A revolutionary geological theory

Danilo Anton
Here I transcribe very synthesized a revolutionary geological theory that should be taken into account to rethink some existing dogmatic hypotheses in geology.

According to Professor Sanchez Cela, the fusion of rock masses of the upper mantle (50-500 km deep), which gave rise to the basaltic eruptions in oceanic ridges, occurred due to heat generated by the exothermic conversion of high density minerals into lower density minerals (i.e. coesite to quartz, feldspars to hollandites, etc).
Rising granitic melts "digest" the sediments of ocean basins formed by limestone and marl rich in CaCO3 and MgCO3, and clays, resulting in basalts (which in some ways can be defined as granites rich in calcium, iron and magnesium). If there were no incorporation of calcareous sediments to melt no basaltic eruptions would exist, but intrusions of granitoids (granites) in depth and effusions of "acid" lavas on the surface. It is noted that the main difference (but not only) between basalts and granites is the enrichment in Ca, Mg and Fe and less silica in basalts. According to V.Sánchez Cela, unlike concepts held in the official geological theories, there is NO convection (generalized ascents of rock masses) but mantelic mineral phase changes mineral with increased volume and higher temperature. These processes result in the formation of granitic crust producing "swelling" because the increased volume. The "swelling" results in the continental reliefs. This author also casts doubt on the movements of continental drift (continents do not move horizontally). As S.W. Carey and J.Maxlow, Sanchez Cela believes that there is NO subduction (no continent "dive" under another continent).
It would be a huge change of ideas in basic geology. Personally, although I am not sure of anything in science, Sanchez Cela theories seem very logical, and they are based on facts and numerous information.

Expansion of the Earth theory

A revolutionary theory on the evolution of the Earth has been developed by Australian geologists Samuel Warren Carey and James Maxlow arguing that the planet has been increasing its volume during geological times. 

Here we reproduce an article on the subject written by J. Maxlow explaining the hypothesis. 

D.A.

Yes, the Earth is expanding

by James Maxlow, PhD, 2005

Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 13, Number 1, December 2005 - January 2006, from NexusMagazine Website

My new book, outlining in detail the concept of an expanding Earth, is titled Terra Non Firma - Earth (Plate Tectonics is a Myth).

In this book, I have simply treated our Earth as just another cosmological entity, an insignificant microdot amongst many, amidst an unimaginably vast Universe. I then looked at modern geological, geophysical and geographical evidence to see not only what has happened to our Earth since its formation, but also to see if science has in fact got the interpretation of this evidence all wrong.

To me, this evidence shows that the concept of an expanding Earth is uniquely viable and represents a demonstrable global tectonic process. Similarly all geological, geophysical and geographical information, when displayed on models of an expanding Earth, substantiates an Archaean to future Earth-expansion process and far better explains this readily available physical phenomenon.

By far the single most important contribution to modern scientific understanding of the concept of global tectonics, and Earth expansion in particular, has been the completion of geological mapping and age-dating of all the continental and ocean-floor crusts. This mapping was not available to early researchers prior to the late 1980s, and has since been significantly under-utilized in plate tectonic studies.

In contrast to plate tectonic studies, this mapping has enabled the assemblage of all crustal plates to be accurately constrained on models of an expanding Earth, and for the first time has enabled modeling studies to be extended back to the earliest Archaean era.

It has also provided a means to define Earth expansion mathematically, and a means to investigate an Earth expansion process mathematically throughout Earth history.
 

Plate Reconstructions

What this mapping shows is that the post-Triassic oceanic geology in particular (ocean crusts younger than about 165 million years ago) can be used to constrain latitudinally and longitudinally and assemble crustal plates on a smaller-radius Earth.

Reconstruction of these crustal plates on models of an expanding Earth consistently show that each plate assembles with a single unique fit, with all plates assembling with a very high degree of accuracy along each of the mid-ocean-rift zones.

If these oceanic plate reconstructions were mere coincidence, then we should expect that the oceanic mapping, as well as evidence from adjoining continents, would not match across plate boundaries on models of an expanding Earth. The evidence, in fact, shows us that oceanic mapping does match across these plate boundaries, that all continental sedimentary basins do merge to form a global network of continental seas, that orogenic and fold mountain belts do coincide, and that ancient crustal regions do assemble together exactly.

This assemblage of oceanic crustal plates is shown to extend back to the Triassic period (200 million years ago), and demonstrates the viability and uniqueness of a post-Triassic Earth expansion process.

This contrasts strongly with plate tectonics reconstructions for the same time interval, where assemblage of crustal plates is based on magnetic evidence preserved in crustal rocks and constrained by latitude only. Here, complex apparent-polar-wander paths are used to generate random, arbitrary, amalgamation-dispersal-amalgamation plate motion cycles on a constant-radius Earth.

The unique Earth expansion assemblage also contrasts strongly with the plate tectonics requirement to fragment continents arbitrarily in order to comply with the oceanic mapping data. It also contrasts with the requirement to dispose of huge areas of inferred pre-existing crust beneath subduction zones in order to maintain a constant surface area.

The utilization of continental crustal geology to constrain a pre-Triassic expanding Earth crustal assemblage (continental crusts older than 165 million years ago) has never been done before.

Early expanding-Earth researchers were limited simply to removing the oceans and visually fitting the remaining continents together on a smaller-radius Earth, and, as previously mentioned, plate tectonics researchers are constrained primarily by magnetic requirements, not crustal assemblage.
 

Spatial Assemblage Retained

What can be seen from the expanding Earth models presented in the Terra Non Firma Earth book is that all continental crust unites precisely to form a single pan-global crust during the Early Permian period and the bulk of the atmosphere and hydrosphere is returned to the mantle.

During this time, continental sedimentary basins merge to form a global network coinciding with continental seas, and ancient continents and seas are defined by the variation in coastal outlines during Earth history.

When we progressively return these sedimentary basins to their pre-extension, pre-rift or pre-orogenic configuration on pre-Permian models of an expanding Earth (continental crust older than 250 million years), we see that the remaining crustal fragments making up our continents retain a unique spatial assemblage throughout Earth history.

This unique spatial assemblage is maintained throughout the long history of Precambrian (older than 560 million years ago) and Palaeozoic (crust aged between 560 to 200 million years ago) crustal extension, prior to crustal rupture during the Late Palaeozoic era, followed by continental break-up and dispersal of the modern continents during opening of the modern oceans.

Again, this unique assemblage of all crustal fragments on models of an expanding Earth demonstrates that Earth expansion, extending back to the beginning of the Earth's geological past, is again viable.

What these Archaean (crust older than 2,500 million years) to present-day models demonstrate is that, rather than being a random, arbitrary, amalgamation-dispersal-amalgamation crust-forming process (as we are currently led to believe), crustal development on an expanding Earth is instead a simple, evolving and predictable crust-forming process.

It is significant to reiterate that on models of an expanding Earth, each of the established Precambrian and Palaeozoic crustal assemblages merge together to form a global network of sedimentary basins on a common pan-global crust. The mergence of each of these crustal settings shows us that global crust-forming processes - such as sedimentary basin extension, crust mobility, orogenesis, mountain building, distribution of metals, and so on - all correlate precisely with the overall development of the crust.

In my book, I show that the global network of sedimentary basins from each of the continents also unites to form a global network of crustal weakness, operating throughout the Precambrian and Palaeozoic eras. It is within this network of global crustal weakness that crustal extension - generated during ongoing Earth expansion - is focused, as well as ongoing crustal mobility, mantle-derived heat flow, magmatic activity, crustal rupture, continental break-up and the eventual opening of each of the modern oceans.

On my expanding Earth models, this break-up of the ancient continental crust results in a disruption of the established polar ice-caps, a disruption of the ancient continental seas, changes to sea levels and a disruption of established climatic zones. These disruptive changes in turn affect plant and animal species' habitats and drive the evolution of these species, their long-term decline or their periodic extinction.

I also show that when imposed constant Earth surface area and constant Earth radius premises are removed from geophysical observations, these same geophysical observations, when applied to models of an expanding Earth, demonstrate that the data are consistent with an expanding Earth.

Similarly, geographical and biogeographical information, when applied to expanding Earth models, aptly quantifies crustal development on an expanding Earth and quantifies the locations of the ancient magnetic poles and equators determined from the unconstrained geophysical data.

The application of ancient magnetic measurements to models of an expanding Earth shows us that all ancient magnetic poles cluster as diametrically opposed north and south poles on each model constructed. This diametrically opposed clustering of poles is impossible on conventional plate tectonics reconstructions, where pole data are instead used to generate complex apparent-polar-wander paths. When used to determine an ancient Earth radius, this same magnetic evidence, traditionally used to negate Earth expansion, in fact confirms Earth expansion.

An interrogation of published space-based geodetic solutions to the Earth's geodetic network, while shown to be non-conclusive, also suggests that raw observational satellite data are being routinely constrained to a static-radius Earth, thus precluding their relevance to Earth expansion.

While published geodetic measurements are routinely quoted to sub-centimeter accuracy, large unexplained fluctuations in Earth radius for most observation sites throughout the world tell us that mathematical solutions to the present Earth radius are not as sufficiently well constrained for use in vertical plate motion studies as they are for horizontal motions.

For horizontal plate motion studies, published results for current-day horizontal motion of the major plates are shown to be close to the million-year average-motion vectors determined from oceanic mapping.

This conclusion is consistent with Earth expansion, and in fact forms the basis for model construction.
 

 Ancient Seas and Supercontinents

When I plotted the published coastal geography on expanding Earth models, I saw that the large, ancient Panthallassa, Tethys and Iapetus oceans of plate tectonics are not present on a smaller-radius expanding Earth.

Instead, this same coastal geography defines the presence of more restricted continental Panthallassa, Iapetus and Tethys seas, which, on an expanding Earth, represent precursors to the modern Pacific and Atlantic oceans and the emergent Eurasian continent.

From this coastal geography, the emergent land surfaces on models of an expanding Earth equate to Rodinia, Gondwana and Pangaea - the assemblages of supercontinents and smaller sub-continents of plate tectonics theory. Instead of fragments of these ancient continents randomly colliding, breaking up and dispersing to reassemble arbitrarily as new supercontinents, the coastal geography on the expanding Earth models demonstrates an evolutionary development of each of the ancient continents throughout Earth history.

On each expanding Earth model, this evolutionary development of the ancient supercontinents is found to be intimately related to changes in sea level, with no requirement for random continental assemblage or crustal break-up.

What the coastal geography shows is that the outlines of emergent supercontinents are intimately related to changes in the outlines of continental sedimentary basins, to changes incurred during crustal mobility, to climate changes, and to changes in sea levels as the modern oceans developed and rapidly opened to the present day.
 

 Distribution of Species and Minerals

When examples of faunal and floral species are plotted on expanding Earth models, the distributions illustrate the ease and simplification of migration and species development.

These cosmopolitan and provincial distributions and inter-relationships are maintained without the need for complex plate tectonic continental assemblage-dispersal requirements. This contrasts strongly with plate tectonics reconstructions, where assemblages and movements of the continents do not correspond to the known or necessary migration routes required by the established species distribution boundaries.

During continental break-up and opening of the modern oceans on an expanding Earth, the traditional migration routes of the various species are then shown to be disrupted, enabling species endemic to the various regions to interact and extend their boundaries with time. The timing of species development is then shown to be reflected intimately in the changes to sea level and the opening of the modern oceans. This timing either facilitated species migration by extending and expanding on existing migration routes or caused species extinction because of failure to adapt to the changing conditions.

The distribution of climate-dependent rocks (such as limestone, coal and glacial rocks) as well as biotic species shows that these rocks and species coincide precisely with the climatic zones expected on an expanding Earth.

Each of these climatic indicators also displays a distinct latitudinal zonation, paralleling the ancient equator, and a distinct northward shift in climatic zonation, suggesting that an inclined Earth rotational axis - inclined to the pole of the ecliptic - was well established during the Palaeozoic era and has persisted to the present day.

The distribution of metals and petroleum products on an expanding Earth also shows global clustering into distinct provinces, and the timing of formation coincides with well-established global tectonic events. The recognition of these ancient metal and petroleum provinces on the present Earth is shown in the book to enable mineral search and genetic relationships to be extended beyond their known localities.

The distribution of metal deposits and the nature and styles of mineralization in time and space also suggest that there has been an evolutionary trend in the concentration of metals as well as in the diversity of the various types of mineral and petroleum occurrences.
 

A Causal Model for Earth Expansion

To round off the investigation into the concept of an expanding Earth, I was then compelled at least to speculate on a causal model for Earth expansion.

It is emphasized that, while speculative, this does not in any way detract from the vast amount of empirical global geological, geophysical and geographical evidence presented in the book to support Earth expansion.

It is an unfortunate human trait that requires us instinctively to want to know or at least comprehend the cause well before the evidence, which far too often blinds us from fully understanding the physical evidence available to us. This is equally true for Earth expansion as it originally was for plate tectonics, where for a long time plate tectonics was rejected by science because of a lack of a suitable cause for crustal or plate motion.

The proposed causal model for Earth expansion presented in my book involves the generation of and an increase in mass within the core. This new matter accumulates at the core-mantle interface and the increase in volume results in a swelling of the mantle. Mantle swell is then transferred to the outer crust as continental crustal extension and also extension along the mid-ocean-rift zones.

This matter-generation process is considered ultimately to result in a decay of the matter-formation process within the core and cessation of expansion with time.

So, what does the Earth really have to say?

The evidence presented in my book tells us that an expanding Earth is indeed a viable and demonstrable global tectonic process. At no stage was any fundamental physical law, apart from human comprehension, violated during this investigation. I simply removed what was not previously there (young crustal rocks), to end up with a primitive Earth comprising an assemblage of equally primitive crustal components.

I then simply displayed published physical evidence on the expanding Earth models created, and all of this evidence was shown to complement each other and substantiate an Earth expansion process.

While this evidence is compelling, it certainly makes me wonder why we continue to allow modern science to constrain our thinking to a static-radius Earth model.

As I show in my book, the physical data suggest that the static-radius Earth of plate tectonics is a myth and that our Earth is, in reality, a terra non firma expanding Earth.

Expanding Earth Theory

Ortodox theories about the origin of the Earth assume that its volume has remained without changes during the whole geological history. In my opinion this lack of volume change has not been proved. Some geologists from Australia led by the late S. Warren Carey and Dr James Maxlow have argued that the size of the planet has increased over time. It is an interesting theory which I think shouldn't be underestimated. The following is a text discussing the subject. I will try to include excerps from Carey, Maxlow and their followers worldwide.

D.A.

From: http://www.dinox.org/expandingearth.html

"One of the longest running and most controversial theories in geology is the Expanding Earth theory. From the earliest school classes to the most advanced university geology lectures we are all taught that the size of the Earth has been constant and unchanging for thousands of millions of years, so virtually everyone is astonished when first presented with evidence for an Expanding Earth.

Some people are so shocked by the array of observations supporting an Expanding Earth model they simply deny there is any evidence for expansion. This rejection of the observations can become very animated at times but a few people are sufficiently curious to carefully investigate the facts indicating that the Earth has expanded over geological time. Some of the more well known investigators into the Expanding Earth theory are professors of geology and other sciences, who continue to examine the supporting evidence and report the results of their observations in various scientific papers and books. This history of the Expanding Earth theory is still developing today as these new scientific observations are examined and debated.

The most widely known geological evidence for Earth expansion is a simple reconstruction of the ancient continents and ancient ocean floor like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. The continents are ancient and some regions have existed for more than 3,800 million years but in geological time scales the ocean floor is relatively young and ranges from only about 200 million years old at the continents to areas at the mid-ocean ridges that are still forming today. When the dinosaurs first evolved none of today's ocean floor existed.

This ancient ocean floor and the continents can be rejoined together by placing them on a smaller diameter Earth. They all fit together neatly in one continuous shell.
It would be remarkable if this process could be progressively continued into the past but this is exactly what happens. If we remove all the ocean floor that didn't exist 10 million years ago, the ocean floor and continents join together on a slightly smaller diameter Earth. If the process is repeated by removing all the ocean floor that didn't exist 20 million years ago, all the remaining ocean floor and continents can once again be joined together - but this time the diameter of the Earth must be smaller than it was 10 million years previously. 
This process of removing parts of the ocean floor that didn't exist in the past can be repeated at all time intervals up to 200 million years old to slowly reduce the size of the Earth as it becomes more ancient. Eventually only the ancient continents are left and these can be joined together to form a continuous continental shell on an ancient smaller diameter Earth.

Consider how unlikely it is that the entire ancient ocean floor fits together so precisely to form a complete sphere on the ancient Earth. If the missing ancient ocean floor had been generated by any other process than an Expanding Earth it would be improbable that the areas were the exact shapes required to reconstruct a smaller Earth. It would be more likely that irregular shapes that didn't fit together would exist. The probability of the Expanding Earth forming by chance is so low it seems impossible. It is similar to arguing that a jigsaw puzzle fits together by chance rather than for any logical reason.

One major unknown about the Expanding Earth theory is the reason why the Earth has expanded. What could possibly cause this massive increase in the size of the Earth? Various people had different suggestions. Professor Jordan suggested in his book, The Expanding Earth, that the force of universal gravity might be changing thereby allowing the Earth to expand. Professor Carey preferred new mass being generated within the Earth in his book, Theories of the Earth and Universe: A History of Dogma in the Earth Sciences. Dr Hugh Owen suggested in his book, Atlas of Continental Displacement, 200 Million Years to the Present: A Test of the Conventional and Expanding Earth Models, that there was a phase change in the Earth's core that produced a volume change in the Earth while the mass stayed the same. These books are still available (with difficulty) from good bookshops.[1]

But none of these theories won general favour over the others even amongst the supporters of an Expanding Earth. A change in universal gravity was generally considered the least likely, and the most popular reasons to explain the Expanding Earth were grouped into explanations that allowed the Earth to expand with a constant mass, or were it expanded with an increasing mass. These two major variations of the Expanding Earth theory became known as the Constant Mass Expanding Earth or the Increasing Mass Expanding Earth.

This is why the dinosaurs' large size is so interesting for the Expanding Earth theory. In 1987 I realized that the dinosaurs' large size could be explained by a reduced gravity and then soon realized that the most likely cause of a reduced gravity was a smaller diameter, less massive Earth.

I'd never heard of the Expanding Earth theory before reasoning that the dinosaurs must live in a reduced gravity, but when I did learn about the geological evidence for an Expanding Earth it was soon evident that a Reduced Gravity Earth is exactly what an Increasing Mass Expanding Earth also predicted. Both theories use very different lines of reasoning and evidence but they both point to the same astonishing conclusions.

By the early 1990s I had produced my own Expanding Earth reconstructions with a computer program using spherical trigonometry and one of these animated reconstructions is shown above. Other people had produced similar reconstructions before - there are even more today - and one of the most convincing aspects of the Expanding Earth theory must be that these reconstructions all look so alike. It must surely provide reassurance that the reconstructions are reasonably accurate.

Some of the best reconstructions available today are on YouTube as short Expanding Earth videos. Neal Adams’ reconstructions are popular but the Australian geologist Dr James Maxlow’s reconstructions also have the added advantage that the geological evidence behind the reconstructions are explained in detail within his book, Terra Non Firma Earth.[2]

If you would like to try to produce your own reconstructions the raw data for the age of the ocean floor can be obtained from institutions like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).[3]  NOAA is presenting the raw data of the age of the ocean floor and is not supporting the Expanding Earth theory in any way so exactly the same raw data is used in plate tectonic reconstructions.

By 1994 I had also joined the ever growing number of authors that supported the Expanding Earth with the publication of my book, Dinosaurs and the Expanding Earth. This received praise from various sources and many noted the significance of the evidence predicting a Reduced Gravity Earth and its implications for the Expanding Earth. The most likely explanation for the Expanding Earth is an Increasing Mass Expanding Earth.

Today some of the evidence for the concept of dinosaurs living in reduced gravity has been repeated in many scientific papers and books including,Earth Universe Cosmos, Terra Non Firma Earth, Gravity and Expanding Earth - and the list is still growing.

If the Increasing Mass Expanding Earth is the correct solution for the evidence, then were has the extra mass come from? I believe the most logical explanation is that cosmic material regularly adds extra mass to the Earth. Yearly ‘cosmic showers’ adds small amounts of materials over short periods, but over geological time we know there are ‘cosmic storms’ that must add vast amounts of new material. This cosmic material is transported by geological processes that we observe today (erosion, sediment transport and subduction), into the interior of the Earth where it separates out into lighter and heavier elements. My book describes the evidence for all this in greater detail.

Various other people have also suggested a number of different possible reasons for a mass increase. Today this key unknown about the Expanding Earth theory is still in a state of flux about which increasing mass process is more likely.

The discussions are still continuing today. In September 2011 a week long conference, organised by Giancarlo Scalera and Stefan Cwojdzinski with James Maxlow as the lead presenter, was held at the International School of Geophysics in Erice to discuss the latest research.[4,5,6] This cross-discipline conference allowed a range of scientists, engineers and others to present papers centred on the Expanding Earth theory and these have been further developed and explored in the post conference book The Earth Expansion Evidence.[7] In August 2012, further papers about recent progress in the Expanding Earth theory were also presented at an International Geological Congress held in Brisbane. 

http://www.dinox.org/expandingearth.html

Earthquakes main cause is uncovered?

The main cause of  earthquakes: planetary degassing

D. Anton

 Just as the theory of planetary degassing promotes a thorough review of the dominant beliefs about the origin of hydrocarbons and coal, it also introduces new elements to review some basic ideas about planetary geophysics.

The orthodox theory attributes earthquakes, earthquakes or tremors to the mainly horizontal movement of crustal plates that diverge, converge or overlap..

These movements of large solid masses with plastics or rigid behavior, depending on the temperature, pressure and other factors, produces stresses which over time can lead to fractures.

Fractures generate vibrations that reach the surface where they are perceived as "earthquakes" or "tremors".

Similarly, when these fractures occur in the ocean, they generate disturbances and mass movements in the sea bottom causing waves which may produceg flash flooding in coastal areas.

These waves, which sometimes have great destructive effect, are called "tidal waves" or "tsumamis".

Gold has a very different idea about the causes of earthquakes and tsunamis vision.

He argues (according to the theory of planetary degassing) that the land expels fluids constantly at great depths, including juvenile volatiles.

A portion of the hydrocarbon fluids rise along with molten lava in volcanic processes. Anoth er part reaches the surface in a more continuous and peaceful way, through mud volcanoes and other hydrothermal emanations.

In some other cases, the ascending fluids produce fractures in rocks rising to the surface along these fractures. When an earthquake occurs these fluids, composed mainly of methane and other hydrocarbons, is expelled to the atmosphere producing fires along the fractures. In the sea bottom they surge as large bubbles which swells the ocean surface which may result in large tsunami waves.

There is numerous testimonial evidence of the relationship between some large earthquakes and the simultaneous emission of gases.

Some of the testimonials are very old, other ones are more recent, but in general, they provide clear evidence of the association between earthquakes, tsunamis and gas surgencies.

Degassing can also be perceived by the animals. Whether for its thermal differences or smells, many animals feel the existing disturbance and change their behaviors. Some mammals that live in underground nests come out of their caves before the occurrence of the seismic event.

The registration and verification of changes in temperature and gas emissions were taken into account in the city of Haicheng in China and allowed to prevent destruction and deaths in the quake of this city in February 1975.

Moreover, there are many descriptions of gaseous emissions sometimes accompanied by flares that occurred during the course of a seismic event.

1) Earthquake in Norcia and Aquila (Italy), January 14 and February 2, 1703

"In Aquila and Norcia, and elsewhere .... the earth here and there fractured and fractures leaving ugly smells of sulfur and bitumen; after the earthquake brimstone and fire came out of the open cracks in the earth "(quoted by Galli, 1911) -

2) Earthquake and tsunami in Lisbon, November 1, 1755

"... We began to hear a thunderous noise, like carriages, which increased to match the louder noise of a cannon, and immediately felt the first quake, which was followed by a second tremor and a third and so on. In the fourth quake, I saw several bright flames coming out of the sides of mountains, like those that can be observed in the embers of coal. I noticed in one of the hills called Fojo, near the beach Adraga (near Colares) there came a lot of smoke, very thick, but not too black, which further increased after the fourth tremor, and then continued out to a greater or lesser degree. Just when we heard thunder underground, we noted and explosion in the Fojo, as the amount of smoke was always proportional to the underground noise. "(Stoqueler, 17564).

3) Earthquake in Komárom, Hungary, June 28, 1763

"The soil fractures originated in thousands of sites. In almost all of them there were emissions of water and quicksand with flames and smoke with unpleasant smell .... the Danube river rose and the water level began to bubble as if boiling. It had sulfurous odor. Most fractures occurred near the river and some of them emerged alternately with sand flames and smoke. On Lake Ferto, 100 km. west of Komarom foam formed with thunderous noise. Flames were seen on the river itself. Cattle perished in the unpleasant steam rising from the earth. On the edge of another smaller river, Vag, flames rapidly emerged from fractures, followed by sulphurous waters. In some places, the water coming from the ground was clearly black. The river seemed to be boiling. "Quoted by Rethly, 1952.

4) Earthquake in Lima, March 30, 1828

"The water in the bay" whistled as if a hot iron was dipped in it, bubbles and dead fish rose to the surface and an anchor chain partially melted while lying on the mud from the bottom "(Bagnold, 1829). It is noted that the anchor chain is on display at the Navy Museum in London

5) Earthquake in Owens Valley, California, March 26, 1872.

"People who lived near Independence ..... said that in each successive tremor flames could clearly be seen in a hundred places at once, apparently about thirty or forty feet long and coiled and folded momentarily and then disappear "(San Francisco Chronicle, April 2, 1872).

6) Earthquake in Sonora, Mexico, May 3, 1887

"Another effect of the earthquake that terrorized the frightened inhabitants of those places, was the fire in all the mountains surrounding the epicenter and even some within the territory of Arizona, including the crest of San Jose. Some of these are continued flaring for many days "(Aquilera, 1920).

Extracted from "Inexhaustible? Gas and oil", Danilo Antón, Piriguazú Editions

Are there bacteria in the depth of the Earth?

About "The Deep Hot Biosphere"

Author: Thomas Gold
This book sets forth a set of truly controversial and astonishing theories: First, it proposes that below the surface of the earth is a biosphere of greater mass and volume than the biosphere the total sum of living things on our planet's continents and in its oceans. Second, it proposes that the inhabitants of this subterranean biosphere are not plants or animals as we know them, but heat-loving bacteria that survive on a diet consisting solely of hydrocarbons that is, natural gas and petroleum. And third and perhaps most heretically, the book advances the stunning idea that most hydrocarbons on Earth are not the byproduct of biological debris ("fossil fuels"), but were a common constituent of the materials from which the earth itself was formed some 4.5 billion years ago.

The implications are astounding. The theory proposes answers to often-asked questions: Is the deep hot biosphere where life originated, and do Mars and other seemingly barren planets contain deep biospheres? Even more provocatively, is it possible that there is an enormous store of hydrocarbons upwelling from deep within the earth that can provide us with abundant supplies of gas and petroleum?
However far-fetched these ideas seem, they are supported by a growing body of evidence, and by the indisputable stature and seriousness Gold brings to any scientific debate. In this book we see a brilliant and boldly original thinker, increasingly a rarity in modern science, as he develops potentially revolutionary ideas about how our world works.

The theory of "fossil" origin of petroleum is unsustainable

 D.Antón

 More arguments for the mineral oil theory

 There is numerous proofs that hydrocarbons are abundant at the galactic and planetary level and as a consequence if can be inferred that in our planet they are too. Astronomical observations obtained through the study of light absorption in clouds of dust and gas in the galaxy and in the solar system bodies (planets, satellites, comets, meteorites) allowed to confirm the abundance of hydrocarbons almost everywhere. Obviously, these hydrocarbonaceous compounds did not originate from fossils. The question that immediately arises: Why should be different on Earth?  

The abiotic theory (non fossil theory) takes into account more adequately the data of reality. Oil, natural gas and associated hidrocarbons are of mineral origin and they are virtually inexhaustible in the short and medium term. The knowledge gained from recent space exploration, interplanetary probes and through images of the Hubble Space Telescope and new ground-based telescopes, allowed a differente look of our planet and the processes that occur in it.. The obtained information shows the relationship   between the various bodies of the solar system and the similarity of processes that gave rise to them. (see enclosed picture of methane lakes in Saturn's moon Titan)

The new data tend to confirm the theory of the formation of planets, planetoids and comets. by agglomeration of planetesimals (meteorites, asteroids, comets). In all of them carbon in its various forms (usually as hydrocarbons or carbon oxides) was found..

It is also considered that, subsequent to their initial formation, these bodies experienced heating due to gravitational contraction, radioactivity of certain elements and in later times through crystalline phase changes.

From the information available it also follows that the internal structure of planets (and satelllites or asteroids) was originally heterogeneous, and that, while some homogenization may have happened , many components of the original heterogeneity must still be present in the interior of the planetary bodies.

One of the main processes of their internal dynamism seems to be degassing. This involves the gradual rise of relatively light elements or compounds, assuming a gaseous state under near surface pressure ranges and temperature. The main molecules that are part of the gaseous envelopes of planets are nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide and water. Nitrogen is relatively abundant at the astronomical level, tends to surge upward and when their mass and gravity are sufficient to retain it, they form "nitrogen atmospheres" (as in the Earth). Because it iss chemically stable very little is combined with other elements during its ascent.
Carbon and hydrogen compounds, however, are ehemically more active, particularly in the presence of oxygenated minerals, such as metal oxides and sulphates. Fractures produced within planets due to distension and astronomical tides facilitate the ascent.

Methane (CH4) is the most common carbon molecule in the planetary interiors and when combined with oxygen,  generates CO2, CO and H2O.

These carbonaceous fluids are injected into solid rock masses generating lateral pressure in the fractures, widening and lubricating them. This produces movement of the crust blocks, producing earthquakes and gas and lava ejections.

When methane and other carbonaceous gases are obstructed in their rise by impermeable layers they can accumulate forming deposits of natural gas. If they continue in their ascent they may lose some of their hydrogen through oxidation becoming liquid hydrocarbons or "oil". If its rise is interrupted oil deposits are generated. The biotic theory, however, attributes these hydrocarbons to ancient organisms that were buried in ancient geological times and then "matured" forming gas and oil. Personally, I think that, this “fossil” hypothesis, although generally accepted, does not fit at all with the geological and extractive reality.

From "Inexhaustible? Gas & Petroleum", Danilo Antón, Piriguazú Editions

Blog in Spanish: dnailoanton.blogspot.com

A revolutionary theory on the origin of the Earth


In this article I will try, and subsequently introduce some elements of a theory of planetary evolution which implies a profound change in contemporary beliefs.  It is based on the arguments of several authors suggesting new insights about the origins and dynamics of our planet (see bibliography).

Introduction
A paradigm that resists to be changed
The paradigm of normal science defined by Thomas S. Kuhn is the set of theories, rules, procedures and knowledge that permeate a particular society at a particular time in its history. Today it regards scientific "model" widely adopted in contemporary global society.
The subject of planetary evolution, currently restricted to the generally accepted "theory of plate tectonics" with a constant volume planet complemented by hypothesis ("fossil") biological origin of petroleum are established paradigmatic areas that resist be changed despite the numerous data which should induce radical and thorough review.

In this "globalized" society would mean that the official scientific construction work through the accumulation of scientific data that would allow "progress" in knowledge, in particular achieving greater detail in the specific application of accepted scientific models.
Unfortunately, there is no official method in this paradigm (or any other dominant paradigm) that would establish "whole model" to accept other theories and apply other rules or procedures to finish modifying it radically.
For that reason, in the field of planetary geology it is very difficult to rethink the validity of many concepts whose validity is being contradicted every day by reality.
The difficulty of changing the official paradigm lies in the fact that this modification would also alter the relations of power.
Politically, those who hold "the paradigmatic power" are the same that control decision-making mechanisms. From the economic point of view they are the ones who benefit from the decisions made based on the officially accepted postulates
In the academic sphere they are the people who defend their prestige and economic security that the professional or academic positions they occupy give and consider that they would be eventually threatened by a possible change of paradigm (Lovelock, 1988).
We have no doubt that sooner or later the paradigm shift will occur. When the critical mass of researchers and scientists and support of the public is sufficient, when the decades pass and new data become available confirming the new vision of the history and dynamics of our planet, the power structures will give way and new paradigm will be officially accepted.
At that time the conditions will be created to redefine the necessary political and economic strategies allowing to develop and establish a new approach to human relationships with planetary resources and environments.
(to be continued)
The blog in Spanish is:  daniloanton.blogspot.com

Oil energy crisis is a scam

     Tony Pitt

Oil and gas reserves are renewable

Oil and coal don't come from decayed matter. There is no chemical relationship between the hydrocarbons in black coal and those in vegetation or dinosaur bodies. Brown coal is a different matter. It comes from decayed vegetable matter (peat, etc)

Oil and gas are condensates from the magma (the earth's molten core). Nearly all fields are being topped up from below. The top-up process is known as Abiotic Oil. The hydrocarbons come from geo-pressurised gas. Many fields considered "exhausted" have come to life again.

The Yates field in Texas is a prime example. Such fields stop flowing when the source of inflowing oil from below becomes blocked as a paper filter becomes clogged and impregnable. Nature finds another path and the oil field can be tapped again.

Russia is now a big oil producer because they understand the process and drill at depths better than 30,000 feet (9,000 metres).

Coal too is unlimited and renewable. It is driven of the magma (molten core of the earth). It comes up as gas, is trapped, condenses, and by a chemical bacterial process changes to oil and eventually to coal.

The bacterial change is an observable process At Laverton (Vic) in the RAAF, we had a Fuel Section dedicated to solving the problem of aircraft fuel tanks and underground tanks. We grew the various contaminants in glass tanks.

Huge grotesque black shapes grew in those tanks (as they did in aircraft tanks). They did no harm in glass tanks, but when they broke up by vibration in an aircraft, they stopped fuel flow through the fuel lines, so the pilot and crew had to walk home.

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~hubbca/Oil%20con%20job.htm

Overproduction in Saudi Arabia is possible because there is oil recharge from underneath

Saudi Arabia deficit, low petroleum prices and the abiotic origin of hydrocarbons. 

"Saudi Arabia's budget deficit soared to $98bn (£65.7bn) this year as the world's biggest oil exporter counted the cost of falling crude prices. In the first budget under King Salman, the kingdom said revenues reached 608bn riyals (£108.7bn; $162bn), down 15% on official expectations. Spending for the year hit 975bn riyals, some 13% more than forecast. Oil prices have plunged from a five-year high of $125 a barrel in March 2012 to just $37.18 now. Saudi Arabia said that oil revenues, which make up 77% of the total revenue figure for 2015, are down 23% compared to last year." From BBC news, 28/12/15.

According to the abiotic oil hypothesis the available volumes of hydrocarbons, including oil and natural gas are practically unexhaustible. Throughout the Earth mantle and lower crust there are huge volumes of methane and other light hydrocarbons which gradually rise through fractures and accumulate when they reach impermeable layers. The abundance of petroleum means that the price will remain very low because of oversupply. The biotic theory, on the contrary, argues that petroleum is formed through the accumulation of organic matter (fossil fuel). Therefore prices will go upwards to a point in which other sources of energy will be necessary. Actual prices are in agreement with the abiotic theory. (D.Anton). 

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35188807

The strange heresies of Thomas Gold

 If the maverick astronomer 's theories about oil are right, we'l be able to drive for a long time

Sometime next year, from off the coast of Japan, we should find out if he is right. Working onboard the Chikyu, a 210-meter ship equipped with a huge drilling platform, a team of geologists, engineers and oceanographers led by Japan's Center for Deep Earth Exploration hopes to drill the world's deepest hole. The 8.5-inch aperture will penetrate seven kilometers under the earth's crust to pierce its mantle and solve some of our most profound mysteries. For the first time, human eyes may see the molten rock that makes up 84 percent of Earth's volume. According to astronomer Thomas Gold, they may tap into the source of the planet's energy and the cradle of life itself. 

If correct, Gold's theory will change the way we think about everything from energy to our role in the universe. Corporate and state power contingent on the vagaries of the oil market could disintegrate. Environmental policies would have to adjust to a new paradigm. Even cultural values premised on the uniqueness of life would have to be made anew. For decades Gold's theory has enraged the scientific establishment. "Every fact is against him," says an Amoco geochemist. "Completely absurd," adds a Colorado School of Mines geologist. "A waste of time," says another, "on about the same level as saying sugarplum fairies will cure cancer." 

Thomas Gold typically generates these sorts of responses. An iconoclast astronomer educated at Cambridge University, Gold spent his career challenging conventional wisdom with ideas on everything from the nature of the universe to the workings of the inner ear. Controversy has been common with Gold, but the response was never more explosive than it was to his theory about the secrets of the mantle. He put forth his most heretical theory after he retired from Cornell University, in 1987. His critics contended he had aged into a wild crank; an unrepentant Gold defended his theory, until he died last year, at the age of 84, in Ithaca, New York. Will the world's deepest hole be Gold's final redemption, or will it sound the death knell for his long-challenged theory? 

Gold's idea was at first simple. Scientists have envisioned the earth as a sterile chunk of molten rock with a surface civilized by a film of life that processed elements into complex molecules. Over time some of these products of living chemistry were rescrambled into molecules such as methane and octane and other hydrocarbons otherwise known as petroleum, which all rest within the first few kilometers of the earth's eggshell-like crust. 

Along with astrophysicist Steven Soter, Gold proposed a modified scenario in 1980. After hydrocarbons--in particular methane, the main component of natural gas--had been found on Jupiter and the moons of Saturn, Gold and Soter hypothesized that the earth, too, might have been endowed with methane and other hydrocarbons long before life came around. Primordial abiotic hydrocarbons--i.e., molecules not created biologically--might bubble up to mingle with biologically generated hydrocarbons. If so, their serpentine movements through cracks and fissures in the crust would explain their mysterious presence at the bottom of certain lakes and steaming out of hydrothermal vents. 

It was, they admitted, a relatively simple hypothesis. It would "doubtless turn out to be in places oversimplified and overstated," but they hoped it would at least spur research. They added a few throwaway lines--a half dozen in a five-page article--about the possibility of abiotic hydrocarbons furnishing a source of energy. It was interesting to ponder but not a practical concern. Nobody had ever drilled deeply into the crust, let alone the mantle underneath it. Why bother? The best oil fields in the world offer oil and gas from holes that are just three kilometers deep. Even a hole twice that depth would cost upwards of $4 million to drill. 

The implications of Gold's theory are profound. According to the Department of Energy, the planet's natural-gas supply is fixed somewhere around a half-trillion barrels of oil. If Gold is right, such estimates are off by several orders of magnitude. Instead "there would bean inexhaustible supply," says industry geologist Barry Katz. What that may mean for a civilization whose progress is defined by finite energy resources boggles the mind. "It's the golden fleece," says Katz. 

It wasn't long before libertarian economists and conspiracy theorists latched onto Gold's hypothesis. "The world is running into oil, not out of it," claimed energy economist Peter Odell, who went on to say that the OPEC-induced energy crisis of the 1970s was driven by market forces. He felt there was no need to fear, because by 2060 "abiogenic oil will, if need be, enter the market." 

Gold wasn't particularly interested in the economic implications of his theory. "It was pretty clear that exploitable deposits are very different from an abundance of inaccessible material," says Gold's colleague astrophysicist Edwin Salpeter. "Gold usually stressed the scientific implications more than the economic ones," adds Soter. Then again, Gold had a tendency to exaggerate for effect. 

From the beginning of his career, Gold was the sort of genius who irritated other scientists. Over and over he invaded new fields and challenged basic principles, offering little more than incisive logic and qualitative evidence done in broad strokes. Born in Vienna in 1920, Gold fit the part of the maverick. A few years after qualifying toski professionally in Switzerland, he went to Cambridge, where as a master's student at Trinity College he shocked the medical establishment with a theory of hearing that challenged Hermann von Helmholtz's accepted theory. The inner ear, Gold claimed, generated its own tone.He was laughed out of medicine. By the age of 28, he had moved on to astronomy. In 1948 he and two fellow graduate students, Fred Hoyle and Hermann Bondi, presented a new theory of the nature of the universe. Their steady-state theory reigned for years before being supplanted by the big bang. 

In 1959 Gold was appointed John L. Wetherill Professor of Astronomy at Cornell. His bold ideas continued to earn him enemies. By the late 1960s conference organizers had become so enraged with Gold's contrarianism--this time his theory was that recently discovered pulsars were actually rotating neutron stars--that they refused to allow him five minutes to speak from the floor. 

The rub was that, more often than not, Gold was right. His theories on hearing and pulsars are now accepted wisdom. Sure, he didn't bother much with details, but "he was undeniably brilliant," says geologist Barbara Sherwood Lollar. "He always advocated theories that were unorthodox," says Salpeter, "and many turned out to be right." 

By the time he turned his attention to geology, Gold was a towering figure. Along with being chairman of astronomy at Cornell, where he had hired Carl Sagan, Gold was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and director of Cornell's Center for Radiophysics and Space Research. "In person he was a polite European fellow," remembers former Cornell grad student Thomas Zemanian. He charmed acolytes with his Viennese accent and his mad-scientist enthusiasm. He skied the Aspen slalom course every year--and in gold-medal times. "He didn't suffer fools," says U.S. Geological Survey geologist emeritus David G. Howell, "and he didn't worry if people disagreed with him." 

In 1966, as NASA prepared to send astronauts to the moon, Gold calculated that contrary to geologists' prediction of a rocky lunar surface--the condition astronauts trained for--the moon would be covered in a fine powder. "Most geologists said, 'Absolutely not. There's no moon dust, not even a hundred-millionth of an inch of dust,'" says Salpeter. "Tommy would exaggerate a little and say, 'Look, the astronauts will sink in to their navels.'" Geologists complain that NASA spent six of seven surveyor missions attempting to find out if its manned mission might sink in dust. Kenneth Deffeyes, a petroleum geologist at Princeton, was appalled. "That was a big, multibiltion-dollar program," he says, "and most of it was spent refuting Gold's idea." In the end, as was often the case, Gold was both right and wrong. The astronauts sank in dust up to their ankles. "So the geologists said, 'He was wrong!'" says Salpeter. "But the geologists were completely wrongby a factor of 100 million. Gold was wrong by a factor of three." 

Then Gold came up with another outrageous theory: that petroleum resided not just in the crust, where oil explorers spent their time hunting for it, but at far greater depths, in the mantle. When energy analyst Gregg Marland gathered geologists in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in 1983 to discuss the abiotic-gas theory with Gold, tensions were running high. Astronomers and physicists might have found Gold's theory reasonable enough, but most petroleum geologists thought it was ridiculous. There were obvious scientific objections: Hydrocarbons would be destroyed at the high temperatures and pressures of the mantle, for one thing. Geochemists, furthermore, had their reputation to consider; energy agencies and oil and gas companies funded their research because it was supposed to help find oil and gas, yet according to a 1975 study, just as much oil and gas would have been found if the holes had been drilled at random. Since then they had worked to build a solid theory of hydrocarbon formation, and they weren't about to let Gold shoot holes in it. 

The three-day meeting quickly devolved into confrontation. Gold was unhappy during much of it. "He felt he was outnumbered and picked on," said Marland. Amoco's John Winters left the meeting saying he would never again speak publicly with Gold because the esteemed astronomer was "out of the realm of rational science." "I've never been at a meeting quite of this character," said the moderator, Alvin Weinberg. 

"People shake their fists at me," Gold told one magazine. "If they could, they would burn me at the stake." Despite all the rancor, no one disputed that Gold's deep abiotic gas existed. 

Geochemist Michael Lewan worked with Winters at Amoco in the 1980s, analyzing organic-rich rock and running lab experiments on how to turn it into oil. "I don't think anybody has ever doubted there is an inorganic source of gaseous hydrocarbons," he says. Another geologist acknowledges, "I have no problem with the idea that there is abiogenic methane." Gold's theory had exceeded the boundaries of petroleum geology. If the stuff was down there, it was probably dispersed and certainly deeply buried. Nobody could see how to make a buck finding and selling such gas, so it was irrelevant, no matter how enlightening. 

But Gold kept pushing. Hadn't geologists similarly excoriated meteorologist Alfred Wegener's 1915 theory of continental drift, mocking it for 50 years before it was accepted? "I don't think I have anything to apologize for," he said to The Vancouver Sun. "I am almost always right." As geologists' resistance grew, so did Gold's claims about abiotic gas. In 1980 Gold and Soter wrote that "much of the petroleum that has been recovered" originated from the burial of biological debris. By 1986 he was telling reporters that only some oil and gas originated from biological materials. By 1999, in his second book on the topic, Gold claimed that no oil came from biological debris, although he allowed that some gas did. 

As a science, geology lacks both a consistent experimental method and a vigorous theoretical wing. This has led some physicists, as one academic geologist notes, to "sometimes think we're dumb." But petroleum geology is perhaps the most advanced subdiscipline within the field. And the story of hydrocarbons has been told many times. According to petroleum geologists, hydrocarbons start to form when sediments enriched with the corpses of organisms--mostly plankton--get slowly buried. As the sedimentary layer sinks to 7,500 feet or so, the pressure and heat are right for sediments to turn, over millions of years, into oil-rich rock. (If sediments slip deeper than 18,000 feet, heat and pressure destroy the oily molecules.) Tectonic movements force the oil in sedimentary rock into circuitous movements in the crust. If the migrating oil meets up with a porous rock with a solid cap on it,it will get trapped. The lucky driller who pierces that rock gets a Cadillac. 

A wide array of evidence supports this three-act story of burial, migration and entrapment. Pieces of chlorophyll and shell are found in oil and gas. Trails of high electrical resistivity can be used to track oil and gas migrations underground. One can even heat a lump of organic-rich sedimentary rock in the lab and turn it into oil. Finally, nearly every oil and gas field has been found not in lifeless igneous rocks thrust up from the mantle, where Gold's abiotic gas supposedly resides, but in sedimentary rocks formed from material sloughed off from the life-teeming land and seas. 

Gold had an alternate explanation for nearly every piece of evidence petroleum geologists put forward to defend their biotic theories. The microfossils in oil? Microbial contamination after the fact, he said. Evidence of migration? Irrelevant, he said, because abiotic hydrocarbons drifting up from the mantle would move in the crust the same way biotic ones did. Ditto for the transformation of organic sedimentary rock into petroleum. The rock had already soaked up abiotic hydrocarbons. Sedimentary rocks as the primary locale for oil and gas fields? Self-fulfilling prophecy, he said. Nobody bothered to look in igneous rocks. 

And yet, save for a few stray supporters such as David G. Howell and independent oil explorers Michel Halbouty and Robert Hefner, Gold's claims fell on deaf ears. "I think 95 percent of professional geologists would disagree with Gold," says one University of Southern California petroleum engineer. Gold needed evidence. He needed to discover hydrocarbons in a place where they couldn't possibly have formed biologically. 

Gold found a receptive audience in Sweden. In the mid-1980s, energy officials there could be described as desperate. Sweden's environmentally concerned populace had condemned the nuclear reactors that hadpowered the country since the early 1970s. With no known domestic source of oil, gas or coal, however, it remained unclear how the Swedes might replace nuclear power. But Sweden did have the Siljan Ring, a perfect test site for Gold's inorganic-gas theory. Nearly 400 million years ago a three kilometer-wide meteor crashed into the crust there,fracturing it to a depth of 50 kilometers and leaving behind Europe's second-largest crater. No organic sediments were present to have produced oil, gas or coal in the traditional way, but the cracks could have allowed Gold's inorganic gas to bubble up. Gold had suggested the notion to Swedish officials in the early 1980s, and after some research they decided to drill a $25 million, six-kilometer-deep hole in the crater to search for the gas. Then the state power board's advisory committee issued a report calling the chances of success remote. Although the notion of mining the sites of meteor strikes wasn't unheard of--others had proposed drilling to tap into geothermally heated water--some officials worried the country might appear foolish. The government pulled the plug on the funding. 

Gold remained determined. A private holding company was set up to fund the project in partnership with government agencies. With talk of a $100 billion reserve, people anted up, and drilling began in June 1986. Gold's detractors weren't impressed. In their eyes Gold had crossed the line from science into boosterism. Forbes ran an article reporting that Gold had received $640,000 for the drilling. According to the magazine, an American drilling supervisor mistakenly announced on Swedish TV that the hole had produced a massive reservoir. Within months share prices had risen from 10,000 kronor to 107,000. 

The rock proved unyielding. By September 1986, after plowing through 6.3I kilometers, the drillers had found only a small bit of oily sludge. Gold claimed victory--"my theory is now on much firmer ground," he said--but skeptics chalked it up to contamination from drilling fluids. The drilling contractor abandoned the hole and pleaded bankruptcy. 

While geologists cheered Gold's failure, across the Atlantic in Ontario methane was streaming out of the same kinds of Precambrian granite Gold had drilled in Sweden. Since the turn of the century Canadian miners had told tales of flammable gases wafting out of their mines, miles away from any ancient biological debris. "But nobody had tackled it scientifically," remembers Barbara Sherwood Lollar, then a Ph.D. candidate in geology at the University of Waterloo. "All this press and money were going into the Siljan," she says. "Then a couple of people here in Canada said, 'We know the gas is here. Let's go to the mines and take some samples.'" Punching a hole into the wall of the mine, she says, was like opening a can of soda. There was gas in the rock everywhere. 

Sherwood Lollar set to work analyzing the gas, but she ultimately turned to other research. Definitive data on the gases wouldn't emerge from her work for years. As a young academic interested in securing tenure, "you want to be sure you're not working in an area that some people would feel is crackpot," she says. Gold had "given the field a black eye. People heard 'abiotic gas' and put you into the category of crank." 

Other evidence emerged at Cornell. Thomas Zemanian, then a grad student, spent five years building an apparatus to test if hydrocarbons could be stabilized by pressures of the mantle, as Gold had speculated. By 1989 he had, contrary to expectation, proved they could. But when he sent out his paper for publication, the anonymous peer reviewers were livid. Zemanian moved on to other things. Trying to support Gold's theory with experimental data--the lack of which continued to condemn it in scientific circles--"just isn't the kind of thing that pays the bills," he says. Zemanian now works for the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Lab. His Cornell research remains unpublished. 

Gold plugged away in Sweden. "He was a believer in this idea," says Howell, "and because of the resistance and because he had retired, he kind of became evangelical." More money was drummed up for another project. In 1991 Gold extolled the Siljan region as a "world-class prospecting area for gas and oil" with a total volume "bigger than the volume of the Kuwaiti oil fields." But that hole also rendered inconclusive results. Out came a small quantity of oily sludge, which caused the same old squabbles: Gold claimed vindication; critics dismissed his find as the result of contamination from distant sediments or drilling fluids. 

But then Gold found something in the hole. More than 50 kilograms of a stiff black putty had oozed up from the bottom of the fissure. Drillers, judging it an "uninteresting, malodorous nuisance of no commercial value," as Gold put it, had thrown most of it away. But Gold got his hands on a small plastic bag's worth, which he set about analyzing. What he found was of "extraordinary scientific value," he laterwrote. It was magnetite. 

A magnetic form of iron, magnetite is found in igneous and sedimentary rocks, mostly in large crystals. Geochemists scoffed that the stuff Gold found was only a by-product of lubricants used in the drilling, but Gold thought otherwise. Something had processed this magnetite - it was particularly fine-grained-and dumped it down there. It was time for another radical proposition. 

In the early 1980s Gold developed a theory of what he called the deep hot biosphere. Accepted wisdom held that all life requires sunlight, but Gold didn't see any plausible reason for that. If inorganic gases had been welling up from the mantle for millennia, as he believed, some microbe must have emerged to feed on them. To figure it out, "you or I would probably start reading the literature," says John Zollweg, a researcher who worked with Gold at Cornell. "But that wasn't Tommy's approach. His was 'I'm a cosmologist. Let me think about things.'" 

There had been hints that microbial life might exist in the depths. Since the 1930s oil drillers had claimed to have found microbes in their oil wells. In the late 1970s all manner of bizarre lifeforms were found around "black smokers"--fissures in the seafloor that stream superheated liquids from below--in waters far too deep for sunlight to penetrate. Clearly the world of microbes had barely been charted. In 1977 microbiologist Carl Woese discovered not just a few new species of microbes but an entirely new kingdom: the archaea. 

What if these creatures were not thrilling extensions of surface fife, Gold asked, but represented some unknown biosphere in the rocks?What if life evolved not on the surface but from down below? In fact, Gold speculated, the subsurface of the planet provided an ideal nursery for early life. It was vast, warm and--if one accepted Gold's theory about inorganic gases--energy rich, too. Gold figured that if microbes were present in just the first six kilometers, even if they were as rare as Siberian tigers, their empire would be at least as big--if not bigger-than our familiar one in the light. "Just imagine the volume" of a deep biosphere, says microbial geochemist Jan Amend. "The subsurface could harbor more living carbon than all the green plants, soil bugs and ocean critters combined." 

Gold considered geology parochial because it painted Earth as unique. He viewed Earth as one planet among many, unique in some ways, ordinary in others. Conditions inside our planet are not unique, Gold knew. "Two or three miles down," says Cornell soil ecologist David Wolfe, "at least a few planetary bodies in our solar system are almost identical to Earth." If there were a deep hot biosphere on Earth, there could be more on other planets rotating around our sun. If Gold is right, scientists shouldn't look for extraterrestrial life on planetary bodies; they should look inside them. 

The basis for Gold's bold conjectures was questionable at best. The supposed deep oil microbes had been dismissed as contaminants from the drill bit or elsewhere. In the early 1980s Carl Woese's methodology wasn't held in high regard in the scientific community. Rather than coaxing his microbes to survive in his lab, where they could be studied, Woese presumed their existence by analyzing bits of nucleic acid RNA in his samples. Blacksmoker ecosystems were dark, true, but ultimately they too depended on life giving sunlight. Their oxygenated seawater came thanks to the exertions of sun-loving plant life. 

In the 19th century Charles Darwin suggested that life may have originated in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc., present." Lab simulations of the warm little pond seemed to support Darwin's scenario. According to Gold's friend Fred Hoyle, the notion that something as complex and thermodynamically improbable as life could form out of a bit of ooze was about as believable as a jet airliner being assembled during a hurricane in a junkyard. But that was the story, and the scientific establishment was sticking to it. In 1983 Gold submitted his paper on the deep hot biosphere to Nature. It was rejected. 

By the 1980s the certainties around the origin of life, the planet's energy budget and the scale of microbial life had started to crumble. A series of discoveries suggested the early earth was more forbidding than had been thought. Meteor craters were found on the moon, much larger and older than those on earth. If the early solar system was as violent as the moon scars suggest, geologists said, the earth could not have escaped unscathed. Yet fossil evidence established that photosynthesizing life-forms emerged not long after an active meteor period. This didn't add up. Such meteors would have sterilized the surface for thousands of years. Life's first ancestors could have survived only if they had been entrenched in some deep, hidden corner. Nobody knew where that corner might be--hydrothermal vents were one suggestion-but many agreed that Darwin's little pond was no longer so welcoming. 

The accepted view on the planet's endowment of methane and microbes had also been called into doubt. In the late 1980s government geologists discovered that the planet's sea floors and permafrost were littered with ice-like compounds called methane hydrates. Previously thought to exist only in the solar system's outer reaches, methane hydrates form when methane leaks out into cold, high-pressure conditions. Ifthere was as much methane hydrate on earth as there appeared to be, the planet must hold 100 times more methane than previously believed.The same goes for microbes. As the molecular techniques Woese had been scorned for came to be accepted, microbiologists discovered they had underestimated the extent of the microbial world by a factor of 100. To top it off, microbiologist Derek Lovley had isolated a new microbe from the bottom of the Potomac River in 1987. It breathed rust and excreted magnetite. 

In 1992 Gold exercised his privilege as a member of the National Academy of Sciences to get his paper on the deep hot biosphere published in the academy's journal without peer review. The paper dropped like a bomb onto fields ranging from microbiology to astronomy and oceanography.USA Today ran a frontpage article. If there were a deep hot biosphere, it "could prove to be one of the monumental discoveries of our age," Physics World wrote. Not everybody was so charged up. "A lot of people just said, 'Rubbish,'" says University of Washington astrobiologist Roger Buick. "We do not yet have enough solid observations to say this is so," a microbiologist told The New York Times. The idea of a living kingdom deep in the crust may have sparked imaginations, but few scientists had the wherewithal to actually look for it. 

Three years later, thanks to energy officials worried about microbes eating through buried nuclear waste containers, the kind of ecosystem Gold had envisioned--living things requiring no sun, no oxygen and nothing that resulted from the two--was found. In 1995 scientists from the Pacific Northwest Laboratory analyzed samples from wells dug into a layer of hardened lava called the Columbia River basalts. The amazing thing wasn't that they found evidence of microbes there but the kind of microbes they appeared to be. These organisms could live in the oxygen-starved darkness by feeding on hydrogen. This "subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystem" (or SLIME) lived off abiotic gases in the lifeless rock alone. 

The hunt was on for the deep hot biosphere. In 1997 the National Science Foundation earmarked $6 million a year for inquiries into life in extreme environments--in scalding hydrothermal vents, under miles of ice and deep underground. In 1998 NASA created the Astrobiology Institute, doling out $15 million a year to search for the origins of life. One arm of it was devoted to drilling deep into the earth's crust. Searching for life under the seafloor likewise rose to the top of the Ocean Drilling Program's research agenda. 

Experimental evidence of a deep hot biosphere started to accumulate quickly. In 1998 Princeton geomicrobiologist Tullis Onstott found microbes living 2.7 kilometers underground in eastern Virginia. Later he discovered signs of microbial life more than 3.5 kilometers down in a South African gold mine. In June 1998 one of Woese's proteges, a University of Georgia microbiologist, calculated that the underground biomass could equal all the planet's marine and land plants. In 2002 another deeply buried SLIME was discovered. In the pore spaces of igneous rock under Lidy Hot Springs in Idaho, microbes were feeding on hydrogen produced by reactions between hot water and rock, exhaling methane. 

While most of these deep microbial worlds exploit the interior's production of hydrogen rather than methane, evidence suggests that methane too is abundant in the crust, formed inorganically as Gold had suggested. In 1999 chemists at Oak Ridge exposed iron-rich rocks to seawater under conditions similar to those beneath the ocean and produced methane. Sherwood Lollar's mysterious gases in the Canadian Shieldwere similarly formed in the water-filled fractures of ancient rocks. As scientists looked for the microbial world they guessed might be feeding on methane, oceanographers inadvertently discovered just that in the spring of 2005, nearly a kilometer under the Atlantic. At the Lost City hydrothermal field of 60-meter-tall creamy white spires and cliffs, seawater trickling into iron-rich mantle rocks exudes life-giving methane and other gases. Scientists still don't know how life originated, but as for where, they are closer to an answer: Look down. 

Even as evidence grew for the deep hot biosphere, Gold's theory of abiotic hydrocarbons remained an object of derision in geological circles. In 1993, for example, when the U.S. Geological Survey published a collection on natural gas that included a contribution from Gold, dozens of irate academic and industry geologists petitioned the agency. "They wanted me fired, and they wanted the book withdrawn," says Howell, who spearheaded the project. Gold responded by filing a $1 billion lawsuit against 36 industry and academic geologists for libel, assault and slander. The suit was dismissed shortly afterward. 

Gold's critics didn't bother to read his books, either. "It was more than I had time for," says Lewan. Kenneth Deffeyes also admits he never read Gold's books. A 2004 textbook penned by geologists from the USGS, Stanford and ExxonMobil recalls Gold as a misguided scientistand notes that his abiotic-gas theory was criticized by "nearly all geochemists and petroleum geologists." The deephot-biosphere theory was in "conflict with conventional concepts of the earth's biosphere."Gold's theory kept making the rounds only because its supporters "use many of the same tactics the supporters of scientific creationism use to ridicule evolutionary theory." To detractors such as industry geologist Katz, the study of abiotic hydrocarbons isn't even real science. "It's almost like a religion with some of these people," he says. "This is something a lot of people want to believe," adds Deffeyes,"because, wow, oil fields will refill themselves; we will just drill deeper, and there won't be any problem." 

Nobody knows whether a huge store of methane lies deep in the mantle. All scientists can say with certainty today is that the methane we do have is primarily biologically derived, with a smaller amount created inorganically in the crust. The deep methane could be there and we just haven't been able to access it yet. Perhaps we never will. The need to prepare for a post petroleum age has probably become urgent enough to render moot hunts for elusive reserves of gas. But new endeavors to study the depths continue apace. In Sweden, microbiologist Karsten Pedersen hopes to circumvent the problems of contamination and pressure differentials that plague deep research by plugging directly into the deep biosphere. Blessed with ample funding through Sweden's nuclear-research program, Pedersen is studying deep microbes from a lab situated in a man-made cave system carved 500 meters under the granite. 

And the scientific community awaits the results from the Chikyu. It may take a year for the drilling to reach the mantle, but many of the scientists involved expect to find life there. What we will learn remains to be seen. What's clear is that over the course of a few decades, Gold's heretical ideas have effected a revolution in our understanding of our place in the universe. 

By the late 1990s the indomitable professor had stopped skiing. "He had bad arthritis in his hands," says Howell. "He wasn't as astute in conversation." But his scientific conviction never faltered. "He was championing his theories right up until he went to the hospital," says Robert Hefner. Gold died in June 2004. 

Today few scientists doubt the existence of the deep hot biosphere. And deep microbial life feeding on abiotic gases may be the rule, not the exception, inside planets similar to ours. It's another ego-bruising blow: First Copernicus told us the sun didn't revolve around us, then Darwin said we descended from animals. Now it appears we're not the lead characters on the main stage of life; we're just a sideshow. Thomas Gold wasn't right on all the details--not by a long shot--but then again, few revolutionaries are. 

Sonia Shah

Playboy

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 18:26 UTC