It seems to me that the idea of mining things like hydrogen or hydrocarbons from outside the earth is sort of based on a misconception of what we lack and what we don't lack. I don't think, as I wrote earlier, that we lack energy. We have a tremendous amount of energy available. And we certainly don't lack hydrogen, it's just the extraction that's hard. Same with water. We have so much water on the earth already that we needn't worry about it. The problem is that most of it is salty, and it costs money to purify it. But there's no way that it would ever become cheaper to get water from outside the earth than it would be to clean it here (OK, I'm a bit overconfident here, who knows). Space technology may advance, but so will water purification technology.

The thing that we really have a constraint on, in addition to some metallic elements, perhaps, is land. I believe that we will run out of land long before we run out of energy or even water. And unfortunately, we can't import land from asteroids. So asteroids will be extremely useful for space exploration or the colonization of space, but I doubt there's much use for anything they have here on earth. Just IMHO.

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As above, so below

Oh I don't know...

We could go fetch some big asteroids and pile them up in the ocean and make some big islands...

Maybe even a continent after a while.

Think Australia wants a little sister?

47.6 barrels of oil per sperm whale... that comes to 630 million sperm whales a year to replace petroleum. Currently there are about one million sperm whales - Quick! Start playing Barry White through the hydrophones! We need more whales!

Well, in that case we might as well just move the Himalayas.

But there is a slight problem. What will happen to the ocean level?

Actually, I suppose the thing to do would be to dig out the deep parts of the ocean and fill the shallow spots with land. And level the moutains to make more flatland.

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As above, so below

I hadn't thought of that.
Of course, water displacement.

We will hollow out the asteroids into like a half dome then. Pop a hole in the top for air to push out. water will fill the interior.

Eventually, Earth would grow so large that the gravity will increase, and the weight/pressure of the water will rupture the sides of those hollow asteroid/mountains. At which point everyone on Earth will need to move to Fuller-style floating air-cities. (The oceans will be too turbulent for water cities for quite some time, as more domes rupture.)

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

How about we do all this crap to Mars's environment, instead of Earths?

Mars currently doesn’t have much of an environment, so there isn’t much we can do to it. Contamination and terraforming are rather moot on a planet that doesn’t even have an environment as we know it. In any case, most of the suggestion were not applicable to Mars anyhow.

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Reality: What a concept!……………………..><Ç(((Ç°>

Well oil is not "running out" there may be a bit of a crunch and some of the reserves may soon dry up.

But there's plenty more oil around in oil sands and in the deep ocean. How difficult is it to drill in the (really) deep ocean? I'm not sure, but I would guess a lot easier than going out to an asteroid or comet to get hydrocarbons.

Of course, if you run out of oil, you can still make it. It's just a hydrocarbon. You can synthesize it from coal, which is a good source for carbon. The germans did it in the second world war. The south africans did it for a long time.

How hard is it to make all the products from crude oil out of other carbon sources? It's kinda hard. You have to have a lot of energy and go through a bunch of chemical processes of steam reformatting, distilling, cracking...

But it's a hell of a lot easier than going out to an asteroid to get hydrocarbons!


If you really want hydrocarbons it really comes down to two questions? Do you have hydrogen? Do you have carbon? Then it's just a chemical process. It's not actually *that* hard to do.

It can also be done from biomass through high temperature decomposition and resequencing. Anything organic can be reduced to hydrocarbons in the end.

Is it easy to do on a large scale? Not really but...
A lot easier than going out to an asteroid for the stuff!

In the end, the real question is who will make money off it. If it costs more to squeeze oil out of rocks than to convert your company to an alternate energy source, the oil will go unsqueezed. (unsquoze?)

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

If you can get to the asteroids and stay there long enough to mine them, (and find enough energy to do so) haven't you kind of proved that you don't need oil?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

While I find the concept of abiogenic oil plausible, and fully expect hydrocarbon deposits of one degree or another in many if not most astronomical bodies, the concept of tapping and recovering these deposits for use back on Earth (presumably as Fuel?) strikes me as about as plausible and "forward thinking" as a business plan proposing the ranching of whales so that we could corner the lamp oil market.

The whole idea of significant abiogenic oil reserves on Earth has as much credibility as the expanding Earth. I have pointed this out in previous posts which other people have kindly linked to.

Methane extraction from the abiogenic organic matter in carbonaceous asteroids is a different story. So would be methane and other hydrocarbon gases on Titan. But neither are oil, as such.

Jon

Shipping combustible fuels across the Solar System to use as fuel on Earth makes less sense than just sending energy to Earth.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I think you meant Mars has no ecology. Environment just means the surroundings. And I think he was joking, hence the winkie .

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I had proposed an alternate solution for dealing with the possible shortage of oil supplies. It's pretty basic chemistry and it uses a resource we have a surplus of.

Just a modest proposal.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I disagree with your assessment of the plausibility of abiotic oil or at the least the plausibility of an abiotic progenitor of a substantial portion of the hydrocarbon components of what we term "oil."

This isn't to say that I don't think that there are biologic factors involved, but rather that there are several compelling supportive theories which pass the smell test as far as providing plausible alternative origins and production mechanisms to the traditional algae masses covered in sediment and cooked under high pressures and this is the process in toto, argument.

But we don't have much disagreement as far as the specific topic of this thread is concerned, and there's little sense in pursuing this tangent in a thread where it really isn't topical. I am new to these forae, if I stumble upon a more topically related thread, I'll look forward to a more detailed discussion of plausibilities.

There's a discussion about it at this thread.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

That's pretty cool. Actually, if you did it on a big enough scale, say 6 billion people or so, you'd alleviate the need for the oil in the first place! Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

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As above, so below

" Soylent Green IS people"

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(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily available to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

"Quaerendo inventis"

Oh, you want to play semantics? Can I play too? Ok, Mars doesn’t have much of an environment in the same way that some restaurants don’t have much of an atmosphere. They both have about the same amount of air, but some have a great atmosphere. It’s called a metaphor.

Oh, and here’s another one: Environmentalists don’t just want to have an environment, they just want a better environment. (As opposed to separatists who want just separation, racists who just want to race, and imperialists who only drive Imperials.)

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Reality: What a concept!……………………..><Ç(((Ç°>

Ah, you read Jonathan Swift, I’m impressed.

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Reality: What a concept!……………………..><Ç(((Ç°>

What are these theories and what evidence is there for them?

In the meantime you have to come up with good explanations for the following observations.

1) The almost universal association of petroleum with sedimentary rocks.

2) The close link between petroleum reservoirs and source rocks as shown by biomarkers (the source rocks contain the same organic markers as the petroleum, essentially chemically fingerprinting the two).

3) The consistent variation of biomarkers in petroleum in accordance with the history of life on earth (biomarkers indicative of land plants are found only in Devonian and younger rocks, that formed by marine plankton only in Neoproterozoic and younger rocks, the oldest oils containing only biomarkers of bacteria).

3) The close link between the biomarkers in source rock and depositional environment (source rocks containing biomarkers of land plants are found only in terrestrial and shallow marine sediments, those indicating marine conditions only in marine sediments, those from hypersaline lakes containing only bacterial biomarkers).

4) Progressive destruction of oil when heated to over 100 degrees (precluding formation and/or migration at high temperatures as implied by the abiogenic postulate).

5) The generation of petroleum from kerogen on heating in the laboratory (complete with biomarkers), as suggested by the biogenic theory.

6) The strong enrichment in C12 of petroleum indicative of biological fractionation (no inorganic process can cause anything like the fractionation of light carbon that is seen in petroleum).

7) The location of petroleum reservoirs down the hydraulic gradient from the source rocks in many cases (those which are not are in areas where there is clear evidence of post migration tectonism).

8 ) The almost complete absence of significant petroleum occurrences in igneous and metamorphic rocks (the rare exceptions discussed below).


Jon

Yes, I actually did see that earlier and did skim through the discussion, though, to my eye, it only touches upon oil a couple of times and there doesn't seem to be much real discussion of the science, but I'll go back over it in more detail and see if perhaps my initial assessment was a bit hasty. Thank-you for the reference!

Though I am loathe to employ wiki as a stand-in for legitimate reference, its page of the topic does provide a handy compilation and fairly even-handed addressment of the abiotic oil subject matter. Again this isn't anything other than a background overview for any more involved discussion of the issue.

While I appreciate your efforts to provide direction to my life, I somehow don't feel the obligation to indulge your dictates to pursue discussion in an area which I have already acknowledged as being tangential to this thread's
primary topic.

If you would care to start a more appropriate thread, or lead the way to a more appropriate thread, I would be happy to address your rather simplistic and largely irrelevent concerns in a more thorough and detailed fashion.

While I have no opinion on the subject as such (I am not qualified), I do find it intriguing. If you are interested, this article seems to address many of your questions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

There are a great many wikipedia articles that illustrate the strength of the wikipedia concept. That isn't one of them.

Jon

That article is not even handed but one sided defence of the theory.

No dictates, noattempts to provide direction to your life, just a list of things you need to consider if you want to discuss the topic in an informed fashion. if you don't want to that's fine, your choice.

You have been already pointed to a thread. here it is again. http://www.bautforum.com/general-sci...tural-gas.html - I will post my points there again so that you can explain why you think they are simplicistic and largely irrelevant.

Jon

In a nutshell:

Oil is organic, in the sense that it's made out of hydrogen-rich carbon-based compounds.

Oil is basically hydrocarbons. Gasoline, diesel, kerosine, LPG and all the other stuff that is made out of oils are hydrocarbon-based. (plastic and stuff involves more chemistry to create molecules).

Crude oil does contain other stuff like sulfur and nitrous compounds, but that stuff is small, incidental and generally undesired anyway.

When fuel is produced it's by separating the oil by the legnth of the hydrocarbon molecule chains. Shorter chains are lighter. They have a higher vapor pressure and such.

From the top down you get gasses then stuff like naptha, which is a light weight quickly evaporating. Then you have short chain hydrocarbons which make up high-octane gasoline, then lower octanes, then diesel and kerosene and then heating oils and then thicker oils, which are often used as the baisis of lubricants, then you get thick greasy oils and finally tar.

It's possible to get more light hydrocarbons out of the heavier ones by heating them under pressure or using a catalyst to break them apart. This is called "Cracking" It also helps to purify the product. Steam cracking adds high pressure steam and can also increase the hydrogen concentrations and form more complex molecules which are often desirable.

You can go the other way too, using a variety of processes to rebond the hydrocarbon chains.

This stuff is actually the made of the simplest organic compounds. It's just a matter of taking organic matter, and decomposing it under pressure until the compex molecules break down. Under high pressures the molecules will end up decomposing and rebonding into hydrocarbon chains. Most organic stuff is made out of mostly hydrogen and carbon. Of course, there are a few other things in the mix too, but nitrates often separate.

If you have enough hydrogen this happends and you get oil. If it's almost all carbon you get coal, which has little hydrogen and is mostly carbon.

Okay, so why am I saying this? Because you can turn nearly anything organic into hydrocarbons and then you get them to the correct weight for what you want and there ya go.

It can be done with biomass. It can be done with coal. Actually it has been done on large scales with coal and natural gas. The Fischer-Tropsch process is a well known method for doing this in a continuous system at relatively good effeciency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process



The only reason petrolium is what is used is that it's already roughly what we want. If you want to do it with coal, it's no problem, but you're going to have to hydrogenate it and decompose it under pressure and the crack the resulting material to what you want. It turns out that's more difficult and expensive than paying for $65+ a barrel for oil.

So why am I saying this? I'm sure a lot of you here already know this stuff.

Because if you can turn most organic matter into gasoline then you can do so with people. And that's something we have a huge surplus of. People contain lots of lipids and proteins and stuff. That stuff decomposes relatively easily and should work just fine.

The biggest question is how soon until we start turning people into gasoline so that I can afford to get a car with a bigger engine?