Posted on 12/10/2018 11:43:51 AM PST by ETL
Based upon what??? bacteria suddenly exposed to a relatively limitless supply of energy? They could be voracious little things.
Leftists look at that and think “imagine the carbon taxes on that!”
Makes me wonder if we should be drilling on asteroids and comets anytime soon.
There are clouds of methane in space, the atmospheres of the gas giants are primarily methane.
If they can live in such harsh environments the surface world could be a bonanza for them and a disaster for us.
Just the bacteria on the drill casings will be freed to the surface by the billions and we're unlikely to have any resistance to these new critters. Where's my tin foil hat dammit!
“DEEP HOT BIOSPHERE: The Myth of Fossil Fuel” By Thomas Gold... or not (he also suggested a “garbage theory” for the origin of life which was an accidental panspermia; the theory says that life on Earth might have spread from a pile of waste products accidentally dumped on Earth long ago by extraterrestrials.)
YMMV
KYPD
Deep microbes are often very different from their surface cousins, with life cycles on near-geologic timescales, dining in some cases on nothing more than energy from rocks
Damn. Rocks.
I remember Pat Boone was on an expedition to explore carbon residual or something deep inside the earth. I’m really hazy on the details of that adventure.
+100
Petroleum oil and gas is absolutely NOT all derived from fossilized forests and dinosaurs.
Read Deep Hot Biosphere to learn why we are not running out of oil.
It replenishes.
RE: “DEEP HOT BIOSPHERE: The Myth of Fossil Fuel” By Thomas Gold”
ETL,
Thanks for another fascinating post!
BTW, were you already familar with Cornell Dr. Thomas Gold book:
Deep Hot Biosphere?
He took so much harrassent from science community peers over his contention that oil & natural gas result from petro-hydrocarbons produced from deep subterrain microbes, and Not originating from ancient composed forests and animals.
Russian and Swede petro-geologists had long observed oil & nat gas deposits deep within massive solid granite domes that could have never hosted prehistoric forests and animal life.
Back in college several of the professors would comment on their belief (and science) that there were deep oil microbe sources, but they were on the fringes. IIRC they said it didn’t matter a whole lot with regard to exploration (that’s what my school taught) as it still needed to get trapped so we could get to it.
I recall a professional talk years after college where some guy proposed that these deep sources were on some sort of regular pattern across the globe - something like the dimples in a golf ball. Something to do with stresses and magnetic fields??? That seemed more like a quack theory, but who knows?
I worked for a company that was involved with drilling deep next to volcanic zones looking to extract deep oil-eating microbes for research into cleaning up oil spills and groundwater contamination.
While pretty cool stuff, I had visions of them growing these microbes, it getting out of control, and they end up eating all hydrocarbon materials (rubber hoses, etc.) I think the Andromeda Strain did that!?
The entire earth will need to be sequestered on Mars. But if that’s what it takes.....
Hmmm, sounds like the black oil from X-files.
If this time period was substantial, then there might have been an era in our universe's past where huge amounts of organic material spanned vast spaces between the planets.
As meteors and asteroids plummeted through this goo, then the goo would have gotten smeared on their surfaces and then ended up in planets as the rocks coalesced.
This is one version of the panspermia hypothesis. I think it is plausible. It also might make for a good premise for a SF novel if one could imagine intelligent beings alive during such an epoch.
He ultimately failed, but his failure did not prove there was no such oil. It might just have been somewhere else or deeper.
Even with this exploration we are barely scratching the surface.
Thank you for sharing and congratulations on that fascinating part of your career.
Doctor Thomas Gold hypothesized this 20 years ago...
The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels
Thomas Gold, Author, F. Dyson, Foreword by Copernicus Books
The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels
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.
Reviewed on: 11/02/1998
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