Titan Has More Oil Than Earth

Space.com ^ | 13 February 2008 | Space.com Staff

[jmcenanly]

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 is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan."

At minus 179 degrees Celsius (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit), Titan would be an awful place to live. Instead of water, liquid hydrocarbons in the form of methane and ethane are present on the moon's surface, and tholins probably make up its dunes. The term "tholins" was coined by Carl Sagan in 1979 to describe the complex organic molecules at the heart of prebiotic chemistry.

Titan has long been viewed as a place that might be somewhat like Earth just before biology got going.

Cassini has mapped about 20 percent of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves, according to a NASA statement. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than Earth's coal reserves.

[aft_lizard]

Actually fossil fuels coming from Dinosaurs is a misconception, they more than likely came from algae and bacteria not the drippins from dead dinosaurs.

[aft_lizard]

Yep and methane is the simplest hydro-carbon you can make, it is probably quite easy under the right conditions to synthesize, once you can do that longer hydro-carbon chains are quite capable of being made.

[alecqss]

Oh, and the closest thing to an 'absolute and unassailable truth' about 'fossil fuel theory' is that it didn't come from dinosaurs. If you really think that is what scientists say then you obviously don't read anything they write.

It is generally accepted that they formed from the fossilized remains of dead plants and animals. "Fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal - that's why they're called fossil fuels) were formed from vegetation and yes, dinosaurs, deposited during the Carboniferous through the Permian eras which extended 380 to 245 million years ago." -http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/ask_quester/answers_fossil_fuels.html, for example. And, on a final note, I don't really think all of that; terribly disappointed in having to point it out explicitly.

[Publius6961]

OK, what is it about Titan that makes it so uniquely a hydrocarbon magnet. What environment surrounds it?
Specifically, what prevents other planets and moons from being similarly blessed (for lack of a better word).

If I recall correctly, Velikovsky asserted that all earth hydrocarbons were space borne...

[Antonello]

Oh, and the closest thing to an 'absolute and unassailable truth' about 'fossil fuel theory' is that it didn't come from dinosaurs. If you really think that is what scientists say then you obviously don't read anything they write.

It is generally accepted that they formed from the fossilized remains of dead plants and animals. "Fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal - that's why they're called fossil fuels) were formed from vegetation and yes, dinosaurs, deposited during the Carboniferous through the Permian eras which extended 380 to 245 million years ago." -http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/ask_quester/answers_fossil_fuels.html, for example. And, on a final note, I don't really think all of that; terribly disappointed in having to point it out explicitly.

I concede that you are technically correct that dinosaur remains were not excluded from the biomass that produced biogenic hydrocarbons. However I stand by the conclusions that: a) dinosaurs were in no way a required or essential ingredient in oil, and b) the amount of mass contributed by animal remains compared to that of plant and bacterial sources is so tiny as to be immeasurably insignificant.

But as I said, I concede your point. Now how about you acknowledge that your original post was incorrect to assert that scientists consider it to be an 'absolute and unassailable truth' that all petroleum comes from dinosaurs?

[alecqss]

No ack.

[Antonello]

No ack.

No surprise.

[SunkenCiv]

I think I’d read that somewhere...

Titan Has More Oil Than Earth
space.com | Today | Space.com Staff
Posted on 02/13/2008 7:02:35 PM EST by Names Ash Housewares
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1969957/posts

Titan Has More Oil Than Earth
Space.com | 13 February 2008 | Staff
Posted on 02/14/2008 12:35:37 PM EST by Magnum44
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1970343/posts

[lepton]

Gas and heating prices would be non-existent if it were feasible to capture the energy there.

Yeah...but the oxygen prices!

[Captain Beyond]

bump