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| dailygalaxy.com |
NEW YORK – Astronomers are providing new evidence hydrocarbons are
not a biological product but instead are created by inorganic chemical
processes that occur on a continuing basis.
“We observed the operation of a natural refinery of gigantic size,” astronomer Jerome Pety told The Daily Galaxy.
Astronomer Viviana Guzman explained to both publications that the
nebula contains 200 times more hydrocarbons than the total amount of
water on Earth.
In 1951, Russian scientist and professor Nikolai Kudryavtsev
articulated what today has become known as the Russian-Ukranian theory
of deep, abiotic petroleum origins.
Essentially, the theory rejects the contention that oil was formed
from the remains of ancient plant and animal life that died millions of
years ago.
As an astronomer, Gold was well aware that hydrocarbons are abundant
in the universe. Since the early part of the 20th century, spectrographs
that analyze wavelengths have permitted astronomers to determine with
certainty that carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the
universe, right after hydrogen, helium and oxygen.
Furthermore, Gold wrote, among planetary bodies, “carbon is found
mostly in compounds with hydrogen – hydrocarbons – which, at different
temperatures and pressures, may be gaseous, liquid, or solid.”
“Astronomical techniques have thus produced clear and indisputable
evidence that hydrocarbons are major constituents of bodies great and
small within our solar system (and beyond),” he said.
In other words, hydrocarbons are not “organic chemicals” resulting
from life processes on earth, as is commonly assumed by proponents of
the fossil fuel theory.
Rather, Gold argued, hydrogen is a fundamental element readily
available in the universe that combines with carbon to form
hydrocarbons, whether life is present or not.
What astronomers have known about the abundance of hydrocarbons in
the universe, however, has not passed on to geologists. In contrast,
geologists think of hydrocarbons as forming only through the activity of
life – either in building life through photosynthesis or when forms of
life die.
Abiotic oil found on Titan
NASA scientists, in conjunction with the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency, have determined from a Cassini-Huygens probe
that landed in 2005 on Titan, the giant moon of Saturn, that Titan
contains abundant methane.
“We have determined that Titan’s methane is not of biological origin,
so it must be replenished by geological processes on Titan, perhaps
venting from a supply in the interior that could have been trapped there
as the moon formed,” Hasso Niemann of the Goddard Space Flight Center
told reporters Nov. 30, 2005.
The Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer, or GCMS, an instrument that
identifies different atmospheric constituents by their mass, provided
measurements demonstrating the methane on Titan is composed of
Carbon-13, the isotope of carbon associated with inorganic or abiotic
origins, whereas living organisms are typically associated with
Carbon-12.
Each Carbon-13 atom has an extra neutron in its nucleus, making
Carbon-13 atoms slightly heavier than Carbon-12 atoms, permitting the
GCMS to distinguish between methane isotopes with Carbon-12 and methane
with Carbon-13 atoms.
Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the
known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to a team of
Johns Hopkins scientists reporting in February 2008 on their new
findings from data collected from Cassini-Huygens probe radar data.
“Several hundred lakes or seas have been discovered, of which dozens
are estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than the entire known
oil and gas reserves on Earth,” wrote lead scientist Ralph Lorenz of the
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., in
the
Jan. 29, 2008, issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.
Lorenz also reported dark dunes running along the equator cover 20
percent of Titan’s surface, comprising a volume of hydrocarbon material
several hundred times larger than Earth’s coal reserves.
“Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material – it’s a giant factory of organic chemicals,” Lorenz wrote.
has long been billed as a "doomsday asteroid" because of a 2004 study that predicted a 2.7 percent chance of the space rock hitting Earth when it passes within 22,364 miles of the planet in April 2029, European Space Agency officials said. Later studies proved, however, that the asteroid poses no threat to Earth during that flyby, but astronomers continue to track the object since it will make another pass near Earth in 2036.
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