Liquid Water and Carbon — the essentials of Life
Carl Sagan and some scientists still cling to the idea that all the simple molecules of Life , including CO2, water, ammonia, methane and all the biochemicals came to earth from eons of bombardment by comets and/or meteors. This doesn’t make sense in that anaerobic bacterial life began perhaps 800 million years after the planet formed and the Sun ignited.
For the basic biochemicals to arrive by comets, Earth would have been in a blinding hailstorm of comets. Comets, meteors and radiation would surely have destroyed life on the surface before it ever began.
Anaerobic life began around deep hydrothermal vents, using the liquid salt water, nutrients, sulfur reduction and protected from the destruction on the surface.
The pH of the ocean water ranges from 8.3 to 8.4. The pH of human blood ranges from 7.3 to 7.4. Our distant anaerobic ancestors lingered just outside the scalding and deeply acidic water emitted by hydrothermal vents.
This awareness gains more and more traction as space missions are in planning to examine such potential life on the moons Titan and Enceladus. Every day , I am so proud and grateful that my President has re-directed NASA away from torturing temperature data and back on track with its original mission — space exploration. I’ll gladly pay taxes towards that end.
All the basic molecules of Life, including all Carbonaceous fuels were cooked up inside. All of the chemical reaction to produce such molecules are exothermic. None of that heat is appreciated and it is darn near impossible to figure out how much energy is derived there. It’s a lot, let’s just say that.
Look up Fischer Tropsch reactions to produce methane and all the hydrocarbons.
CO + H2, in the presence of an Iron or Cobalt catalyst and around 300 C yields methane and water. At higher temperatures and pressures, F/T reactions continue to add onto the hydrocarbon chain.
There are deep Earth diamonds which have been found with Iron inclusions surrounded by pockets of methane. Fischer Tropsch at play.
The deepest coal mines (U.K. & Czech Republic) go down approx. 5000 ft while the real big, high pressure oil and gas reservoirs are 20,000 to 30,000 ft down.
Does it make sense that if squished trees produced coal as well as oil & gas, that the oil and gas flowed downward into higher pressures and temperatures ?
No, oil and gas is produced inside and flows upward. If there is a non-permeable strata, the oil can pool to either form tar sands oil (bitumen), or cook down to coal — just like charcoal is produced.
Another interesting observation is how the U.S. Dust Bowl was in 1934 and the big East Texas and Oklahoma oil fields really started producing in the late 30s and thru WW-II. All the make-work programs to get out of the Great Depression hardly did anything. It was the bounty of oil & gas.
In WW-II America wasn’t just the Arsenal of Democracy. America were the Gas Station of Democracy. Truly we are blessed. Now look around to the modest heat up that ended about the mid-90s, and today old oil fields are coming back into production and new finds of oil & gas are everywhere.
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