Steven Zoraster

It is very easy to say what this book is about. Simply take everything you thought you knew about the origins of life, the origins of oil and natural gas, and the causes of earthquakes, and throw them away. Dr. Thomas Gold, an astrophysicist at Cornell University, has better theories. The trouble, for me, is what to write about first? Well, let's start with oil and gas. The standard theory outside of Russia is that hydrocarbon deposits - so-called fossil fuels - result from the compression and heating of biological matter through geologic activity. Ancient swamps, with a few dead dinosaurs thrown in, buried under layers of rock millions of years ago, and since then subject to tremendous heat and pressure. Enough heat and pressure to convert them into something that, when found in economic quantities by carefully trained geologists, helps to make the average citizen of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait richer than almost anyone in The United States or Western Europe. So, let me ask this question: Have you ever noticed any oil leaking out of the bottom of your compost heap? No? Neither has Dr. Gold, who, by the way, is a very famous physicist, who has had a number of other revolutionary ideas over the last 40 or 50 years, many of which were subsequently confirmed by other scientists.

In The Deep Hot Biosphere, Gold points out that in the last century, when scientists were first trying to explain the puzzling existence of oil and gas deposits miles deep in the earth's crust, nobody knew that hydrogen and carbon are major components of most astronomical objects in the universe. Assuming that those deposits had to have been created after the Earth, scientists hypothesized biological sources, since life itself is largely made up of molecules which might, conceivably, be converted under strong enough heat and pressure into oil and gas. In fact, those molecules are now known to be so prevalent in the universe that it is safe to assume that they were part of the original cosmic dust that went into creating Earth. Over time, according to this book, they simply migrate towards the surface, to become trapped in certain rock formations, which, sometimes, are shallow enough for it to be economically feasible to extract them. Dr. Gold supports this hypothesis, by a large amount of circumstantial evidence. This evidence includes the presence of surprisingly large amounts of helium in most oil and gas deposits; the fact that where oil and/or gas is found in one particular layer of rock, it is almost certain to be found in deeper layers; and the fact that spatial distribution of oil and gas resources across the world's surface is not easily explained by the fossil fuel hypothesis. And, he adds, no one has actually succeeded in making oil or gas out of biological materials, either in a backyard compost heap, or in a well-funded university laboratory.

Okay, so what? Who cares where oil comes from, as long as the price of a barrel of oil stays below $20? You do, if you are interested in the origins of life. Dr. Gold also hypothesizes in The Deep Hot Biosphere, that there is an entire zone of biological activity buried hundreds and thousands of feet below the surface. The bacteria and other microscopic life forms found there, live off the hydrocarbons buried with them. This hypothesis makes more sense everyday, as other scientists find more life forms in "extreme" environments, such as around vents in the bottom of the ocean miles below the surface, in hot springs, and buried in caves completely cut off from the sun as a source of energy. In fact, Gold suggests that this relatively stable "deep hot biosphere" is where life started, protected from the truly extreme environmental variations found on the surface of the Earth. And, if life could start there on earth, it might just be possible for it to start in an infinite number of other places in the universe, even if they don't have surface environments like Earth does.

Which leaves earthquakes. Dr. Gold suspects that pressure from migrating oil and gas is the cause for many earthquakes. This is a hypothesis that might be easily tested, by putting hydrocarbon detectors in known earthquake prone regions. It is also the one I am least interested in, which is why this paragraph is so short.

Do I believe Gold's hypothesis? Well, I'm not a university-trained scientist, but I can follow his logic, and it sounds good to me. His abionic theory of the sources of oil and gas are particularly fascinating, because there are some arguments, which support his hypothesis that he does not include. The one I am most familiar with is the remarkable correlation between the ancient asteroid impact craters on Earth, and oil and gas fields. The largest oil and gas field in the Indian Ocean, the Bombay High, is associated with one such impact event. The impact event which killed off all those dinosaurs 65 million years ago was located just north of the Yucatan by examining old seismic surveys and well test data which was collected in Mexico's search for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico. There are, in fact many similar examples ("North American Impact Structures Hold Giant Field Potential," Donofrio, The Oil and Gas Journal, May 11, 1998.)

I found The Deep Hot Biosphere easy to read. Well, let me correct that. I found most of the book easy to read. Every once in a while, Gold presents scientific arguments requiring more knowledge of chemistry and physics than I have, or want to have. I am willing to assume those arguments are valid. (If they aren't, then someone else will be able to tear Gold's ideas to pieces. And, I think, would have done so already.) I strongly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in biology or earth science.