archive-1: SETI [ASTRO] Astronomer Looks At Our Deep Hot Biosphere And Finds
SETI [ASTRO] Astronomer Looks At Our Deep Hot Biosphere And Finds
Larry Klaes ( lklaes@bbn.com )
Thu, 28 Jan 1999 06:57:44 -0500
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>Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 6:31:00 GMT
>From: Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
>To: astro@lists.mindspring.com
>Subject: [ASTRO] Astronomer Looks At Our Deep Hot Biosphere And Finds It
Teeming With Life
>Sender: owner-astro@brickbat12.mindspring.com
>Reply-To: Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
>
>News Service
>Cornell University
>
>Contact: David Brand
>Office: (607) 255-3651
>E-Mail: deb27@cornell.edu
>
>FOR RELEASE: Jan. 26, 1999
>
>Cornell astronomer looks at our deep hot biosphere and finds it teeming with
>life , and controversy
>
>ITHACA, N.Y. -- The ideas come crowding in: Deep within the Earth's crust
>is a vast ecosystem of primitive bacteria nurtured by a reservoir of
>hydrocarbons of unimaginable size, much of it untapped. Even more: The
>microbes predate all of the planet's other life forms, existing even before
>photosynthesis became the preferred life-giving form.
>
>In a new book, The Deep Hot Biosphere (Copernicus/Springer-Verlag, $27),
>Cornell Professor emeritus of astronomy Thomas Gold argues that subterranean
>bugs are us -- or at least they started the whole evolutionary process, and
>that there's no looming energy shortage because oil reserves are far greater
>than predicted.
>
>In the hands of anyone other than Gold, the reaction to all this might be a
>skeptical raised eyebrow. But Gold, as ever the Cornellian gadfly, makes his
>argument with erudition and conviction. Founder and director of Cornell's
>Center for Radiophysics and Space Research for two decades, Gold is hardly a
>stranger to sticking his neck out. He has been proven right in such diverse
>realms as a theory of hearing, the interpretation of pulsars and a theory of
>the Earth's axis of rotation.
>
>But Gold's most controversial idea, as physicist Freeman Dyson notes in the
>book's forward, is that of the nonbiological origin of natural gas and oil,
>which he first proposed more than 20 years ago. These hydrocarbons, Gold
>postulated, come from deep reservoirs and are composed of the material from
>which the Earth condensed. The idea that hydrocarbons coalesced from organic
>material is, he says, quite wrong. The biological molecules found in oil, he
>avers, show only that the oil is contaminated by microbes, not that it was
>produced by them.
>
>Some researchers, and in particular petroleum geologists, have taken issue
>with Gold's proposal. They are likely to be even more put out by his new
>book, which says that these microbes populate the Earth's interior down to
>a depth of several miles and that everything we see living on the planet's
>surface is only a small part of the biosphere. The greater part, and the
>ancient part, is very deep and very hot.
>
>Indeed, Gold shows irritation at a scientific community that "has typically
>sought only surface life in the heavens." Scientists, he writes, "have been
>hindered by a sort of 'surface chauvinism.'"
>
>The heavens?
>
>Absolutely, says Gold. "Spectroscopic evidence is very strong for many
>planetary bodies. The prime example is Titan [a moon of Saturn], which has
>clouds of ethane and methane. They interchange with the surface, so there
>must be lakes or oceans of liquid ethane or methane. Once you know that,
>it's clear they came outside from the body within."
>
>Thus, he writes, life on many other planetary bodies seems probable, even
>though their surfaces are either too hot or too cold to support life.
>"Subsurface life, however, is another matter. Mars, the satellites of the
>major planets, many asteroids and even our own moon should be regarded as
>real prospects for harboring extraterrestrial life of this kind," he writes.
>
>On Earth, says Gold, there is clear evidence that subsurface microbial life
>still exists; for example, in the discovery of primitive microbes in hot
>ocean vents. "We pulled up bugs from five kilometers down in the granite in
>Sweden. They were perfectly alive and probably the earliest life form on the
>planet," he says. The primitive microbes, he notes, are thermophiles and
>hyperthermophiles, heat-loving archaebacteria.
>
>Photosynthesis, his book argues, "developed in offshoots of subterranean
>life that had progressed toward the surface and then evolved a way to use
>photons to supply even more chemical energy." When surface conditions such
>as temperature and liquid water became favorable to life, surface life was
>able to blossom.
>
>In the eons since, the deep world of microbes has had to rely on chemical
>energy, the oxidation of hydrocarbons, ranging from methane to petroleum, as
>the organisms emerge upwards from deep reservoirs below. "Every oil-bearing
>region in the world must have large amounts of microbiology," he says.
>
>Writes Gold: "In my view, hydrocarbons are not biology reworked by geology
>(as the traditional view would hold) but rather geology reworked by biology.
>In other words, hydrocarbons are primordial, but as they upwell into Earth's
>outer crust microbial life invades."
>
>Reviewing the book, Publishers Weekly noted that "if Gold is right, the
>planet's oil reserves are far larger than policy-makers expect ... moreover,
>astronomers hoping for extraterrestrial contacts might want to stop seeking
>life on other planets and inquire about life in them."
>
>-30-
>
>Related World Wide Web sites:
>
>The following sites provide additional information on this news release. Some
>might not be part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell has no
>control over their content or availability.
>
>Thomas Gold's overview of his new book, The Deep Hot Biosphere:
>http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/
>
>
>