Click here to get back home

Re: Refs for deep hole drilling
 Home | NewsGroups | Search | About
Login Password
Register Now!
 alt.sci.planetary    Post an article   get this group's latest topics as an RSS feed add this group's latest topics to your My MSN content add this group's latest topics to your My Yahoo content
Subject Author Date
Re: Refs for deep hole drilling David Williams 02-15-2006
Get Chitika Premium
Posted by David Williams on February 15, 2006, 6:35 pm
Please log in for more thread options
 -> Dow and I have argued the idea that the primary source
-> of so-called "fossil fuels" is hydrocarbons formed deep
-> in the earth, with the methane trapped at the time of
-> earth's formation. Your post helps my argument!
-> Ken

Ken and I have argued *about* that idea. That's not the same as
"arguing the idea", which would imply that we were both in favour of
it.

It would be interesting to look at the distributions of stereoisomers
in natural petroleum deposits. In materials of biological origin, it is
common to find unequal amounts of complementary stereoisomers (e.g. the
"dextro-" and "levo-" versions of the same compound). Materials with
non-biological origins generally have equal amounts of stereoisomers.
Does natural petroleum have equal or unequal amounts? I am not aware
that anyone has ever looked, although the experiment would be very easy
- the sort of thing that any of us could do. Obviously, the results of
this experiment would have a significant bearing on the question that
Ken has raised.

Note that I said "natural" oil deposits. Looking at gasoline or any
other product that has gone through an oil "cracking" plant would not
be much use. This process would tend to equalize the amounts of
stereoisomers, even if they were initially unequal. "Crude" oil should
be examined.

dow

Posted by Jonathan Silverlight on February 17, 2006, 1:32 pm
Please log in for more thread options
>-> Dow and I have argued the idea that the primary source
>-> of so-called "fossil fuels" is hydrocarbons formed deep
>-> in the earth, with the methane trapped at the time of
>-> earth's formation. Your post helps my argument!
>-> Ken
>
>Ken and I have argued *about* that idea. That's not the same as
>"arguing the idea", which would imply that we were both in favour of
>it.
>
>It would be interesting to look at the distributions of stereoisomers
>in natural petroleum deposits. In materials of biological origin, it is
>common to find unequal amounts of complementary stereoisomers (e.g. the
>"dextro-" and "levo-" versions of the same compound). Materials with
>non-biological origins generally have equal amounts of stereoisomers.
>Does natural petroleum have equal or unequal amounts? I am not aware
>that anyone has ever looked, although the experiment would be very easy
>- the sort of thing that any of us could do. Obviously, the results of
>this experiment would have a significant bearing on the question that
>Ken has raised.
>
>Note that I said "natural" oil deposits. Looking at gasoline or any
>other product that has gone through an oil "cracking" plant would not
>be much use. This process would tend to equalize the amounts of
>stereoisomers, even if they were initially unequal. "Crude" oil should
>be examined.

I found a paper by Thomas Gold (not an unbiased source !) which says
that optical activity is one of four pointers to petroleum being of
biogenic origin (one of the others is the preference for molecules with
an odd number of carbon atoms, which he interprets as implying breakdown
of a larger molecule of biological origin).
The page was at <http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/usgs.html> but
it returns "not found" and you will have to use Google's cache.
He doesn't say in which direction the optical activity occurs, and
according to _this_ paper
<http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1742-6596/6/1/014/jpconf5_6_014.pdf> very
high pressures can convert a racemic mixture to a scalemic one (that
word was new to me !)

Posted by John Curtis on February 17, 2006, 7:20 pm
Please log in for more thread options
Jonathan Silverlight wrote:
>
> I found a paper by Thomas Gold (not an unbiased source !) which says
> that optical activity is one of four pointers to petroleum being of
> biogenic origin (one of the others is the preference for molecules with
> an odd number of carbon atoms, which he interprets as implying breakdown
> of a larger molecule of biological origin).
> The page was at <http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/usgs.html> but
> it returns "not found" and you will have to use Google's cache.
> He doesn't say in which direction the optical activity occurs, and
> according to _this_ paper
> <http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1742-6596/6/1/014/jpconf5_6_014.pdf> very
> high pressures can convert a racemic mixture to a scalemic one (that
> word was new to me !)
>
To ascertain the origin of Titan's methane, Huygens probe measured the
ratio of carbon 13 to carbon 12, which indicated nonbiological source.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47675
Volcanic CO2 also displays abiogenic C13/C12 ratio, because at
volcanic temperatures primordial methane is burned into CO2 by
atmospheric oxygen.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:MWVsNtbUDo0J:worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp%3FARTICLE_ID%3D23362++%22+non-organic+carbon+dioxide+that+gets+belched+out+of+a+volcano%22&hl=en
At deep sea volcanos, methane is contaminated with microorganisms
and the biological transformation of carbon ratios begins. John Curtis


Posted by Jonathan Silverlight on February 18, 2006, 5:10 am
Please log in for more thread options
>Jonathan Silverlight wrote:
>>
>> I found a paper by Thomas Gold (not an unbiased source !) which says
>> that optical activity is one of four pointers to petroleum being of
>> biogenic origin (one of the others is the preference for molecules with
>> an odd number of carbon atoms, which he interprets as implying breakdown
>> of a larger molecule of biological origin).
>>
>To ascertain the origin of Titan's methane, Huygens probe measured the
>ratio of carbon 13 to carbon 12, which indicated nonbiological source.
>http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47675
>Volcanic CO2 also displays abiogenic C13/C12 ratio, because at
>volcanic temperatures primordial methane is burned into CO2 by
>atmospheric oxygen.
>http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:MWVsNtbUDo0J:worldnetdaily.com/news
>/article.asp%3FARTICLE_ID%3D23362++%22+non-organic+carbon+dioxide+that+g
>ets+belched+out+of+a+volcano%22&hl=en
>At deep sea volcanos, methane is contaminated with microorganisms
>and the biological transformation of carbon ratios begins. John Curtis
>

I hadn't thought of stable isotopes. Thanks.
There's a hell of a lot of information on carbon isotopes in petroleum,
but according to this paper
<http://www.earthscape.org/r3/whelan/whelan27.html> the amount of C13
goes up with age, due to loss of C12 in methane. And while I don't trust
anything from rense.com, this page makes interesting reading
<http://www.rense.com/general65/naty.htm>
I suspect this is not a trivial problem :-)

Posted by Ken S. Tucker on February 17, 2006, 3:10 pm
Please log in for more thread options
Thanks Mr. Silverlight to your ref to Thomas Gold.

David Williams wrote:
> -> Dow and I have argued the idea that the primary source
> -> of so-called "fossil fuels" is hydrocarbons formed deep
> -> in the earth, with the methane trapped at the time of
> -> earth's formation. Your post helps my argument!
> -> Ken
>
> Ken and I have argued *about* that idea. That's not the same as
> "arguing the idea", which would imply that we were both in favour of
> it.

LOL, now you all know why I loose arguments with Dow,
I didn't understand that, but anyway...

> It would be interesting to look at the distributions of stereoisomers
> in natural petroleum deposits. In materials of biological origin, it is
> common to find unequal amounts of complementary stereoisomers (e.g. the
> "dextro-" and "levo-" versions of the same compound). Materials with
> non-biological origins generally have equal amounts of stereoisomers.
> Does natural petroleum have equal or unequal amounts?

That would not be decisive, the constuction of complex
hydrocarbons from methane in the billion year time period,
together with exposure to numerous catalyst's and varying
heats and pressures, will provide you with anything you
want to hear. I quite uncertain you'll get a useful decision.

>I am not aware
> that anyone has ever looked, although the experiment would be very easy
> - the sort of thing that any of us could do. Obviously, the results of
> this experiment would have a significant bearing on the question that
> Ken has raised.
>
> Note that I said "natural" oil deposits. Looking at gasoline or any
> other product that has gone through an oil "cracking" plant would not
> be much use. This process would tend to equalize the amounts of
> stereoisomers, even if they were initially unequal. "Crude" oil should
> be examined.
> dow

Well in view of extra-terrestrial geo-biology, we should
rule out the gas giants methane content results from
biological origins.

I'll further argue - the coincidence of coal and the first
trees is because the first plants used surfaced tar pits
to directly obtain carbon. Later as the tar pits surface
became exhausted, a unique evolution occurrred, that
being the breaking up of the C02 molecule by direct
application of sunlight.
That's quite amazing, since the CO2 molecule is among
the most difficult and energy intensive molecules to split.
I would say that acquiring that ability must have had
intermediate steps where the evolution of life ability is
concerned, i.e. the use of available carbon directly first.
Regards
Ken S. Tucker


Similar ThreadsPosted
Refs for deep hole drilling February 14, 2006, 5:11 pm
Re: Refs for deep hole drilling February 17, 2006, 9:47 pm
Re: Refs for deep hole drilling February 17, 2006, 9:35 pm
Re: Refs for deep hole drilling February 19, 2006, 11:31 am
Re: Refs for deep hole drilling February 20, 2006, 10:33 pm
Re: Refs for deep hole drilling February 25, 2006, 10:01 pm
Re: Refs for deep hole drilling February 26, 2006, 9:46 pm
Re: Refs for deep hole drilling February 27, 2006, 10:12 pm
Re: Refs for deep hole drilling February 28, 2006, 9:31 pm
Re: Refs for deep hole drilling March 1, 2006, 3:18 pm

Our other projects:

Art Dolls, Fairies and Mermaids - Sunnyfaces.net

Roy's Linux, Programming and Search Engines messages

1-Script XML SitemapXML Sitemap