------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From: "Ira Oehler" <ira_oehler@hotmail.com>
To: HollowEarth@chc.co.za
Subject: Re: [HollowEarth] - Life inside
Date sent: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 11:47:48 PST
Send reply to: HollowEarth@chc.co.za

Here's a piece about a very renowned scientist who makes some controversial assertions in his research and new book. He postulates that life begins inside of planets where conditions are more hospitable. Also, that "dead" planets such as Mars may be very much alive if one goes beneath the surface and that this underground life may have bizarre characteristics and much diversity. Finally, he believes petroleum is not created by the decay of life but rather is created during the formation of a planet in a primordial process and that huge amounts of oil reside in very deep undeground reservoirs in the earth. Seems to be in agreement with our thoughts...

Life Began Deep In Earth And Oil Reserves Much Larger Than Known

Gold Book Stirs Up Controversy Again

UniScience News Net, Inc. http://unisci.com 2-2-99

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. 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 started the whole evolutionary process -- and that there's no looming energy shortage, because oil reserves are far greater than predicted.

Were this anyone but Gold, the reaction from the scientific community might be a skeptical raised eyebrow. But Gold, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Cornell amd a perennial 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.

And 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. Which may be why he has received such honors as Fellow of the Royal Society (London); Member, National Academy of Sciences (US); Fellow, American Geophysical Union; Honorary Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge; Gold Medal, Royal Astronomical Society (UK) ND Honorary M.A., Harvard University.

Gold is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society.

Before founding and for 20 years serving as director of Cornell's Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, Gold was the John L. Wetherill Professor of Astronomy at Cornell and Chairman of the Department of Astronomy and Assistant Vice President for Research.

Previously, he was Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy at Harvard; Chief Assistant to the British Astronomer Royal and Lecturer in advanced physics at Cambridge. Gold did radar development work for the British Admiralty during World War II.

Gold's most controversial idea, as physicist Freeman Dyson notes in the book's foreword, 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, Gold 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, the ancient part, is very deep and very hot, he says.

Gold shows irritation with 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.'"

And what about other planets. Gold says: "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."

He writes that 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, Gold says, 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," Gold says.

He writes: "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."

Related link: Thomas Gold's overview of his new book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere" http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/

1-28-99