Oct. 2000 Vol. 221 No. 10  Exploration

Perry A. Fischer,  Engineering Editor

Their karma ran over our dogma

Giordano Bruno, born in Italy in 1548, joined the Dominican Order at 13. One of the first things that a student must learn is to give the teacher answers that the teacher wants; but Bruno had the regrettable flaw of voicing his own opinions.

Among his many heresies, he is best known for a small writing which said that the universe was infinite, that stars were in fact distant suns with planets and, most importantly, that Copernicus was right: Earth was not the center of anything. He spent six years in a dungeon, refused to recant, and was burned alive in 1600.

In 1596, Dutch mapmaker Abraham Ortelius, noticing the fit between continents, suggested that the Americas were "torn away" from Europe and Africa. More than 250 years later, Antonio Snider-Pellegrini published the idea that the continents had drifted apart. Another 58 years would pass until Frank Taylor and Howard Baker would publish the same idea in 1908; and Alfred Wegener would follow in 1912.

Despite what these men regarded as clear and convincing evidence: identical fossil species and unusual geologic structures that correlate the coasts of Africa and South America, fossils that show dramatic climate changes had occurred on some continents, and a subsea ridge midway in the Atlantic – -the idea of continental drift violated the dogma of its day. These men were regarded as misguided fools with preposterous theories.

One of the most-cited criticisms of continental drift was that no one could account for whatever forces had moved the continents. Ironically, that is still true today.

In 1968, Harry Hess and Robert Dietz (among others) finally assembled the pieces of overwhelming evidence into what we now know as plate tectonics – 400 years after Ortelius said that the Americas were torn away from Europe and Africa.

This editor realized two things long before the O. J. Simpson trial proved them: 1) with sufficient effort, all evidence is refutable; and 2) all truth is cultural.

Another "preposterous" idea. The idea of non-biological (abiogenic) origins of hydrocarbons originated in the Soviet Union more than a century ago. In some ways, it has become another East vs. West cultural difference.

Thomas Gold has been a proponent of the abiogenic theory for more than 20 years. Gold links abiogenesis with evidence of a microbiotic subsurface community. He suggests that such microbes feed on hydrocarbons, and their corpses act as contaminants that give oil its telltale biological markers. This is the essence of his 1999 book, The Deep Hot Biosphere.

The theory hinges on five assumptions: 1) hydrocarbons are primordial; 2) Earth only partially melted; 3) hydrocarbons are stable at great depth; 4) rock at great depth has porosity; and 5) hydrocarbons are still upwelling. To me, none of these seem beyond the pale.

Rather than take the word of dozens of geologists and geophysicists that I spoke with, I made the effort to read the book. Surprisingly, everyone knew of Gold’s abiogenic theory, and many were intolerant toward it; but none had read any of his works.

My main criticism of the book is that it is short and written at the student level, and thus leaves much unexplained. Gold covers numerous topics, including the origins of: life, black coals, earthquakes, atmospheric carbon, and diamond and ore deposits. The brevity and level of the book do not allow room for a devil’s-advocate approach to refute many of the obvious objections most geologists would have. It is, however, in scope and simplicity, an elegant theory.

The primordial disconnect. One of Gold’s points is: Why is there a disconnect between planetary geophysics and Earth-centered geophysics? That is, why should the hydrocarbon-forming mechanisms of the rest of the solar system have no bearing on Earth? Is this an Earth-centric holdover from Bruno’s day?

NASA’s Stardust spacecraft is currently in orbit around the sun. Its primary mission is to collect comet and interplanetary dust and return it to Earth, but it also has an onboard mass spectrometer. In April, the spectrometer detected large, organic macromolecules that resemble tar or coal.

This does not come as a surprise to astronomers or planetary geophysicists. They have known for decades that hydrocarbons are common in space and that the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are know to contain various hydrocarbons. The spacecraft Cassini, now halfway through its voyage, will further determine the composition of Saturn’s moon Titan – which is known to harbor methane and ethane, and may have hydrocarbon oceans. It arrives there in 2004.

Conclusion. Gold has spent much of his life battling the curmudgenous forces of eternal certainty. And he’s done so with admirable indifference to naysayers, even ridicule.

If nothing else, Gold helps us to look outside prescribed explanations to difficult questions. For example, most explorationists know of reservoirs whose connection to any source rock is exceedingly difficult to explain.

If karma is the result of one’s actions, then Gold should not be taken lightly; academically, he’s a heavyweight. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), a member of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) and has taught at Cambridge, Harvard and Cornell. Among his many accomplishments, he is often cited for discovering the mechanisms of mammalian hearing and the nature of pulsars and radio galaxies. In those endeavors, and in many others, his ideas have not been welcomed, to put it mildly. He has, however, mostly been right.

Gold once said, "In choosing a hypothesis, there is no virtue in being timid . . . I clearly would have been burned at the stake in another age."

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."

– René Descartes

Comments? Write: fischerp@gulfpub.com