Posted on 03/05/2006 1:03:29 PM PST by billorites
Thomas Gold was not your typical radical. Far from being a mad scientist, he was a brilliant professor of astronomy at Cornell University, but he succeeded in driving many others mad with theories that flew in the face of conventional wisdom.
His most controversial idea was among his last, and geologists and petroleum experts around the world still rage against Gold for suggesting they were dead wrong in their understanding of how oil and gas are formed in the Earth's crust.
Now, a couple of decades after Gold first suggested that hydrocarbons are formed deep underground by geological processes and not just below the surface by biological decay, there is increasing evidence that he may have been on to something.
If he was wrong, he may have erred only in taking his idea too far. Gold argued that all hydrocarbons are formed in the intense pressure and high heat near the Earth's mantle, around 100 miles under the ground. If he was right, it means the finite limits of the resources that power our cities and our factories and our vehicles have been vastly overstated.
Oil and gas fields are continually replenished by hydrocarbons manufactured far below the Earth, he argued. So there is no fuel crisis. As long as the Earth grinds along on its orbit around the sun, hydrocarbons will continue to be produced, and we can all roll along with no fear of running out of gas.
It should be said at this point that virtually no experts believe that to be the case. But several prestigious organizations have found evidence that methane, the main component of natural gas, can indeed be formed under conditions like those found deep in the Earth.
Researchers at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, D.C., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Harvard University, Argonne National Laboratory and Indiana University in South Bend have joined forces to see if they can replicate the geological processes that Gold claimed would produce hydrocarbons.
And the evidence so far suggests that methane, at least, can be produced independent of biological materials. When such common materials as iron oxide, calcite and water are squeezed under pressures more than 100,000 times those found at sea level and heated up to 2700 degrees Fahrenheit, methane does form.
That's very close to conditions found 100 miles under the ground. But it's not likely to convince many that Gold was right.
"All we've done is show experimentally that at the pressure at the Earth's mantle and pretty high temperatures you can indeed make methane," says Henry Scott, a physics and geology professor at Indiana University and lead author of a report on the research in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scott is pretty sure of that because he's seen it with his own eyes, thanks to a magnificent machine. A diamond anvil, which squeezes material between two diamonds, was used to simulate the pressures found deep within the Earth. And since a microscope can see through the diamonds, the results could be witnessed in real time.
And those results, Scott says, are quite compelling.
"Gold said that when you squeeze things down at very high pressures, the basic chemistry can change," he says. "That's exactly what we are doing."
Scott says he wasn't very optimistic when he first started working with the diamond anvil while at Carnegie. He says it was a slow day on a Friday afternoon when he decided to take some minerals and subject them to enormous pressures and high temperatures.
"I expected nothing to happen," he says. "But sure enough, it formed methane. It was a bit of a shock."
Lawrence Livermore picked up at that point and found that methane production was most productive at 900 degrees Fahrenheit and 70,000 atmospheres of pressure. That's still hot, and it's still deep, but it suggests that methane may be abundant throughout the planet.
Like Gold, Livermore may have carried it a bit too far when it suggested in a news release that "These reserves could be a virtually inexhaustible source of energy for future generations."
There's a problem here. No one is going to drill a well 100 miles into the Earth. Even five or six miles is a really deep well.
"It's not even foreseeable that we would try to drill down to it," Scott says.
But there is a possibility that some of those methane deposits, if they really do exist deep within the Earth, may find their own way to the surface, following weaknesses in the crust, for example.
That's what Tommy Gold said would happen.
A few years ago, Sweden bought into that, big time. Officials there began drilling a deep well in a formation that Gold said could contain hydrocarbons that would be clearly of a non-biological origin. That would prove him right.
The newspaper I was working for in those days packed me off to Sweden to see what they were finding. Unfortunately, they weren't finding much.
They never found Gold's postulated gusher. But maybe Scott has. Not deep within the Earth. In a diamond anvil, where methane was produced just the way Gold said it would be.
Tommy Gold died last year. He would have loved this.
They'll burn you at the stake for such heresy. They'll still say you're an infidel defiling their beautiful mother, sucking the very life out of her. They are enviro Nazis, after all.
Though I don't completely disbelieve abiogenic theory... I don't believe that most of the oil fields we have today were create in that manner.
I also don't believe you are going to find vast amounts of oil. Look at Gold's experiment in Sweden. What a success that was... $60 million spent on two oil wells and for what? 80 barrels of oil that probably came from the oil used to lubricate the drill.
I am not saying that we should complete disclaim this theory... there maybe some truths in it... but I am not gonna sit back and say "Yay!!! unlimited oil and methane!!!".
Which says all we have to do is match consumption to production.
Because those fossils are, indeed, as old as the deposits where they reside. I would like to know about such fossils and their relationship to the new oil in the replenishing sites.
Thers's that, too. And all of these become cheaper to do once hey are being done.
It would be interesting if someone could look at some old oil fields that haven't been pumped in decades and see if they are being replenished from below.
I have yet to have anyone explain to me how many dinasaurs died beneath the Bearing sea in order to produce all that oil, miles beneath the surface of the ocean - in a place no historian has ever postulated was ever dry land.
I'm far from buying this theory unless someone manages to prove it.
But I don't see why diatoms couldn't get into oil via movements of the earth. After all, if you can have ancient shells up in the Himalayas because of the movement of the Indian subcontinental plate, and all sorts of various rocks and other objects squeezed into conglomerate rock, why not diatoms in oil?
By the same token, it's possible to imagine how oil can get down pretty deep, so proving this theorem would require more than just finding a few deep reserves.
Problems on top of problems, plus a death.
If the author's theory is correct, then this raises a question. Currently, oil drillers will inject salt water into oil wells to help push out more oil. Could the injection of salt water into oil wells affect the process? Are we killing the process.
Probably.
Exactly. You mean to tell me that all of the oil the world has burned since the turn of the 20th century was from some poulation of dinosaurs and some plants? Pffft.
So, these are found in the Jovian system?
Thanks for the ping!
Indeed ..FACTS.. does have a 2nd reality ring to it..
Facts according to what?.. When I'm driving around the world does seem to be flat, except for the Mountains and Valleys.. Depends on your vantage point I suppose what is a fact or not.. If you are earth bound it can be hard to see clearly.. And if you are a DNA'osaur well you just might be a primate as well.. or think you are.. Humans can indeed Ape any animal.... and DO...
Thank you so much for your insights!
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