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The Earth has suffered thousands of violent collisions with asteroids and comets over the last four billion years. The scars from these collisions are impact craters. But the Earth hides its wounds well -- less than two hundred impact craters have been discovered. Many are buried deep below the surface. They were only found by accident during geological surveys that were part of the massive, ongoing effort to find oil for an energy-dependent world. If Russian theories about the non-biological origin of much of our oil prove to be accurate, then there may be good reasons for oil prospectors to...

Methane on Mars may be produced at rates 3000 times higher than previously thought and partially destroyed by dust storms, controversial new research suggests. The work is sure to reignite the debate over a possible biological origin for the gas, but another team reports that subsurface volcanism alone - and not life - can account for the gas. Sunlight is thought to destroy methane molecules in Mars's atmosphere over about 300 years. So recent discoveries of the gas by space- and ground-based instruments suggested it is actively being replenished by geological processes or – possibly – living microbes. The mystery...

The governor of Montana reached into the pocket of his black jeans, pulled out a vial of liquid and banged it on the table in front of him with a winning smile. "Diesel," he bellowed. "It smells nasty. It is nasty." Like one of the fairground hucksters who used to roam his giant western state, he paused, then lobbed a nugget of coal into the air, before pulling out another vial. "Now smell this. It doesn't smell at all. It is the future." Inside the second vial was a synthetic fuel made from, of all things, coal. It looks like...

<p>A chemistry professor at Columbia University who in March retracted two papers and part of a third published in a leading journal is now retracting four additional scientific papers.</p> <p>The retractions came after the experimental findings of the papers could not be reproduced by other researchers in the same laboratory.</p>

To efficiently operate a fuel cell, carbon monoxide has always been a major technical barrier. But now, chemical and biological engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have not only cleared that barrier—they also found a method to capture carbon monoxide's energy. To be useful in a power-generating fuel cell, hydrocarbons such as gasoline, natural gas, or ethanol must reform into a hydrogen-rich gas. A large, costly, and critical step to this process requires generating steam and forcing a reaction with carbon monoxide (CO). This process, called water-gas shift, produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2). Additional steps then must reduce the...

The nation's energy industry is struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Gas prices are soaring as a result of the catastrophic storm. America's reliance on overseas oil increases every year. And from his office in the North Bay city of Sebastopol, Mark Goldes envisions a day -- perhaps not so far off -- when none of this will be a problem. Goldes, 73, is chief executive of a small company called Magnetic Power Inc., which has spent years researching ways to, yes, generate power using magnets. Within a few months, he says, he might just have a breakthrough to report...

By Alan Caruba If you do an Internet search for "oil reserves", you get a ton of information, much of it announcements by various nations saying they have discovered vast potential new fields of crude oil and are, not surprisingly, eager to tap them. Then why are being told that we have to cut back consumption? The answer is political, not geological. The most casual look at the UN Kyoto Climate Control Treaty reveals the economic devastation that would occur if this and other industrialized nations were forced to cut back to 1990 levels of energy use. Economists warn ...

Magic Earth THE petroleum industry and the computer have been closely connected for many decades -- since the years when a computer was a human being calculating as fast as he could. Along with the space program and a few other endeavors, the oil industry has been elemental in driving computing technology forward, because petroleum geologists' appetite for processing power is insatiable. It is no accident that Texas Instruments, one of the pioneers in the computer business, was born in 1930 as Geophysical Service, a company that provided seismographic data to the oil industry. There is nothing new about seismic ...

The US government pays 3 billion dollars per year to farmers to let 34 million acres to lay fallow or be seeded in grass. If 25 million acres were planted in switchgrass and harvested once that year we could replace the current demand of petro gasoline with methanol. 24,333,333 acres times 6,000 gallons of ethanol per acre equals 146,000,000,000 gallons That number is the 400,000,000 gallons per day times 365. This wouldn't replace any other crop currently being cultivated and the three billion dollars should be used as incentives to farmers and processors to jump start this program. If we...

SCIENTIST STIRS THE CAULDRON: OIL, HE SAYS, IS RENEWABLEDavid L. Chandler, Globe staff Date: May 22, 2001 Page: A14 Section: Health Science It's as basic as the terminology people use in discussing sources of energy: On the one hand, there are "fossil fuels," left over from the decayed remains of millions of years worth of vegetation and destined to run out before long; on the other hand, there are "renewable" resources that could sustain human activities indefinitely. But what if fossil fuels aren't fossils, but are actually renewable and virtually inexhaustible? To most people, that question may sound as ...

If consumers are getting gouged, then gas station owners are being impaled. When gasoline prices spike, as they have in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, windfall profits rarely accrue to gas station owners. Kim Do, owner of a Coast station in Pleasanton, Calif., reports that in the immediate aftermath of the storm, she lost 8 to 10 cents on every gallon of gas she sold. "Customers are very angry—they call my prices a rip-off," Do says. "I tell them, 'I'm just like you.'" In fact, because retail prices are stickier than wholesale ones, gas stations make the fattest profits when...

Mexico's oil giant forks over so much money to the state that it's deeply in debt, and a price drop could set off a crisis.World oil prices are at near-record highs, and Mexico is pumping and exporting more crude than ever before. The country is the world's seventh-largest oil producer and one of the top three suppliers to the U.S., up there with Canada and Saudi Arabia. Yet state oil monopoly Petreolos Mexicanos (Pemex), a giant with $55.9 billion in revenue, is hardly thriving.Indeed, in recent years the company has only been able to make ends meet through massive borrowing,...

Study Reveals Natural Air Cleaners Bjorn Carey LiveScience Staff Writer/LiveScience.com Fri May 20, 2005 New! Improved! 20 percent more cleaning power! That could be the label on new smog-reducing product found in Earth's atmosphere. Natural chemicals in the air scrub away pollution more effectively than previously thought, according to new research. Chemicals in the air produce natural air cleaners called hydroxyl radicals, which gobble up smog hydrocarbons and break them down. These chemicals have turned out to be better than expected at producing a substance Mr. Clean would love: hydroxyl radicals, which consist of one oxygen atom and one atom...

As a prominent advocate for encouraging unconventional energy sources, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) was asked to testify today in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on his efforts to develop fuel from a vast untapped domestic oil reserve in tar sandsand oil shale -- a large part of which sits in eastern Utah. "Who would have guessed that in just Colorado and Utah, there is more recoverable oil than in the Middle East?" Hatch said. "We just don't count it among our nation's oil reserves because it is not yet being developed commercially. I find it disturbing...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A tiny oil company has snapped up leasing rights to a half-million acres in central Utah that it says could yield a billion barrels or more of oil. Geologists are calling it a spectacular find — the largest onshore discovery in at least 30 years, located in a region of complex geology long abandoned for exploration by major oil companies. It’s turning out to contain high-quality oil already commanding a premium at Salt Lake refineries. With the secret out, industry players expect a bidding war to break out at the next Utah leasing auction, set...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Contrary to popular myth the Earth is not warming significantly, according to new research published last month in Geophysical Research Letters by scientists with the universities of Rochester and Virginia. 1. The reports note two important findings that run counter to the view that human activity is causing catastrophic global warming. "It's been known for some time that satellites and surface thermometers give different temperature trends," said one of the reports' co-authors Prof. S. Fred Singer, president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). "We now have independent confirmation that the satellite results...

Other consequences of gas emissions are the dangerous and misleading indications that the flight instruments would provide. Air speed indicators and air pressure altimeters would give quite false and fluctuating readings. The autopilots, programmed for air, may have totally erroneous responses in the light gas, as indeed may the pilots themselves, who would be perplexed by a situation they had never encountered or contemplated before.

Titan - Saturn's major moon - may have a surface of oily lakes or oceans, according to the latest radar research. The giant Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico has transmitted a beam of radio waves towards Titan, and detected a faint echo over two hours later. Analysis of the dim signal suggests the presence of craters filled with oily oceans or lakes beneath the clouds. In January 2005 a European Space Agency probe - Huygens - will parachute on to Titan's surface to see what is there. Down to a sunless sea Titan is one of the most...