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Keyword: thomasgold

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  • One is the loneliest number for mine-dwelling bacterium

    10/09/2008 11:01:43 PM PDT · by neverdem · 13 replies · 442+ views
    Nature News ^ | 9 October 2008 | Laura Starr
    Sole member of world's first single-species ecosystem depends on rocks and radioactivity for life. The rod-shaped D. audaxviator was recovered from thousands of litres of water collected deep in the Mponeng Mine in South Africa.Greg Wanger, J. Craig Venter Institute / Gordon Southam, University of Western Ontario Nestled kilometres down in the hot, dark vaults of Earth's crust, scientists have discovered a remarkably lonely bacterium species. The rod-shaped bacterium, Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, lives independently of any other organism in a part of the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa, some 2.8 kilometres beneath Earth's surface. There, water flows from...
  • At 2.8 km down, a 1-of-a-kind microorganism lives all alone [descende, Audax viator ...]

    10/09/2008 2:26:18 PM PDT · by Mike Fieschko · 13 replies · 334+ views
    physorg.com ^ | October 09, 2008 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    Desulforudis audaxviator is an organism that lives independently in total darkness and at high temperature by reducing sulfate and fixing carbon and nitrogen from its environment, deep within the Earth. It constitutes the first known single-species ecosystem. Illustration © 2008 Thanya Suwansawad Click here to enlarge image The first ecosystem ever found having only a single biological species has been discovered 2.8 kilometers (1.74 miles) beneath the surface of the earth in the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa. There the rod-shaped bacterium Desulforudis audaxviator exists in complete isolation, total darkness, a lack of oxygen, and 60-degree-Celsius heat...
  • Oil-eating bacteria make light work of heavy fuel

    12/12/2007 9:10:17 PM PST · by neverdem · 27 replies · 105+ views
    Nature News ^ | 12 December 2007 | Katharine Sanderson
    Unpicking the route by which microbes produce methane could help to boost the process. Getting usable fuel out of the heavy oil of Canada's tar fields takes a lot of energy.Ian M. Head Researchers have worked out how natural bacteria deep within the Earth break down crude oil and produce methane. This knowledge could help with projects to encourage these bacteria to covert more oil, faster. And it could point towards a way to produce hydrogen - an even cleaner fuel - by using these natural fuel-processing plants.Microbes living on the crude oil in petroleum reservoirs usually start by biodegrading...
  • Rare Microorganism That Produces Hydrogen May Be Key To Tomorrow's Hydrogen Economy

    07/08/2008 6:58:10 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 42 replies · 3+ views
    www.sciencedaily.com ^ | 08 July 2008 | Adapted from materials provided by Virginia Tech.
    An ancient organism from the pit of a collapsed volcano may hold the key to tomorrow's hydrogen economy. Scientists from across the world have formed a team to unlock the process refined by a billions-year old archaea. The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute will expedite the research by sequencing the hydrogen-producing organism for comparative genomics. When members of the Russian Academy of Sciences isolated a rare archaeal microorganism that breaks down cellulose and produces hydrogen, Biswarup Mukhopadhyay, an assistant professor with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, saw an opportunity to open a door for development of...
  • Meet the Intraterrestrials

    06/12/2008 1:00:33 AM PDT · by neverdem · 14 replies · 3+ views
    NY Times ^ | June 10, 2008 | Olivia Judson
    Some weeks ago, I wrote about microbes in the air and their possible role in helping clouds form, in causing rain and in altering the chemistry of the high atmosphere. This week, I want to go in the opposite direction and plunge down into the earth. For many bacteria live deep in the oceans and deep in the earth, far from light, far from what we normally think of as good, comfortable places to live. For example: the bottom of the Mariana Trench. This is a seam on the sea floor in the northwestern Pacific, not far from the island...
  • Scientists Document Bustling Community Far Below Ocean Floor

    05/27/2008 4:53:13 PM PDT · by neverdem · 13 replies · 38+ views
    NY Times ^ | May 27, 2008 | HENRY FOUNTAIN
    The lost civilization of Atlantis may just be legend, but way down below the ocean (to quote the folksinger Donovan) there are some things that are very real — namely, bacteria and archaea. By some estimates, sub-seafloor prokaryotes may account for two-thirds of the biomass of these types of organisms on Earth. The latest evidence for such a huge undersea biosphere, and a depth record of sorts, is reported in Science by R. John Parkes of Cardiff University and colleagues. They have found living prokaryotes 5,335 feet below the ocean floor off Newfoundland, about twice as deep as the previous...
  • Dinosaur killer may have struck oil

    05/08/2008 12:11:16 PM PDT · by Berlin_Freeper · 45 replies · 4+ views
    Australian Broadcasting Corporation ^ | May 07, 2008 | Larry O'Hanlon
    The dinosaur-killing Chicxulub meteor might have ignited an oilfield rather than forests when it slammed into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, say geologists. Smoke-related particles found in sediments formed at the time of the impact are strikingly similar to those created by modern high-temperature coal and oil burning, as opposed to forest fires, says Professor Simon Brassell of Indiana University. He and colleagues from Italy and the UK publish their report on the discovery in the May issue of the journal Geology. ...What he and his colleagues have found instead are particles called cenospheres, which resemble the...
  • Titan Has More Oil Than Earth

    02/14/2008 9:35:37 AM PST · by Magnum44 · 25 replies · 24+ views
    Space.com ^ | 13 February 2008 | Staff
    Saturn's smoggy moon Titan has hundreds of times more natural gas and other liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, scientists said today....
  • Titan Has More Oil Than Earth

    02/16/2008 8:21:16 AM PST · by jmcenanly · 29 replies · 35+ views
    Space.com ^ | 13 February 2008 | Space.com Staff
    Saturn's smoggy moon Titan has hundreds of times more natural gas and other liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, scientists said today. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky on the miserable moon, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. This much was known. But now the stuff has been quantified using observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. "Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material — it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Ralph Lorenz, a Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "This vast carbon inventory...
  • Research Finds Life 1000 Feet Beneath Ocean Floor

    01/03/2003 9:00:10 AM PST · by RightWhale · 61 replies · 534+ views
    spaceref.com ^ | 3 Jan 03 | staff
    Research Finds Life 1000 Feet Beneath Ocean Floor CORVALLIS, Ore. A new study has discovered an abundance of microbial life deep beneath the ocean floor in ancient basalt that forms part of the Earth's crust, in research that once more expands the realm of seemingly hostile or remote environments in which living organisms can apparently thrive. The research was done off the coast of Oregon near a sea-floor spreading center on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, by scientists from Oregon State University and several other institutions. It will be published Friday in the journal Science. In 3.5 million-year-old crust...
  • Titan Has More Oil Than Earth

    02/13/2008 4:02:35 PM PST · by Names Ash Housewares · 67 replies · 56+ views
    space.com ^ | Today | Space.com Staff
    Saturn's smoggy moon Titan has hundreds of times more natural gas and other liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, scientists said today. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky on the miserable moon, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. This much was known. But now the stuff has been quantified using observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. "Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material — it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Ralph Lorenz, a Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "This vast carbon inventory...
  • Titan's surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth

    02/13/2008 11:10:35 AM PST · by Brian S. Fitzgerald · 136 replies · 161+ views
    SpaceRef.com ^ | February 13, 2008 | ESA
    Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA, are reported in the 29 January 2008 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters. "Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material--it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz. "This vast carbon inventory is an important...
  • Shedding light on deep-sea thermal vents

    01/15/2008 12:20:49 PM PST · by SunkenCiv · 12 replies · 27+ views
    Cosmos magazine ^ | Thursday, January 10, 2008 | Agence France-Presse
    Marine seismologists have overturned an existing theory about the internal workings of deep-sea hydrothermal vents... Until now, the main hypothesis about hydrothermal vents has been that gigantic pressure forces seawater through large faults along the flanks of the ridge. The water, the theory goes, is then heated by coming into proximity with volcanic rock before re-emerging at the middle of the ridges, where the vents are usually clustered... But in the first detailed investigation into vent circulation, a team led by Maya Tolstoy of Columbia University's Earth Observatory in New York City... placed seismometers over a four-square-kilometre area of the...
  • Deep-ocean vents are a source of oil and gas (evidence of abiogenic hydrocarbons)

    01/31/2008 9:42:53 PM PST · by neverdem · 35 replies · 97+ views
    Nature News ^ | 31 January 2008 | Rachel Courtland
    Hydrocarbons bubble up from the mid-Atlantic's Lost City. Deep-sea vents could offer a non-biological source of oil and gas.D. KELLEY & M. ELEND, UNIV. WASHINGTON INST. FOR EXPLORATION/URI-IAO/NOAA/THE LOST CITY SCIENCE TEAM Undersea thermal vents can yield unexpected bounty: natural gas and the building blocks of oil products. In a new analysis of Lost City, a hydrothermal field in the mid-Atlantic, researchers have found that these organic molecules are being created through inorganic processes, rather than the more typical decomposition of once-living material. Most of the planet's oil and natural gas deposits were created when decomposing biological matter is 'cooked'...
  • Lost City pumps life-essential chemicals at rates unseen at typical black smokers

    01/31/2008 1:28:30 PM PST · by decimon · 38 replies · 10+ views
    University of Washington ^ | January 31, 2008 | Unknown
    Hydrocarbons -- molecules critical to life -- are being generated by the simple interaction of seawater with the rocks under the Lost City hydrothermal vent field in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Being able to produce building blocks of life makes Lost City-like vents even stronger contenders as places where life might have originated on Earth, according to Giora Proskurowski and Deborah Kelley, two authors of a paper in the Feb. 1 Science. Researchers have ruled out carbon from the biosphere as a component of the hydrocarbons in Lost City vent fluids. Hydrocarbons, molecules with various combinations of hydrogen and carbon...
  • BLACK-GOLD BLUES Discovery backs theory oil not 'fossil fuel'

    02/02/2008 1:52:27 AM PST · by Fred Nerks · 143 replies · 236+ views
    WND ^ | February 1, 2008 | By Jerome R. Corsi
    New evidence supports premise that Earth produces endless supply ------------------ A study published in Science Magazine today presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil, which asserts oil is a natural product the Earth generates constantly rather than a "fossil fuel" derived from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs. The lead scientist on the study – Giora Proskurowski of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle – says the hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field were produced by the abiotic synthesis of...
  • Massive deep-water oil find in Brazil challenges technology

    12/01/2007 5:44:49 PM PST · by Graybeard58 · 83 replies · 155+ views
    McClatchy Washington Bureau ^ | December 1, 2007 | Jack Chang
    RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — This country, famed for its development of sugar-cane-produced ethanol, soon could become one of the world's great oil powers — if its state-controlled energy company, Petrobras, can tap a potentially massive deposit beneath the South Atlantic Ocean. Experts believe the deposit, in the Tupi field 180 miles off the southeastern Brazilian coast, holds up to 8 billion barrels of light oil and natural gas. If confirmed, the deposit would be the largest petroleum find in seven years and would propel Brazil to the No. 12 position in oil reserves, after the United States and ahead...
  • CNBC Live: Earth Oil Supplies 3x Previous Estimates

    11/14/2006 8:05:49 AM PST · by farlander · 29 replies · 655+ views
    CNBC ^ | CNBC Live
    CNBC is discussing live the new report that there seems to be three times more oil on Earth than previously thought. The report explicitly states that the 'peak oil' theory is completely false.
  • Does Deep Earth Host Untapped Fuel?

    03/05/2006 1:03:29 PM PST · by billorites · 102 replies · 2,894+ views
    ABCnews.com ^ | January 19, 2006 | Lee Dye
    Thomas Gold was not your typical radical. Far from being a mad scientist, he was a brilliant professor of astronomy at Cornell University, but he succeeded in driving many others mad with theories that flew in the face of conventional wisdom. His most controversial idea was among his last, and geologists and petroleum experts around the world still rage against Gold for suggesting they were dead wrong in their understanding of how oil and gas are formed in the Earth's crust. Now, a couple of decades after Gold first suggested that hydrocarbons are formed deep underground by geological processes and...
  • Rebel with a Cause: The Optimistic Scientist

    04/10/2007 6:39:53 PM PDT · by ccmay · 9 replies · 264+ views
    TCS Daily ^ | 10 April 2007 | Benny Peiser
    Freeman Dyson: My optimism about the long-term survival of life comes mainly from imagining what will happen when life escapes from this planet and becomes adapted to living in vacuum. There is then no real barrier to stop life from spreading through the universe. Hopping from one world to another will be about as easy as hopping from one island in the Pacific to another. And then life will diversify to fill the infinite variety of ecological niches in the universe, as it has done already on this planet. ... Concerning the climate models, I know enough of the details...
  • Gas escaping from ocean floor may drive global warming

    07/20/2006 4:08:30 AM PDT · by Pharmboy · 101 replies · 2,284+ views
    UC Santa Barbara via Eureka Alert ^ | 7-19-06 | Ira Leifer and Gail Gallessich
    (Santa Barbara, Calif.) -- Gas escaping from the ocean floor may provide some answers to understanding historical global warming cycles and provide information on current climate changes, according to a team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The findings are reported in the July 20 on-line version of the scientific journal, Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Remarkable and unexpected support for this idea occurred when divers and scientists from UC Santa Barbara observed and videotaped a massive blowout of methane from the ocean floor. It happened in an area of gas and oil seepage coming out of small volcanoes...
  • If hydrocarbons are renewable- then is "Peak Oil" a fraud?

    12/05/2006 1:02:40 AM PST · by 2ndDivisionVet · 159 replies · 2,737+ views
    321 Energy ^ | December 5, 2006 | Joel Bainerman
    Are hydrocarbons "renewable"- and if so- what does such a conclusion mean for the future of the world's oil and natural gas supplies? The question is critical due to the enormous amount of coverage the issue of "Peak Oil" is receiving from the mainstream press. If the supply of hydrocarbons is renewable- then the contrary to the conventional wisdom being touted throughout the mainstream press today- the world is NOT running out of oil. Unbeknownst to Westerners, there have actually been for quite some time now two competing theories concerning the origins of petroleum. One theory claims that oil is...
  • Perspective: India's next big business? (Oil)

    12/17/2005 11:42:55 PM PST · by nickcarraway · 10 replies · 702+ views
    C|Net ^ | Michael Kanellos
    DOHA, Qatar--Srhi Shankar Aiyar, minister of petroleum for India, knows the idea sounds outlandish, but he believes that India could become a petrodollar state in the 21st century. "If you don't get into the Bay of Bengal now, you will be left back as an Okie," he said during a presentation at the International Petroleum Technology Conference last week. "Unless you step into the breach, you may regret one day dismissing me as a raving lunatic." The optimism is grounded in massive oil deposits, close to 30 billion tons, in Central India. That's twice the size of the deposits in...
  • Plenty of Oil—Just Drill Deeper

    09/06/2006 9:36:29 PM PDT · by thackney · 86 replies · 1,702+ views
    Business Week ^ | SEPTEMBER 6, 2006 | Mark Morrison
    The discovery of reserves in the Gulf of Mexico means supply isn't topping out ... WORLDWIDE DEPOSITS. Other parts of the world that once appeared beyond the pale may also come into play. Areas believed to have oil deposits extremely deep beneath the ocean floor, which could now become commercially recoverable, include the North Sea off the coast of Britain, the Nile River Delta off the coast of Egypt, and possibly coastal Brazil, says Andrew Latham, a vice-president at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh, Scotland. Other analysts say West Africa could harbor lots of ultra-deep deposits. The areas have...
  • The Origins of Peak Oil Doomerism

    12/11/2006 7:16:04 PM PST · by SunkenCiv · 17 replies · 633+ views
    Energy Bulletin ^ | 6 Dec 2006 | Toby Hemenway
    People in the Peak Oil movement chafe at the label of doomer, but many of us do have an apocalyptic bent. Although plenty of Peak Oil commentary is sober analysis, a survey of the major websites and books quickly brings up apocalyptic titles like dieoff.org, oilcrash.com, The Death of the Oil Economy, The End of Suburbia, and The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Peak Oil writings are sprinkled with predictions that billions will die, civil order will collapse, and even that civilization will end. Scientists, too, aren't immune. During geologist Ken Deffeyes's Peak Oil presentations, he displays the words "war,"...
  • Prospecting for Oil? Look In an Asteroid Crater

    10/07/2006 6:33:48 PM PDT · by Fred Nerks · 87 replies · 1,847+ views
    space.com website ^ | 14 December 1999 | By Michael Paine
    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...
  • LINK LISTING - Space Propulsion Techniques and Technologies

    01/24/2005 2:01:06 PM PST · by vannrox · 9 replies · 5,385+ views
    VARIOUS ^ | FR Post 1-24-05 | VARIOUS
      POSTAL STS - Solar Thruster Sailor RSS - Ring Segment System LTH - Launcher Transport Head EFO - Experimental Flying Object RSC - Rotational Slingshot Catapult L I N K S ENGLISH Search - Solar Sailing - Propulsion Systems - Thruster - Lifters - Magnetism, Diamagnetism - Gravity, Antigravity, Gyroscope, Rotation - Space Tethers and Catapults - Space - UFO - Materials - Space Settlement - Space Mining - Space Tugboats - deflection - Sun - micro-/ nano spacecraft - Billboards, Message Lists - News - Newsgroups - Search - Solar Sailing Sites www.solarsails.info Benjamin Diedrichs NEW (July...
  • Time Before Time [speculative cosmology]

    08/30/2006 1:01:48 AM PDT · by snarks_when_bored · 130 replies · 3,128+ views
    Seed Magazine ^ | August 28, 2006 | Sean Carroll
    TIME BEFORE TIME An event like the Big Bang is about as likely as billions of coin tosses all coming up heads. Explaining why that is might take us from empty space to other universes--and through the mirror of time. by Sean Carroll • Posted August 28, 2006 11:53 AM From the SEPTEMBER issue of Seed:    The nature of time is such that the influence of the very beginning of the universe stretches all the way into your kitchen—you can make an omelet out of an egg, but you can't make an egg out of an omelet. Time, unlike...
  • 'Fossil fuel' theory takes hit with NASA finding

    12/02/2005 7:00:55 PM PST · by seastay · 150 replies · 3,885+ views
    worldnetdaily ^ | December 1, 2005
    New study shows methane on Saturn's moon Titan not biological NASA scientists are about to publish conclusive studies showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature is found on Saturn's giant moon Titan, a finding that validates a new book's contention that oil is not a fossil fuel. "We have determined that Titan's methane is not of biologic origin," reports Hasso Niemann of the Goddard Space Flight Center, a principal NASA investigator responsible for the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer aboard the Cassini-Huygens probe that landed on Titan Jan. 14. Niemann concludes the methane "must be replenished by geologic processes on Titan,...
  • Oil Is Well: The Shortage Is A Myth, And Not A New One

    06/04/2006 7:59:38 AM PDT · by rdmartinjd · 43 replies · 1,491+ views
    TheVanguard.Org ^ | 2 June 2006 | Rod D. Martin
    "America has no shortage of oil... Washington, DC has a shortage of the political will required to let American workers go get it." -- Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) With oil prices reaching record levels, the left is up to its old tricks, blaming the President and calling for lots of expensive big government “solutions”. As part of this push, they argue that we're running out of oil. But clearly, this argument is not new -- and it's dead wrong. In 1874, Pennsylvania's state geologist fretted that America had only a four-year supply of oil left. He was wrong. In 1914,...
  • Oil Without End?

    02/15/2003 9:47:02 PM PST · by CalConservative · 24 replies · 1,805+ views
    Fortune ^ | 2/4/03 | Julie Creswell
    BRAINSTORMOil Without End? Revisionists say oil isn't a fossil fuel. That could mean there's lots more of it. FORTUNE Tuesday, February 4, 2003 By Julie Creswell In the quiet waters off the coast of Vietnam lies an area known as Bach Ho, or White Tiger Field. There, and in the nearby Black Bear and Black Lion fields, exploration companies are drilling more than a mile into solid granite--so-called basement rock--for oil. That's a puzzle: Oil isn't supposed to be found in basement rock, which never rose near the surface of the earth where ancient plants grew and dinosaurs walked. Yet...
  • Supplies of oil may be inexhaustible

    05/29/2002 8:18:56 AM PDT · by jimkress · 93 replies · 639+ views
    Detroit News ^ | 5/29/2002 | Bruce Bartlett
    <p>On April 16, Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, published a startling report that old oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico were somehow being refilled. That is, new oil was being discovered in fields where it previously had not existed.</p>
  • The world has more oil not less

    12/24/2001 11:55:44 AM PST · by ATOMIC_PUNK · 36 replies · 2,038+ views
    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 ...
  • Methane on Mars: the plot thickens

    08/02/2005 12:00:01 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 31 replies · 913+ views
    New Scientist ^ | 8/02/05 | Maggie McKee
    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...
  • Peak oil theorists don't know Jack ( It Could Increase U.S. Reserves by 50% )

    09/05/2006 10:03:24 PM PDT · by demlosers · 106 replies · 2,322+ views
    Globe and Mail ^ | 5 September 2006 | PATRICK BRETHOUR
    The elephants aren't extinct yet. Chevron Corp. and its partners say they have tapped into an area that may contain as much as 15 billion barrels of oil in the ultradeep waters of the Gulf of Mexico — the kind of massive reservoir of crude that the industry dubs an elephant discovery. The days of such discoveries were supposedly gone, with oil supplies peaking as the world simply ran out of big oil-producing fields, according to pessimistic forecasters. Instead, high technology and sky-high oil prices have combined to transform dud prospects into billions of barrels of crude. “The industry is...
  • Marine Methane Heats Things Up

    09/01/2006 9:17:01 PM PDT · by neverdem · 24 replies · 629+ views
    ScienceNOW Daily News ^ | 28 August 2006 | Julie Rehmeyer
    Oil seeping from the seafloor may have contributed to climate change long before the internal combustion engine did. The petroleum deposits are rich in the powerful greenhouse gas methane, which, according to a new study, may have played a major role in two previous episodes of global warming. Bedrock below the ocean bottom keeps a lid on oil reservoirs, but it's not an impermeable cap. Small cracks allow petroleum and methane to bubble to the surface. Once there, the petroleum oxidizes and turns to tar, which sinks. Meanwhile, the methane drifts into the atmosphere, where it makes up about 15%...
  • Scientist stirs the cauldron: oil, he says, is renewable

    11/19/2001 10:07:24 AM PST · by Aurelius · 208 replies · 2,965+ views
    Boston Globe | May 22, 2001 | David L. Chandler
    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 ...
  • Shaped from clay [origin of life]

    11/04/2005 5:00:06 AM PST · by PatrickHenry · 345 replies · 3,587+ views
    Nature Magazine ^ | 03 November 2005 | Philip Ball
    Minerals help molecules thought to have been essential for early life to form. A team of US scientists may have found the 'primordial womb' in which the first life on Earth was incubated. Lynda Williams and colleagues at Arizona State University in Tempe have discovered that certain types of clay mineral convert simple carbon-based molecules to complex ones in conditions mimicking those of hot, wet hydrothermal vents (mini-volcanoes on the sea bed). Such complex molecules would have been essential components of the first cell-like systems on Earth. Having helped such delicate molecules to form, the clays can also protect them...
  • UC Riverside Researchers Identify Clay as Major Contributor to Oxygen that Enabled Early Animal Life

    02/03/2006 3:49:20 AM PST · by PatrickHenry · 35 replies · 731+ views
    University of California, Riverside ^ | February 2, 2006 | Iqbal Pittalwala
    Study suggests steps a planet must go through for complex animal life to arise. Clay made animal life possible on Earth, a UC Riverside-led study finds. A sudden increase in oxygen in the Earth’s recent geological history, widely considered necessary for the expansion of animal life, occurred just as the rate of clay formation on the Earth’s surface also increased, the researchers report. “Our study shows for the first time that the initial soils covering the terrestrial surface of Earth increased the production of clay minerals and provided the critical geochemical processes necessary to oxygenate the atmosphere and support multicellular...
  • At 30,000 feet down, where were the dinosaurs?

    11/29/2005 3:26:34 AM PST · by ovrtaxt · 72 replies · 3,177+ views
    WorldNetDaily.com ^ | November 29, 2005 | Jerome Corsi
    At 30,000 feet down, where were the dinosaurs? Posted: November 29, 20051:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Developments in deep-drilling for natural gas present serious challenges to those who still maintain "Fossil-Fuel" theories as to the origin of complex hydrocarbon fuels. The Western world's record for deep-well natural-gas exploration and production is held by the GHK Company in Oklahoma. From 1972 through 1974, the company engineered and drilled two Oklahoma natural-gas commercial wells at depths greater than 30,000 feet (approximately 5.7 miles) – the No. 1-27 Bertha Rogers well (total depth 31,441 feet) and the No. 1-28 E.R. Baden well, both located...
  • Oil Czar and ally

    10/11/2001 10:42:24 PM PDT · by JohnHuang2 · 3 replies · 232+ views
    TownHall.com ^ | Friday, October 12, 2001 | Larry Kudlow
    TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Larry KudlowQUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEWtownhall.comLarry Kudlow (back to story)October 12, 2001Oil Czar and ally Almost unnoticed in the wave of economic pessimism accompanying the war against terrorism is the precipitous plunge of oil prices. Since shortly after the Sept.11 bombing, oil has dropped about 25 percent from $30 a barrel to nearly $22. Gasoline prices at the pump have slipped $0.20 to $1.30. Just as negative oil shocks act on the economy like tax hikes, this (SET ITAL) tax-cut (END ITAL) like decline will surely boost ...
  • Hydrogen Production Method Could Bolster Fuel Supplies

    11/27/2004 10:23:36 PM PST · by neverdem · 85 replies · 2,584+ views
    NY Times ^ | November 28, 2004 | MATTHEW L. WALD
    WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 - Researchers at a government nuclear laboratory and a ceramics company in Salt Lake City say they have found a way to produce pure hydrogen with far less energy than other methods, raising the possibility of using nuclear power to indirectly wean the transportation system from its dependence on oil. The development would move the country closer to the Energy Department's goal of a "hydrogen economy," in which hydrogen would be created through a variety of means, and would be consumed by devices called fuel cells, to make electricity to run cars and for other purposes. Experts...
  • About Coal: America's most abundant energy resource

    10/07/2004 1:05:50 AM PDT · by xzins · 15 replies · 975+ views
    Clean Energy
    About Coal America's most abundant energy resource and a source of chemicals, fertilizer, and power worldwide. Bookmarks on this Page Introduction Domestic Resources Domestic Consumption World Resources World Consumption Introduction Coal is the generic name for a solid hydrocarbon substance that has been burned as fuel for hundreds of years. Thanks to technological advances, coal can now be converted into a synthesis gas that can be used as a feedstock for the production of chemicals, fertilizer, and electric power. Webster defines coal as "a black or brownish black solid combustible substance formed by the partial decomposition of vegetable matter...
  • Anything into Oil(solution to dependence on foregn oil?)

    04/21/2003 5:57:41 AM PDT · by honway · 142 replies · 15,713+ views
    DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 5 ^ | May 2003 | Brad Lemley
    In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can change almost anything into oil. Really. "This is a solution to three of the biggest problems facing mankind," says Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of Changing World Technologies, the company that built this pilot plant and has just completed its first industrial-size installation in Missouri. "This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming." Pardon me, says a reporter, shivering in the frigid dawn, but that sounds too good to be true. "Everybody says...
  • Abiotic Theory of Oil Formation

    06/09/2004 9:15:38 PM PDT · by narses · 67 replies · 1,242+ views
    There is an alternative theory about the formation of oil and gas deposits that could change estimates of potential future oil reserves. According to this theory, oil is not a fossil fuel at all, but was formed deep in the Earth's crust from inorganic materials. The theory was first proposed in the 1950s by Russian and Ukranian scientists. Based on the theory, successful exploratory drilling has been undertaken in the Caspian Sea region, Western Siberia, and the Dneiper-Donets Basin. The prevailing explanation for the formation of oil and gas deposits is that they are the remains of plant and animal...
  • Fossil Fuels Made without Fossils

    10/28/2004 10:55:18 PM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 18 replies · 1,549+ views
    The researchers squeezed materials common at the Earth's surface—iron oxide, calcite and water—to pressures ranging from 50,000 to 110,000 times the pressure at sea level. They then heated the samples to temperatures up to 1,500°C (2,700°F). They were able to get methane to form by reducing the carbon in calcite over a wide range of temperatures and pressures, supporting the possibility that the deep Earth may produce abiogenic hydrocarbons.