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.
"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."
This is a terrible sentence. Does it mean there is more than was thought or less? It is completely unclear.
I have been saying this for years. However, everytime I raise this theory, many here pooh-pooh it. I maintain that there is a very good chance that this in fact happens. Do scientists even know much about the earth's core? No, not much.
More than was thought. BUMP
The question is not whether, but how much. And if it's lots, does it migrate to the surface fast enough to replenish what we use.
more than thought
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."
---
I agree, it's a terrible sentence, but I think he is trying to say that the FINITE part has been overstated, i.e. we don't have hard limits on the oil inside the earth. i.e. there is a virtually infinite supply, because new oil keeps forming.
That's the crucial question. If the rate of production is much less than our rate of consumption, then we still have a long-term problem unless we switch to nuke/solar/geothermal
Violate the narrow FR orthodoxy and.... Well you know.
Corrected
If he was right, it means the limited quantities of the resources that power our cities, factories, and our vehicles have been vastly understated.
For those in Rio Linda...
If he was right, we got a whole lot more than the experts think.
To me this is the scary statement: the predetermination of results. At least he was intellectually rigorous enough to actually do the experiment. It reminds me of the 'archaeologists' who didn't bother to dig below the Clovis level at their sites because they 'knew' they wouldn't find anything.
It's what we 'know' that isn't true that can hurt us.
I remember falling asleep as I listened to some guy explain how the earth is like a giant refinery of products that are continually being produced as part of a geocosmic life supporting body.
pretty incredible, the amount of untold renewing energy and wealth that lies beneath our feet.
Please, don't upset the Mole People tapping into it. ;-)
Maybe it also means that our Solar System is full of this stuff.
Thus the only question remaining is: -- why is that fact ignored when we discuss the formation of hydrocarbons on earth?
Thanks all for the clarification.
Here is a potential technique to get more oil out:
US says CO2 injection could quadruple oil reserves
The United States, where oil production has been declining since the 1970s, has the potential to boost its oil reserves four-fold through advanced injection of carbon dioxide into depleted oilfields, the Department of Energy said on Friday.
The United States, the world's top oil consumer, has been successfully pumping small amounts or carbon dioxide into depleted oil and natural gas fields for 30 years to push out hard-to-reach fossil fuels.
The DOE said 89 billion barrels could potentially be added to current proved U.S. oil reserves of 21.9 billion barrels through injection of carbon dioxide, the main gas that most scientists believe is warming the earth.
Earth is hollow with a miniature sun at the center. The entrance is at the north pole, and UFOs come from there.
People disagree?
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