Saturn’s Moon Once Had Dinosaurs?
Feb.16, 2008 in
Other - Uncategorized
Saturn’s moon Titan has oil on it!
… data from the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn has shown that the ringed planet’s moon has “hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth,” according to research reported in the Geophysical Research Letters.
So when did Titan have dinosaurs?
Or is it possible that geophysical processes could produce liquid hydrocarbons? Perhaps, even here, under the Earth’s crust?
And if so, what are the implications for the Russian scientists who have promulgated a theory of abiotic (alt. term, abiogenic) oil production, and what are the implications for the “peak oil” theorists?
February 16th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Maybe Titan once had even monoline insurers on it. Who knows…
February 16th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Forget all that, what are the implications for the Dick Cheney? Who can we kill over there to get the oil? how soon can we send BlackWater up there?
February 16th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
B2C: LOL
February 16th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I’m certain that the Titans will recognize U.S. as “liberators” and throw rose petals in front of our tanks. Or petals from whatever kind of flower they grow there …
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Hydrocarbons have been found in interstellar gas clouds and on comets. Very cool stuff. Gonna be decades or centuries before it’s practical to get out and mine them but what a sight that would be! (And think of the resources and expenses to fund such a mission - you need a lot of cheap resources just to get to Titan in the first place, catch-22)
Abiotic oil? It’s a nice fantasy, but where’s the evidence? If we haven’t found it yet, the size of any deposits (assuming even possible which I doubt) would make them both small and prohibitively expensive to extract. Don’t think “peak oil” gets vanquished so easily :)
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:30 pm
The Ruskies would argue that the evidence for biogenic oil is flawed, and abiogenic generation moved through the fossil record and confused the traditional interpretation. They might also argue that the Tiger fields in Vietnam are evidence of abiogenic oil.
I don’t see either theory (biogenic or abiogenic) as being necessarily exclusive of the other.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 pm
If abiogenic oil is mixed in with real oil (sorry, “biogenetic oil”) then what’s the point? Evidence is weak and we’re already tapping the stuff anyway.
Tiger fields - interesting, hadn’t heard of them. Not much into the field, obviously. Sounds like there’s a perfectly good biogenetic explanation and the abiogenetic one needs a lot of work, but what do I know? Thanks for informing me.
February 23rd, 2008 at 7:19 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
If I understand the extreme position that all oil is abiogenic, they would claim that the “evidence of biogenic oil” was a fluke caused by the oil moving through regions and picking up materials that “fooled” previous geologists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Tiger_oil_field
Now I would imagine that each group of scientists would prefer to have their theory proven to be the exclusive origin of oil, but there’s an argument that oil could be produced in multiple ways …