page_title: Thomas Gold
section_title: Origins of petroleum
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Gold / Origins of petroleum
context_page_description: Thomas Gold, was an Austrian-born astrophysicist, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Gold was one of three young Cambridge scientists who in 1948 proposed the now mostly abandoned "steady state" hypothesis of the universe. Gold's work crossed academic and scientific boundaries, into biophysics, astronomy, aerospace engineering, and geophysics.
context_section_description: Gold first became interested in the origins of petroleum in the 1950s, postulating a theory on the abiogenic formation of fossil fuels. Gold engaged in thorough discussion on the matter with Fred Hoyle, who even included a chapter on "Gold's Pore Theory" in his 1955 book Frontiers in Astronomy. In the late 1970s, just as the United States faced another major energy crisis, Gold resurrected his work on petroleum. In 1977, a research submarine near the Galapagos Islands discovered a number of thriving ecosystems down on the ocean floor, living alongside hydrothermal vents. Later expeditions found that these vents were host to a number of organisms, including giant tube worms and albino crabs, that survived off heat-loving chemosynthetic microbes. The discovery of life in this adverse environment led Gold to reconsider the established interpretation of biogenic petroleum formation. Gold believed that "biology is just a branch of thermodynamics" and that the history of life is just "a gradual systematic development toward more efficient ways of degrading energy".
  He began his investigation by studying how earthquakes facilitated the migration of methane gas from the deep Earth to the surface. He speculated that a large enough earthquake would fracture the ground, thus opening up an "escape route" for gas. Gold believed that this would explain the number of unusual phenomena associated with earthquakes, such as fires, flares, earthquake lights and gas emissions. With his colleague Steven Soter, Gold constructed a map of the world depicting major oil-producing regions and areas with historical seismic activity. Several oil-rich regions, such as Alaska, Texas, the Caribbean, Mexico, Venezuela, the Persian Gulf, the Urals, Siberia, and Southeast Asia, were found to be lying on major earthquake belts. Gold and Soter suggested that these belts may explain the upward migration of gases through the ground, and subsequently, the production of oil and gas fields.
  Gold theorized that since petroleum and its component hydrocarbons were present across the entire universe, there was no reason to believe "that on Earth they must be biological in origin". Gold proposed that fuels were trapped inside the core of the Earth in randomized molecular form nearly 4.5 billion years ago. Over time, the extreme heat of the core "sweated" the rocks that contained these molecules, pushing them up through the porous layers of the Earth. As they move up toward the surface, the hydrocarbons fueled the development of large microbial colonies, which served as the basis for life on Earth. The migrating fossil fuels collect biological remnants before becoming trapped in deep underground reservoirs. Soon after Gold started publishing his theories, researchers discovered a number of ecosystems functioning under "conditions of heat and pressure once thought impossible to sustain life". In addition, Gold discovered that the location of major oil-producing regions in the Middle East and southeast Asia was defined by large scale patterns in surface geology and topography, such as deep fault lines. He also pointed to the abundance of helium in oil and gas reserves as evidence for "a deep source of the hydrocarbons". Moreover, a few oil reserves thought to have been exhausted were suddenly generating vast amounts of crude oil.  From this, Gold proposed that the Earth may possess a virtually endless supply – suggesting as much as "at least 500 million years' worth of gas" – of fossil fuels.
  Gold was accused of plagiarizing the abiogenic theory from Soviet geologists who first published it in the 1950s, but the accusations were refuted. After first publishing his views on abiogenic petroleum in 1979, Gold began finding the papers on the subject by Soviet geologists and had them translated.  He was both disappointed (that his ideas were not original) and delighted (because such independent formulation of these ideas added weight to the hypothesis). He always credited the Soviet work once he knew about it. His 1987 book Power from the Earth devoted five pages to describi
caption: Tube worms feeding at base of a black smoker hydrothermal vent
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