Oil Without Dinosaurs ?
The familiar tale is that “Prehistoric plants died and changed into oil and gas while sandwiched between layers of rock in the hot, high-pressure environment deep below Earth’s surface.”
The debunking in this Nov. 6 article actually “un-debunks” an old idea from the 19th century that methane and other hydrocarbons might be produced abiotically, without fossil fuels.
Long-held beliefs such as these are being overturned, after being held as “scientific truth” for decades or centuries.
Which brings up an interesting question -— How do we know that today’s current dogmas are invulnerable to turnarounds? A future discovery might even debunk the debunkers in these stories – some of whom debunked earlier debunkers.
I have heard this before from oilmen, and it makes sense.
It never did make sense to me, a non-oilperson and certainly not a chemist or biologist, that all oil came from multi-million-year-old organic matters ‘sandwiched’ between rock.
How could that happen? The rock would have to form, and that would takes thousands of years, and the organic matter didn’t rot away and disappear in those thousands of years?
By the time the rock formed any organic matter would have been long gone.It also means that oil is continually being made, or generated.
The familiar tale is that “Prehistoric plants died and changed into oil and gas while sandwiched between layers of rock in the hot, high-pressure environment deep below Earth’s surface.”
Where and when did this come from and how is it supported?
It’s what I grew up hearing but it seems to make little sense.
“Some scientists, however, believe that oil and gas originated in other ways, including chemical reactions between carbon dioxide and hydrogen below Earth’ surface.”
Oh, come on. Rosie O’Donnell herself will tell you there’s no way carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen can turn into gas and oil.
What I would like to know is; if methane and other hydrocarbons are formed from decayed plant and animal matter - how they heck does Saturn’s moon Titan come to have literal oceans of liquified methane? Hell, according to one report I read, it even rains methane!
......Oil Without Dinosaurs ?......
That is a canard. The bio mass from which methane was derived is plant matter. The new thought one does not preclude the old.