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Life is found in deepest layer of Earth's crust
The New Scientist ^ | 18 November 2010 | Michael Marshall

Posted on 11/19/2010 1:25:40 PM PST by Fractal Trader

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Recharging of oil and gas fields
by Thomas Gold
September 1999
Vertically stacked domains of hydrocarbons have been found in all cases where drilling was sufficient to display them. The consistent tendency to find hydrocarbons below any producing region has been given the name of "Koudyavtsev's Rule", after the important Russian petroleum investigator who discovered this effect and collected a very large number of examples of it from all parts of the world. This rule would be the consequence of a deep origin of hydrocarbons and a steady process of outgassing... [In Kuwait] [t]he extraction of g[r]oundwater at the shallow levels results in the disintegration of the barrier to the oil levels just below, and the water in the wells is suddenly replaced by oil. The delicate pressure balance that had established itself, just up to the level that the strength of the rock could bear, had been upset. Similarly in stacked domains of hydrocarbons, the lower domains will be opened quickly, once the upper ones had been depleted and the fluid pressure thereby reduced sufficiently. This process can be fast, just as it is in Kuwait, where we had the advantage that a different liquid (water) filled the upper domain, so that one could identify the rupture to the oil filled domain below.
This only works in foreign countries. In the US -- uniquely in the world -- drilling for oil results in the mass extinction of all species and earthquakes. ;') Though his papers remained online (along with his other faculty webpages) for some time after his death, the URLs I've stored no longer work.


61 posted on 11/19/2010 4:10:58 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: aruanan

As I stated previously, the other conclusion one can draw from this evidence is that life started in the mantle and slowly moved outwards into the crust, then the oceans and ultimately onto land. If this is what happened, then there may be life inside all of the rocky planets plus a number of the moons.


62 posted on 11/19/2010 4:15:58 PM PST by vbmoneyspender
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To: djf

The Siljan Ring drill project was in Sweden, and that was one of Thomas Gold’s experiments in this field. Here are the URLs I have of his formerly online papers, those interested can probably find them via the Webarchive.

http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/assoc.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/DHB.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/depth.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/Earthq.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/eyewit.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/hazard.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/index.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/Krop.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/metal.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/Natgas.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/origins.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/recharging/
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/usgs.html


63 posted on 11/19/2010 4:16:02 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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Life on other Planets
by Thomas Gold
May 1997
Highly oxidized iron is abundant on Mars, and very small-grained magnetite can then be expected to be one of the accumulated residues of microbial processes; so can iron sulfide and methane-derived carbonates. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are the large molecules that might remain in a rock that originally contained crude oil but then was exposed for millions of years to the high vacuum of space. All these substances have been found in the discovery meteorite, closely packaged to each other, and this by itself would make a strong case for the microbial interpretation. In addition, there are small objects seen under scanning electron microscopy that may well be fossils of microbes. While the last item by itself would not be conclusive evidence, the combination of this together with oil and the three residue products make a strong case for the microbial explanation. It is true that each step can occur without biological intervention, but the chance of finding by chance the evidence for all three solids in a small volume, together with hydrocarbons, seems to be very low. Many terrestrial oil and gas wells show just such an association (but an association with helium also, which the meteorite could not have transported through space).

64 posted on 11/19/2010 4:18:18 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf090/sf090g08.htm

THE KTB HOLE

KTB = Kontinentales Tiefbohrprogramm der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

If you could drop a pfennig down the KTB hole, it would take several minutes to hit bottom, for this research drill hole has now penetrated to 7.5 kilometers. It is the second deepest man-made hole, after the Soviet 12-km hole in the Kola Peninsula. Drilled solely for scientific purposes, the rocks and strata encountered by the KTB drill bits have forced the redrawing of German geological maps. The “real” subterranean world turned out to be quite different from that inferred from both surface indications and the seismic and electrical probing of the depths. Three specific surprises are worth mentioning:

Temperatures in the drill hole rose far faster than predicted. The expected boundary (”suture”) between two old tectonic plates thought to exist at 3 km according to surface geology had not yet appeared at 7.5 km. Most interestingly, crevicular structure (crevices and pores) existed at almost all depths, even though theory said they could not because of intense pressures. And these voids were filled with fluids. P. Keher, a KTB scientist, was amazed at what the drill found:

“When I started 25 years ago, the idea was that the deeper you go into the crust, the drier it gets.”

(Kerr, Richard A.; “Looking — Deeply — into the Earth’s Crust in Europe,” Science, 261:295, 1993.)

Comment. Deep-living bacteria were not mentioned in the above article, but Soviet scientists claim to have pumped them up from 12 km down! Outer space may not be our final frontier despite the introductory blurb to Star Trek!

From Science Frontiers #90, NOV-DEC 1993. (C) 1993-2000 William R. Corliss


65 posted on 11/19/2010 4:20:08 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: SunkenCiv

See? I knew there were Mud Men...


66 posted on 11/19/2010 4:22:05 PM PST by Monkey Face (This statement is false.)
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To: SunkenCiv
Wow, Civ. Giving us a little light reading for the weekend?? :-))
67 posted on 11/19/2010 4:25:06 PM PST by colorado tanker
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Oh, sorry, archiving on the wayback machine of the Thomas Gold papers was blocked by Robots.txt — damn, I hate those stupid robots.

http://www.google.com/search?q=thomas+gold+site:cornell.edu


68 posted on 11/19/2010 4:27:34 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: Fred Nerks; Swordmaker

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/April01/Gold.dust.deb.html


69 posted on 11/19/2010 4:28:51 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: colorado tanker

There’ll be a test Monday. ;’)


70 posted on 11/19/2010 4:35:50 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: vbmoneyspender

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2630109/posts?page=64#64


71 posted on 11/19/2010 4:40:19 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: Fractal Trader
...had evolved to feed off hydrocarbons like methane and benzene...

On Saturn's moon Titan they discovered something is reducing Acetylene on the surface. It could be life.

72 posted on 11/19/2010 4:46:24 PM PST by Nateman (If liberals are not screaming you are doing it wrong!)
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To: SunkenCiv
They should be careful going so deep - never know what you might find down there.


73 posted on 11/19/2010 4:54:22 PM PST by colorado tanker
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To: Oberon; SunkenCiv
I did notice that nugget, and was going to post it...then I saw your post about it...then I saw the time stamp.

Here it is again, anyway:

He points out that the reactions that produce oil and gas abiotically inside the crust could happen in the mantle,

I thought this concept was a major poo-pooing trigger from both mainstream scientists as well as environuts.

Sounds like Gold and the Russkies may be vindicated in the not so distant future.

74 posted on 11/19/2010 5:27:08 PM PST by ApplegateRanch (Islam: A Satanically Transmitted Disease spread by unprotected intimate contact with the Koranus)
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To: colorado tanker

It’s okay, I’m beginning to think I can cure a rainy day.


75 posted on 11/19/2010 5:27:32 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: SunkenCiv
Thanks for the ping! Seen some of it.

Interesting.

76 posted on 11/19/2010 5:36:54 PM PST by YHAOS (you betcha!)
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To: Monkey Face

ROKY CRIKENSON: And so, at each death, the soul descends further into the inner earth, attaining ever greater levels of purification, reaching... enlightenment at the core. Assuming, of course, that your soul is able to avoid... the lava men.


77 posted on 11/19/2010 5:41:17 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: ApplegateRanch
imo he's been vindicated; Freeman Dyson wrote the foreword to "Deep..." and pointed out what a polymath Gold was, and how he'd made left-field predictions in various unrelated, uh, fields -- and been vindicated.
Thomas J Gold: "But I am not really willing to accept your premise, because it may well be that the means of communications they have are of a kind that we do not know how to receive, and that they would not have the means of communicating with sufficiently powerful radio or optical signals. That is something which, technologically, is too difficult for them but they would have some other means we would not recognize." and "What we can conclude from this is that we must think very widely as to what it takes to develop intelligence and not take us so much as a model of what is necessary." [Communication with Extraterrestial Intelligence, p 123; Sagan editor -- CETI was the old acronym]

78 posted on 11/19/2010 5:45:15 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: YHAOS

My pleasure!


79 posted on 11/19/2010 5:45:26 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: TChris

Hydrocarbons, yes. Not crude oil however.


80 posted on 11/19/2010 6:14:28 PM PST by onedoug
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