacteria, similar to the microorganisms that have been discovered living in thermovents deep on the ocean bottom and in the hot pools of Yellowstone National Park, and as tough as the extremophiles living within ice sheets in Antarctica and possibly even on meteors in deep space. This deep hot biosphere gets its energy not from the sun like we surface-dwelling creatures do, but from the energy of the earth?s interior. It may be so dense that is cumulatively outweighs all surface life combined, including trees and plants!

Fossil fuels, or hydrocarbons, says Gold, are not the by-product of decaying organic matter as most geologists believe. Instead, long before life formed on earth hydrocarbons developed naturally in the planet?s interior, just as they have been discovered on other planetary bodies and moons in the solar system. From the light gas methane to the heavy liquid petroleum, hydrocarbons exist in prodigious quantities and great depths and could sustain our energy needs for many centuries or millennia to come (George Dubya Bush would love this theory).

The reason scientists think that hydrocarbons have their origins in dead plants is that petroleum contains molecules that are typically the by-product of decaying organic matter. Also, when you pass light through petroleum it exhibits an optical property of rotating in a right-handed fashion, which is the result of having more right-handed molecules than left-handed molecules. (Molecules come in both right and left handed versions, but living organisms consist mostly of right-handed molecules, so a preponderance of them would indicate an organic origin.) The reason for this, says Gold, is that petroleum and other hydrocarbons have seeped up through the rocks from tens of kilometers below the surface, and in doing do have absorbed organic matter along the way. These organic signs, he concludes, are secondary to the true origin of hydrocarbons.

Evidence for Gold?s theory comes from numerous sources: petroleum from deeper levels in the crust contains fewer signs of biological origin than petroleum from shallower levels; oil from different regions of the planet should show differing chemical signs because of the different forms of life from which it was allegedly formed, yet all oil shows a common chemical signature, whish you would expect if it had a common origin deep inside the earth; one would expect to find oil at geological levels of abundant plant life but, in fact, it is found below such layers; the natural gas methane is found in many locations where life most likely did not thrive; diamonds are carbon crushed under high pressure, which Gold thinks implies the presence of carbon hundreds of kilometers below the surface.

Perhaps most striking, Gold notes that most oil fields contain far more reserves than oil companies anticipated because, he argues, they are refilled from the much larger hydrocarbon supply lying below ? the drop in pressure in the oil cavity caused by drillings draws the hydrocarbons from the higher-pressure cavities below. Finally, the earth?s surface is very rich in carbonate rocks, which, as their name implies, are loaded with carbon. Gold believes that the source of the carbon is not biological but astronomical ?the earth was formed by an accretion of rocks similar to the meteorites that bombard the planet today (shooting stars), one type of which is a carbonaceous chondrite. When heated under the extreme pressure of a condensing earth they would have released substantial quantities of hydrocarbons. Lighter than the surrounding material, they would then rise toward the surface, thus accounting for the high carbon content in the earth?s crust.

Geologists and earth scientists have explanations for these anomalies, but I?m impressed with Gold?s track record of being right about other heresies he has proposed, such as the nature of pulsar stars, the extent of the layer of moon dust the Apollo astronauts would encounter, and even a new theory of hearing. Like any good scientist, Gold admits that the only way to find out if his theory is correct is to drill deep into the earth?s surface and see what?s down there. In other words, the theory will stand or fall on the evidence.

interesting...

Not anymore, I got my PhD at the University of Utah Medical School though, and while I was there, I wrote for the City Weekly....they occassionally still ask me to write.

....and SLC is beautiful, but ya, it was a little scarry lol

Very interesting!

Isn't that 'theory' like a reverse tinfoil hat load of bullshit?

No not really, the evidence provided is solid enough to be taken seriously, but it does need to be tested to decide if it's true or not

cool cool thanks

this thoery, will be "proven" wrong and oil prices will continue to skyrocket. The oil companies quarterly revenues depend on it being "proven" wrong.

I kinda think something like that would hold true more than dead dinosaurs.. Personally I've never bought into the dead dinosaur = oil stuff.. Just doesn't seem right to me for some reason.

I mean it would take a hell of a lot of dead dinosaurs in a pile to add up to some of the pockets of oil we find. As well as where did the oil that is under the ocean's floors come from?

dino-fish :thumbsup

I have to agree that this explanation makes a hell of a lot more sense than a bunch of dead stuff that happens to collect into pools. Whats the chances of actually being able to drill to a required depth to test it with our current tech?

that is very damn interesting :2 cents:

That's quite interesting. I did not buy that 'Oil from fossil fuel' idea back in HS either. It's just impossible to beleive.

Oil is this magic substance that aliens pour into the Earth?s crust daily in exchange for our top secret cookie recipes.

that's great and possibly true, however, since we cannot drill a hole deep enough there is no way to prove that hypothesis, right?

let alone get that oil

Oil is made from dinosaur fossils.

i can only imagine what would happen if we did somehow manage to drill to the code :Oh crap

It'd be that whole Final Fantasy movie n shit come to life :1orglaugh

First I was tempted to call bullshit, but it's a interesting theory. Testing it would be even more interesting. Congrats for the article :thumbsup!

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh no shit eh! :thumbsup

Cheesecake isn't cake. :winkwink:

... the "fossil fuel" point of view is that decomposed plant life accounts for the majority of the petroleum we've found. :2 cents:

Very true! And that simple truth my friend is the most important thing by leaps and bounds in this thread.

Well, I'll be the first one to say it in this thread.... you write really well.

Actually they just can't refine enough of it right now. They are just using oil running out as an excuse.

The entire US economy depends on it. (the petrodollar...)

Professor Gold passed away http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases..._obit.hrs.html but his controversial idea might just be proven right...... who knows.

When the guy who came up with Plate Tectonic theory first came out with his idea, people thought he was nuts too.

The more I read about Professor Gold, the more I like him. He's a pure thinker who doesn't give a fuck what orthodox academia says:

"Thomas Gold, 1968, in the laboratory of the Cornell University Center for Radiophysics and Space Research. His 1955 prediction -- that lunar explorers would find a layer of fine rock dust on the moon -- was about to be tested by Apollo 11 astronauts. Cornell University Photography Copyright hahaha169; Cornell University Click on the image for a high-resolution version (1302 x 1908 pixels, 1454K)

Indeed, despite the intense opposition they often encountered, many of Gold's most outrageous -- and passionately held -- ideas had a curious habit of turning out to be right. For example, in 1946 as a graduate student in astrophysics at Cambridge University, Gold became intrigued by a problem that was perplexing auditory physiologists at the time: Why is the human ear so good at discriminating between different musical notes? Prevailing thought held that the structures of the ear were too weak and flabby to resonate and that it was the brain -- not the ear -- that was responsible for detecting the pitch of a note. Gold disagreed and designed an elegant experiment to prove his theory that the ear was indeed capable of resonating.

His research was largely ignored until nearly 30 years later, when physiologists, armed with more refined tools, began to uncover evidence for the existence of natural amplifiers: tiny hair cells that provide feedback to vibrating membranes in the ear, enabling them to resonate. Another of Gold's ideas that encountered initial resistance was his 1967 theory about the nature of pulsars, objects in deep space that produce regularly pulsing radio waves. Gold's explanation, that pulsars are neutron stars emitting radio waves as they spin, was considered so implausible that he was not even allowed to defend it at a conference. However, the discovery of a pulsar in the Crab Nebula led to the theory's universal acceptance. "

interesting article

Not a new idea at all, and the MythBusters would call this one 'Busted' by now; at least in any practical sense.

Here's a pretty informative article that sums it up. http://www.energybulletin.net/2423.html