> I'm just finishing up Thomas Gold's book *The Deep Hot Biosphere*. ..
>
> I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this book or knows something of
> Gold's views, especially anyone with a geology background.
A review of Gold's book appears in the current issue of "Physics
Today". The reviewer is Paul Davies. It is available in electronic
form to those who have registered on the IOP site.
http://physicsweb.org/users/article/books-1999-02-01-12-02-01
I'll give extracts below.
-------------------------------------------
Science gets hot under the crust
The Deep Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold
1998 Copernicus 225pp £19.00/$27.00hb
On page 38 of this provocative book, Thomas Gold describes how he
began "nosing around in the field of petroleum geology" only after
establishing himself as an esteemed astronomer and physicist, and
having been elected as a member of several prestigious learned
societies. He would not recommend a scientist of lesser standing,
"however brilliant", to propose the sort of radical theories
summarized here. For Gold's thesis amounts to a total revision of much
of the Earth sciences. If he is right, the consequences could be
dramatic, not only for science, but also for economics and politics.
At the heart of the theory is the problem of the origin of
hydrocarbons in the Earth's crust. Conventional wisdom has it that oil
and coal are remnants of ancient surface life that became buried and
subjected to extremes of temperature and pressure. Gold maintains that
these deposits are not fossil fuels in the normal sense, but the
products of primordial hydrocarbons dating from the time of the
Earth's formation. He claims that over the aeons the volatile gases
migrate towards the surface through cracks in the crust, and either
leak into the atmosphere as methane, become trapped in sub-surface gas
fields, or are robbed of their hydrogen to become oil, tar or
carbonaceous material like coal. In other words, these substances are
formed from the bottom up, rather than the top down. It follows that
there must be reserves of fuel vastly in excess of the quantities that
the gas and petroleum industry estimates.
When Gold proposed this theory in the early 1980s, few scientists took
him seriously. However, he did persuade the Swedish State Power Board
to drill into a slab of granite fractured by an ancient meteor impact.
Since oil is supposed to be found only in sedimentary rocks, it was a
good test of Gold's theory. If gas is coming up from deep in the
Earth, it might be expected to accumulate beneath the dense granite
cap, and migrate slowly up through any fissures, perhaps turning into
oil or tar. In the event, the prospectors did strike oil Ð about 12
tons of it. This was not enough to make the well commercially
successful, but it did confirm that Gold was on to something.
It was not the Swedish oil that proved the most significant discovery
though. Mixed in with the sludge at the bottom of the well, at a depth
of over 6 km, was a large quantity of magnetite Ð a reduced form of
iron oxide often associated with bacterial activity. After further
investigation, Gold announced to the world that life exists not only
on the surface of our planet but, in microbial form, deep inside the
crust too.
The claim that the biosphere extends far underground was, if anything,
even more heretical than the theory of upwelling hydrocarbons. At the
time it was greeted with widespread scepticism. But I, for one,
immediately found the basic idea plausible. ....
......
A more serious objection is that volatile hydrocarbons would not have
survived the heat of the Earth's formation from the solar nebula. Gold
sidesteps this problem by claiming that the primeval Earth was not
unduly hot. In this he is out of step with the prevailing theory that,
shortly after its formation, the Earth was struck by a Mars-sized body
that created the Moon from the detritus of impact, and ploughed on to
form the Earth's core. This awesome encounter would have melted the
Earth and driven off or destroyed any primordial water or methane.
According to the favoured scenario, such volatile substances were
delivered later by the impact of smaller bodies such as comets and
asteroids, which coated the planet with only a thin veneer.
Whatever the status of the upwelling-gas theory, many of Gold's ideas
deserve to be taken seriously. Because of the controversial nature of
his work, he is often denied credit for the trailblazing research he
did on the deep hot biosphere, the existence of which could prove to
be one of the monumental scientific discoveries of our age. This book
serves to set the record straight.
Paul Davies is a physicist living in South Australia, and author of
The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin of Life (Penguin, 1998).
---------------------------------
I thought Kevin would appreciate the penultimate paragraph :-)
A few comments from me:
I regard Gold as a maverick with ideas worthy of our attention
(rather like Fred Hoyle). He will arouse fierce opposition, but he
is sufficiently thick skinned to know that much of it is a backlash
from the "establishment scientists" and paradigm-dependent. There
are big questions in my mind about his theories: the isotopic
signatures in oil and the recognisable plant remains in coal seams,
for example. I've followed his ideas over the years, and am looking
forward to reading this new book.
I was able to visit the Siljan complex in Sweden over 10 years ago
and was very interested in the seeps of hydrocarbon there. Although
drilling did not find extractable reserves, sufficient was present
for Gold to be encouraged about the validity of his approach.
Best wishes,
David J. Tyler.