Can Hydrocarbons Form in the Mantle Without Organic Matter?

Geology.com ^ | July 2009 | Republished from a Carnegie Institution press release

[JmyBryan]

Could Deep Source Hydrocarbons Migrate Up Into Oil and Gas Reservoirs?

The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth's crust. Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons could also have been created deeper in the Earth and formed without organic matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle —the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core. The research was conducted by scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues from Russia and Sweden, and is published in the July 26, advanced on-line issue of Nature Geoscience.

[nralife]

Stole this link the other day:

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3952

Great reading!

[tired1]

Seems to occur on other planets, why mot here?

[JRandomFreeper]

See Triton, moon in this solar system, for an answer.

WTF are they doing for education these days? Complex hydrocarbons appear anywhere it LOOKS LIKE the conditions might be right.

And CHON isn't just an acronym, it's food.

/johnny

[coconutt2000]

Frankly, given the way carbon chains can self assemble in the right conditions without extreme pressure, heat and extreme pressure in the upper mantle seem a pretty good candidate for enabling that kind of reaction.

The idea that oil and other hydrocarbons are made solely from compressed organics is ridiculous. I think even to suggest that compressed organics constitute the majority of hydrocarbon deposits on our planet is similarly ridiculous.

One only has to look at the abundance of hydrocarbons in our Solar System to conclude that either dinosaurs can breathe vacuum or the idea that “fossil fuels” are made out of actual fossils is bogus.

[shibumi]

If hydrocarbons come from dead dinosaurs, then how come they’re plentiful throughout the universe, and found on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus?

[nralife]

Follow the money... :)

[freedomconservationist]

One of Saturn’s moons, “Titan”, has oceans of methane. Does that mean there’s life there? There are whole nebulae made of alcohols, does this mean there’s life there too? I think there’s merit to this theory.

[vbmoneyspender]

Frankly, given the way carbon chains can self assemble in the right conditions without extreme pressure, heat and extreme pressure in the upper mantle seem a pretty good candidate for enabling that kind of reaction.

What if life came from the same place?

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Didn’t you know that dinosaurs could fly? Remember, they’re related to birds, so ...

Coming to a theater near you, “Dinosaurs of Mars”.

[vbmoneyspender]

The Deep Hot Biosphere

When scientists discovered thermophiles?primitive microorganisms that live in deep seafloor vents and eat hydrocarbons (chemicals like gasoline)?experts assumed the mysterious bugs had little to tell us about ourselves or about the earth's core. Cornell University Professor Emeritus Gold, however, who for 20 years directed the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, here proposes the striking theory that "a full functioning... biosphere, feeding on hydrocarbons, exists deep within the earth, and that a primordial source of hydrocarbons lies even deeper."

Most scientists think the oil we drill for comes from decomposed prehistoric plants. Gold believes it has been there since the earth's formation, that it supports its own ecosystem far underground and that life there preceded life on the earth's surface. The "deep hot biosphere" hypothesis would explain the thermophiles, the minerals and the oil Swedish drillers found in 1990 under rock where no one expected them. The hot goo and massed gas far under our feet would also explain some mysterious historical earthquakes (notably the New Madrid, Mo., shocker of 1811), and it would tell puzzled geologists why so many oil reserves just happen to sit underneath coal fields. As later chapters explain, if Gold is right, the planet's oil reserves are far larger than policymakers expect, and earthquake-prediction procedures require a shakeup; moreover, astronomers hoping for extraterrestrial contacts might want to stop seeking life on other planets and inquire about life in them.

[Maelstorm]

It occurs on Titan.

[grey_whiskers]

Like, *PING*, dudes.

Sunken, hydrocarbons are putatively the *final remains* of dinosaurs et al so to speak -- hence the "Graves" of "GGG" connection to you...

Cheers!

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[neverdem]

Methane-derived hydrocarbons produced under upper-mantle conditions

[SubMareener]

This makes “fossil fuels” are a “renewable energy source”!

[John Locke]

Sorry, complex hydrocarbons are “irreducibly complex”. They could not possibly have formed naturally. They are clearly the work of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

[ExGeeEye]

Titanic Farts.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks grey_whiskers and neverdem. :')

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[SunkenCiv]

Methane Mystery: L.A. Emitting Twice as Much as Estimated
Discovery News via ENN | July 27, 2009 08:50 AM | Michael Reilly
Posted on 07/29/2009 3:40:27 AM PDT by Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2303407/posts

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

dead link (last I checked) from the former U pages of the late Dr. Gold:

Recharging of oil and gas fields
by Thomas Gold
September 1999

Vertically stacked domains of hydrocarbons have been found in all cases where drilling was sufficient to display them. The consistent tendency to find hydrocarbons below any producing region has been given the name of "Koudyavtsev's Rule", after the important Russian petroleum investigator who discovered this effect and collected a very large number of examples of it from all parts of the world. This rule would be the consequence of a deep origin of hydrocarbons and a steady process of outgassing... [In Kuwait] [t]he extraction of g[r]oundwater at the shallow levels results in the disintegration of the barrier to the oil levels just below, and the water in the wells is suddenly replaced by oil. The delicate pressure balance that had established itself, just up to the level that the strength of the rock could bear, had been upset. Similarly in stacked domains of hydrocarbons, the lower domains will be opened quickly, once the upper ones had been depleted and the fluid pressure thereby reduced sufficiently. This process can be fast, just as it is in Kuwait, where we had the advantage that a different liquid (water) filled the upper domain, so that one could identify the rupture to the oil filled domain below.

[bigheadfred]

Hee-hee-hee-chee

[Double Tap]

Me thinks some of you should brush up on the definition of hydrocarbons and the formation of crude oil.

This is not new science...

[Condor51]

Can Hydrocarbons Form in the Mantle Without Organic Matter?

Uh ... Yes.
Can I have my PhD in Chemistry now?

[Travis T. OJustice]

There are whole nebulae made of alcohols, does this mean there’s life there too?

Party life WOOOHOO, let's go space trippin'!

[bvw]

Maybe like diamonds forming in the presence of water.

[TomOnTheRun]

Say again?

[bvw]

I just remember from making diamonds that water is a particular type of poison to the process. It makes the diamonds skeletal — all edge and no middle, if they form. Great for some applications.

Just wondering out loud if in the presence of water, the carbon mix would tend to form hydrocarbon chains under such conditions of ultra high pressure and high temperature.

[TomOnTheRun]

That’s interesting. I had no idea about that. I will certainly look into the process of diamond formation. Especially some of the artificial ones coming up. Thank you for the info!

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

If hydrocarbons come from dead dinosaurs, then how come they’re plentiful throughout the universe, and found on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus?

That's where the dinosaurs came from, silly.

[redhead]

I always love to read this. Gold was brilliant.

More here.

[stefanbatory]

could this be why there are lakes of oil under the gulf of mexico? a place where an asteroid or some such thing impacted the earth’s crust and surely created all kinds of ways for oil to seep up from the mantle? makes one wonder if other prolific oil producing areas were impacted by similar cosmic bodies in the past...

[Old Student]

I ran into this article a few years ago:

RESOURCE GEOLOGY, vol. 56, no. 1, 85–98, 2006 85 Review

Abiogenic Origin of Hydrocarbons: An Historical Overview

Geoffrey P. GLASBY

Laboratory for Earthquake Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo,

7-3-1 Hongo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan

[e-mail: g.p.glasby@talk21.com] Contact address: 42, Warminster Crescent, Sheffield S8 9NW, U.K.

Received on October 6, 2005; accepted on October 26, 2005

Abstract: The two theories of abiogenic formation of hydrocarbons, the Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins and Thomas Gold's deep gas theory, have been considered in some detail. Whilst the Russian-Ukrainian theory was portrayed as being scientifically rigorous in contrast to the biogenic theory which was thought to be littered with invalid assumptions, this applies only to the formation of the higher hydrocarbons from methane in the upper mantle. In most other aspects, in particular the influence of the oxidation state of the mantle on the abundance of methane, this rigour is lacking especially when judged against modern criteria as opposed to the level of understanding in the 1950s to 1980s when this theory was at its peak. Thomas Gold's theory involves degassing of methane from the mantle and the formation of higher hydrocarbons from methane in the upper layers of the Earth's crust. However, formation of higher hydrocarbons in the upper layers of the Earth's crust occurs only as a result of Fischer-Tropsch-type reactions in the presence of hydrogen gas but is otherwise not possible on thermodynamic grounds. This theory is therefore invalid. Both theories have been overtaken by the increasingly sophisticated understanding of the modes of formation of hydrocarbon deposits in nature. Keywords: abiogenic hydrocarbons, Russian-Ukrainian theory, Thomas Gold

The overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths. Academician Professor Vladimir B. Porfir'ev, senior petroleum exploration geologist for the U.S.S.R., at the All-Union Conference on Petroleum and Petroleum Geology, Moscow, 1956.

I have gone to the best geologists and the best petroleum researchers, and I can give you the authoritative answer: no one knows. Edward Teller on how living matter is converted into petroleum (Teller, 1979)

I've copied and pasted the title and abstract, if y'all are interested in tracking it down and reading it, you're on your own, but I think I found it through the University of Oklahoma library system online.