Posted on 09/12/2005 6:39:36 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Using primitive meteorites called chondrites as their models, earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have performed outgassing calculations and shown that the early Earth's atmosphere was a reducing one, chock full of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapor.
In making this discovery Bruce Fegley, Ph.D., Washington University professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, and Laura Schaefer, laboratory assistant, reinvigorate one of the most famous and controversial theories on the origins of life, the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment, which yielded organic compounds necessary to evolve organisms.
Chondrites are relatively unaltered samples of material from the solar nebula, According to Fegley, who heads the University's Planetary Chemistry Laboratory, scientists have long believed them to be the building blocks of the planets. However, no one has ever determined what kind of atmosphere a primitive chondritic planet would generate.
"We assume that the planets formed out of chondritic material, and we sectioned up the planet into layers, and we used the composition of the mix of meteorites to calculate the gases that would have evolved from each of those layers," said Schaefer. "We found a very reducing atmosphere for most meteorite mixes, so there is a lot of methane and ammonia."
In a reducing atmosphere, hydrogen is present but oxygen is absent. For the Miller-Urey experiment to work, a reducing atmosphere is a must. An oxidizing atmosphere makes producing organic compounds impossible. Yet, a major contingent of geologists believe that a hydrogen-poor, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere existed because they use modern volcanic gases as models for the early atmosphere. Volcanic gases are rich in water, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide but contain no ammonia or methane.
"Geologists dispute the Miller-Urey scenario, but what they seem to be forgetting is that when you assemble the Earth out of chondrites, you've got slightly different gases being evolved from heating up all these materials that have assembled to form the Earth. Our calculations provide a natural explanation for getting this reducing atmosphere," said Fegley.
Schaefer presented the findings at the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, held Sept. 4-9 in Cambridge, England.
Schaefer and Fegley looked at different types of chondrites that earth and planetary scientists believe were instrumental in making the Earth. They used sophisticated computer codes for chemical equilibrium to figure out what happens when the minerals in the meteorites are heated up and react with each other. For example, when calcium carbonate is heated up and decomposed, it forms carbon dioxide gas.
"Different compounds in the chondritic Earth decompose when they're heated up, and they release gas that formed the earliest Earth atmosphere," Fegley said.
The Miller-Urey experiment featured an apparatus into which was placed a reducing gas atmosphere thought to exist on the early Earth. The mix was heated up and given an electrical charge and simple organic molecules were formed. While the experiment has been debated from the start, no one had done calculations to predict the early Earth atmosphere.
"I think these computations hadn't been done before because they're very difficult; we use a special code" said Fegley, whose work with Schaefer on the outgassing of Io, Jupiter's largest moon and the most volcanic body in the solar system, served as inspiration for the present early Earth atmosphere work.
NASA's Astrobiology Institute supported this work.
"What proportion of professional petroleum geologists do you think are young-earth-creationists? Have you ever met any significant number?"
I've never met any that I know of, not that it has been a topic of conversation.
I (and basically anyone else in this biz) spot formations by ancient reefs or similar markers (repeatedly confirmed by core samples containing tons of fossilized sea creatures) --- in the middle of Texas.
The fact that the fossilzed sea creaures miles down are very, very, very old is really not a matter of serious dispute --- at least by those who actually find oil and gas and make money based on their being correct about what happened a long time ago.
I suppose God or the Enemy could have put them there to test or mislead us as to how God worked Creation, but I just don't think that is the way such things work.
Existence is indeed a miracle. The question posed by science is whether the rules are unchanging, and whether we can find them.
Also the scale of the universe's volume, and the femto-spopic scale of the universe's structure... You took the words right out of my brain.
So this type of atmosphere would be completely cloudy (and opaque to visible light) until the later (oxygen -producing) plants arrived, right?
Where then, in the global time frame, would these first theorectical "plants/microbes/amino-acid-strings" be compared to the formation of the moon from its asteroid collision?
(Moon is theorectically 4.5 billion years old. First rocks still existing in the Canadian shiled are also 4-5 billion years old. So when could the earliest "life" begin?)
Darwin was there first:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.Source: Origin of Species, 6th Ed. (Last sentence of last chapter)
I guess Tom has never heard of the tar sands in Kansas or the tar sands in Alberta, great sources for petroleum. Tar is nothing more than higer molecular weight petroleum, so of course it's found uin the geologic column. Production from tar sands, depending on how you define "tar", accounts for about 8% of the world's oil production
1. "How then can "oil" be routinely discovered tens of thousands of feet down."
To the best of my knowledge, oil has never been discovered below 15,000.
Indeed, temperatures below 12,500 feet are generally above 275F (varies by your kneck of the woods), which breaks down hydrocarbons, giving you, if lucky, methane.
2. I am not discounting the possibility of abiotic hydrocarbons -- merely discounting the idea that the oil and gas we use is abiotic. (But, as stated in my first post, perhaps the reefs we use as markers may merely be capturing the hydrocarbons.)
Regardless of source, the reefs are there, which was the point of my post.
MeanWestTexan, PE (petro)
1. Actually, in further follow up, oil exists in that 5,000 to 15,000 zone where temps and pressures are "just so." Bit like diamonds, in that way. Coal is the same way --- albeit its sweet spot is higher, and its cooking temp lower.
2. No ones really systematically hunted for "coal" per se at 5,000 to 15,000 (good luck mining at those depths!), so one cannot say that there is not coal co-existent with oil. That said, I would suspect there is coal at depth, compressed and cracked by time, pressure, and temperature. We call such coal "oil."
The question as to the origin of oil has always interested me as a microbiologist. Clearly coal is of plant origin, but oil is trickier. The presence of biological like compounds in oil does not have to show biological origin, the oil could have been contaminated at a later date. The presence of bacteria in almost all oil fields permits this possibility along with the possibility for underground migration which surely has occurred in some areas. I'd say the preponderance of evidence is for biological origin, but the evidence is not unambiguous.
Hmmmn.
Digging fer coal at 15,000 feet would be a bit tricky!
(But I've never heard of "coal" residue coming up from the mud washed out of oil wells: If it were co-existant, it seems that coal deposits/layers/residues/leftovers/partially-cooked remianed would be mentioned as a regular occurance in the discharges from oil wells.)
I have heard of a few coal deposits that are about 12,000 ft in Wyoming and Colorado - obviously too deep to mine. Candidates for coal bed methane production. I believe the Ute reservation in SW Colorado has one such operation. I think it isn't produced because it's too deep, but I think there may also be other (Indian cultural) factors (IIRC).
All sorts of carbonates and paraffins come up at the same time, not to mention benzene and H2s, depending on location and depth.
As an aside, one could go get a core sample and hunt for this, but you generally look at cuttings (from the bit) as they come up --- but they are mixed in with drilling mud (anything from fresh water, to 9.1 brine to heavy barite-filled goop), so you wash them and look for rocks, so as to compare and contrast with the predictions and re-direct, as necessary.
I think the word you're looking for is "translucent." Opaque describes something that completely blocks light.
"Do you think it possible for a rational petroleum geologist to maintain a faith in YEC in the light of the data that they see daily as part of their job?"
Anything is possible, I suppose.
I am a fundamentalist Christian. I am very serious about my Christianity -- born a Jew and pretty well kissed my whole family goodbye upon conversion, several of whom are conservative or Orthodox.
That said, probably because of my background, I do not read more into the Bible that the black letters, and I accept that there is a lot of white space between those black letters, which we should only very cautiously and tentatively fill.
I also think the "conventional" fundamentalist intepretations of Genesis by certain fundamental groups are just as agenda-driven as global warming science.
People should just go READ the Bible (after praying for wisdom and confession of sins, of course!).
There are about twenty million ways the TWO creation stories might be read, only a few of which gets you to YEC.
I've come across the Creationist suggestion that fossils are just God's little joke, a 'test' of our faith--which always struck me as just a tad perverse. I mean, are we really to worship a God who sets out, like an evil schoolteacher, to 'trick' us into giving the wrong answer, and thereby spend all eternity in fire and brimstone? Mercifully, this is not a prevailing view of a healthy majority of Christians!
Mind you, an equally plausible thought occurs. I confess that the phrase "chondritic material" earlier in this thread sent me (with my deficient education) scuttling to the dictionary, which informs me that 'grainy' material is indicated. Now, by chance I also know that Parmesan cheese is known in Italian as formaggio grana ('grainy cheeese') and, armed with other insights from a recent FR thread on creationism, feel on the verge of an epiphany here. Grainy material / grainy cheese -- could this not be the noodly appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster at work?
Even as late as the early 1950's "orthodox science" was disputing continental drift, the moon's craters, and interstellar collisions!
Yes, the dates are not "day-by-day. But then again, it IS a "story" of creation, not a "textbook" of creation. Besides, it's a bit difficult to discuss billions of years to a people who had not yet invented the concept of "zero" yet.
I fully agree, and have, in fact, espoused much the same harmonization of evolution and Genesis here on FreeRepublic, generally to be answered with hate by the anti-God crowd and the I-don't-know-about-the-Bible-but have memorized the Cachtsim (sp?) roman catholics and the God-hates-Jews-and-Catholics protestants.
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