Posted on 11/29/2005 3:26:34 AM PST by ovrtaxt
prisoner6
Any clues?
I never bought the dinosaur bit as a 2nd grader. That was also the year JFK got killed.
Petroleum under pressure
14 September 2004
Scientists in the US have witnessed the production of methane under the conditions that exist in the Earth's upper mantle for the first time. The experiments demonstrate that hydrocarbons could be formed inside the Earth via simple inorganic reactions -- and not just from the decomposition of living organisms as conventionally assumed -- and might therefore be more plentiful than previously thought.
Methane is the most abundant hydrocarbon found in the Earth's crust and is also the main component of natural gas. Reserves of natural gas are often accompanied by petrol, usually only a few kilometres below the Earth's surface. The possibility that hydrocarbons might exist deeper in the Earth's mantle, or could be formed from non-biological matter, has been the subject of debate among geologists in recent years.
To explore these questions further Henry Scott of Indiana University in South Bend and colleagues at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, Harvard University and the Lawrence Livermore National Lab subjected materials commonly found in the Earth's crust to temperatures of up to 1500°C and pressures as high as 11 gigapascals (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. to be published). These conditions are similar to those found in the Earth's upper mantle.
The set-up
The set-up
Scott and co-workers squeezed together iron oxide, calcium carbonate and water between two diamonds with flattened tips while heating up the device. The advantage of the "diamond anvil cell" technique is that the sample can be analysed in situ -- through the diamonds -- using a variety of spectroscopic techniques. The US scientists found that methane was most readily produced at relatively low temperatures of 500°C and pressures of 7 gigapascals or below.
The sample
The sample
In 2002 J F Kenney of Gas Resources Corporation in Texas and co-workers in Moscow found methane and other hydrocarbons in similar experiments. However, their apparatus did not allow them to follow the formation process in situ (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 99 10976).
Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton believes the results are important because they could help answer the question of whether natural gas and petroleum could be created inorganically. "If the answer turns out to be inorganic, this has huge implications for the ecology and economy of our planet," says Dyson.
However, Scott is more cautious about his team's results. "Although I believe the Earth's mantle could contain a significant quantity of even heavier hydrocarbons, I cannot constrain how much of this reaches the Earth's surface, or the extent to which it may augment resources that we exploit commercially," he told PhysicsWeb. "I do not want to suggest in any way that these hydrocarbons are likely to represent an untapped energy reserve."
About the author
Belle Dumé is Science Writer at PhysicsWeb
Matbe God created it?
You're too rational, stop that right now.
From the Sinclair web site -
From the Sinclair web site -
In 1930, Sinclair's advertising writers noted that Wellsville-refined lubricants -- the best in the trade -- derived from Pennsylvania grade crudes laid down more than 270 million yearsearlier. These oils were mellowing in the ground during the Mesozoic era when dinosaurs populated the earth. The obvious sales message was: the oldest crudes make the best oils. But how to dramatize this?
A series of advertisements in 104 newspapers and five national magazines feature a dozen of the strange dinosaurs, from hideous-fanged tyrannosaurus rex and three-horned triceratops, to the unaggressive, vegetarian apatosaurus (brontosaurus), a 40-ton lizard with neck and tail each 30 feet long. The campaign -- confined entirely to Wellsville oils -- was a great success. The curiosity value of it was tremendous.
Interesting, but certainly not conclusive. Natural Gas is found near Petroleum because organinic materials produce both. Just because methane can be produced non-organically does not logically mean that petroleum can as well. Given that oil has not yet been found in any place where plants could not have been, I will remain very sceptical.
Regardless, it sounds like it would be so expensive to extract that other sources of energy would be more attractive.
"Maybe God created it?"
Perhaps, but that would turn this into EVO/CREVO thread of which there have been plenty.
This article is full of misconceptions about gas and oil formation.
Oil does not come from dinosaurs. Oil is formed from the burial of organic material, chiefly plankton, in seafloor sediments.
Natural gas is not a complex hydrocarbon as the article seems to claim. Methane, for example, is one of the simplest hydrocarbons at CH4 and can be formed from biological processes (decaying organic material in a landfill or cow farts, for example. It is also found in the atmosphere (and as ice) in many of the planets and moons in the outer solar system. No one believes it's formed by organic processes out there.
Just because you can find some natural gas in the basement rocks (the igneous and metamorphic rocks below the sedimentary bedrock) doesn't mean you'll find petroleum there as the article seems to imply.
I do know that any hydrocarbon can be turned into any other hydrocarbon, it's simply a question of cost. As the market for drilled oil and gas goes up, other sources become more economically viable. It's in the current producers' best interest to keep oil more affordable than fuel from other sources- such as diesel from common garbage.
I don't buy the peak oil theory. I'm not personally in the industry or anything, just an outside casual observer. I have a feeling that there's plenty of oil around, but politically, we've been maneuvered into a position of vulnerability and dependency.
So the political cost must also be factored into any equation of the relative value of oil from enemy states as well. Sure, the dollar value of a barrel may be low, but the value of a defunded Saudi Arabia is worth how much?
Cow fart ping.
Rock on!
The surface of the earth is divided into tectonic plates that constantly dive and grind under one another. Therefore, some critters that died a few hundred million to a billion years ago certainly have had their remains taken down to 30,000 feet or more...
First, I know, I know! Never call you Shirley...
Secondly... See, there is an answer for everything!
Here's the thing: Oil is nothing more than polymerized gas.
Take CH4, methane, pressurize it and heat in in an oxygen free environment for a few huundred million years, like down 10 or 20 miles beneath the surface of the earth, subject it to other factors like the presence of unoxidized iron to take up any spare oxygen lying around, and you shouldn't be surprised if oil like, say C10H22, starts seeping up through cracks, especially in the vicinity of volcanos and faults.
And when you look around this old planet, what do you find? Just that. There is no real good reason to think that much of any of the Earth's gas and oil is anything but abiogenic in origin - other than the insignificant quantities of swamp gas and dump seeps you refer to.
I think God put it there. How He did it has not been revealed to me at this time.
This is not so. You have obvioulsy not heard of the Silurian Ring.
Bump for later reading
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