Oil reserves... on Titan, Saturn's moon

Oil reserves... on Titan, Saturn's moon

www.jpl.nasa.gov

Cassini has mapped about 20 percent of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than Earth's coal reserves.

Proven reserves of natural gas on Earth total 130 billion tons, enough to provide 300 times the amount of energy the entire United States uses annually for residential heating, cooling and lighting. Dozens of Titan's lakes individually have the equivalent of at least this much energy in the form of methane and ethane.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.astrobio.net

Thought this might be of interest to some of you out there.

(Hope this is the right place to put it, mods feel free to move if you need to.)

S

www.jpl.nasa.gov
(visit the link for the full news article)

Are there any organic chemists out there that can tell us how this accumulation of hydrocarbons could have developed without the presence of life? Where do petrochemicals come from geologically?

reply to post by Zelun


I'm not an organic chemist, but I am an avowed google-ite.

Oil is not a fossil-fuel! NASA scientists are about to claim that. Yes, NASA scientists. New study shows methane on Saturn’s moon Titan not biological. Showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature found on Saturn’s giant moon Titan, NASA scientists are about to publish conclusive studies. And this is a finding that validates a new book’s contention that oil is not a fossil fuel. “We have determined that Titan’s methane is not of biologic origin,” reports Hasso Niemann of the Goddard Space Flight Center, a principal NASA investigator responsible for the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer aboard the Cassini-Huygens probe that landed on Titan Jan. 14. While on the one hand, methane has been synthetically created in the laboratory, abiotic methane is abundantly found on Titan on the other, NASA confirms.

Free Republic | 'Fossil fuel' theory takes hit with NASA finding

Addressing the theory in circulation that oil is not solely of organic origin, but that there may be another mode of origin as well from deeper in the crust, involving magma.
There is a substantial body of evidence to support this theory.

Abiotic Oil | Reserves Replenished by Process in Earth's Mantle?



A 2005 thread on the subject:

NASA discovers that Oil is not a fossil fuel. Peak Oil Confirmed Hoax



More:

The good news is that panic scenarios about the world running out of oil anytime soon are wrong. The bad news is that the price of oil is going to continue to rise. Peak Oil is not our problem. Politics is. Big Oil wants to sustain high oil prices. Dick Cheney and friends are all too willing to assist.

Geopolitics - Geoeconomics | F William Engdahl | Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer



So we won't need to go to Titan to exploit it for energy, and "Peak Oil" is a lie to increase the profits of Big Oil.

Wow, thanks for posting this, Sunalei, I just learned some rather startling information.

Flagged and Starred!

reply to post by goosdawg


oil is NOT methane , didnt google teach you that ?????????????

reply to post by ignorant_ape


What's your point?

This is not a one line post...

reply to post by goosdawg


i have made my point - why hasnt it sunk in yet - its pretty straight forward

reply to post by ignorant_ape


Well, your hostility is certainly coming through loud and clear...

If your intent is be deliberately obtuse, then yes, your point has been made.

But what's that got to do with the common knowledge that methane is not oil?

Hmmmm what part of "organic" hasn't sunken in yet?
Methane is produced by cow farts and decaying organic matter.
It is a hydrocarbon. Hydrogen and carbon.
There are only two explanations for such material on a planet or moon.
Either there is or was life there, or life is not needed for the formation of hydrocarbons.
Either would be fine for me, I am just wondering which one they are most afraid to announce.

Its not the pigs or cows farting itself that creates methane, but the bacteria inside the digestive systems, a byproduct of them.

Methane is vented from volcanoes as well and can be created abiotically. We can find methane on the Moon.

We would need to test the methane to determine an abiogenic versus biogenic origin.

However, what is on Titan is NOT oil. I know that is what the headline says, but they do that. They had one today that said Astronauts build monster in space.

Besides. If it was oil, we would have declared war on Titan

Hmm, mining Titan. The Jupiter Mining Corperation?

Red Dwarf anyone?

Originally posted by ignorant_ape
reply to post by goosdawg

 

oil is NOT methane , didnt google teach you that ?????????????

Energy's energy. Unless we protect Titan from space miners people will undoubtedly harvest there. No time soon I don't think.

I was feeling lucky:

The calculations show that PAHs and normal alkanes could form metastably from CO, CO2, and H2 below approximately 250-300 degrees C during rapid cooling of trapped magmatic or impact-generated gases.

An abiotic origin for hydrocarbons in the Allan Hills 84001 martian meteorite through cooling of magmatic and impact-generated gases

This was about how there could be organic material in the meteorite they found in Antarctica and how it wasn't definite proof of life.

Here's a pdf from NASA that has some good illustrations about the methane cycle they propose operates on Titan, and a bit about cryo volcanism.

To me it seems like nature cranks out carbon polymers, and so it stands to reason that life might be built out of it.

I think the problem with using the oil and coal is that we're pulling this stuff out of the ground and putting it into the air. How does it get back into the ground if we burn away the trees too? It's barbaric. Especially considering we have a perfectly good star overhead half the time, not to mention all the gravity power in the ocean. Whether peak oil is a myth or not, we still need to get away from using that stuff.
[edit] forgot about peak oil for a second

[edit on 17-3-2008 by Zelun]

If there is actually some form of useful fuel on some moon or other plannet, then watch as humans become the aliens in Independence Day, moving from to plannet to plannet sucking all the resources dry. As our leaders try to get everyone to rationalize this view that we can take whatever we want without regard to any ecosystems or life forms we may be destroying.

We've done such a great job of that here, what's to prevent US from becoming the resource consuming intergalatic locusts we worry will come to our plannet?

Originally posted by gotrox
...Either there is or was life there, or life is not needed for the formation of hydrocarbons.
Either would be fine for me, I am just wondering which one they are most afraid to announce.

Living organisms are NOT required to produce hydrocarbons, specifically methane...and why would anyone be afraid to announce that?

And as Shadow_Lord pointed out, that article says NOTHING about there being oil and coal on Titan. All it says is that there are more methane lakes and carbon dunes on Titan than there is oil and coal on Earth.

Wow...and people think gas is expensive now. Wait till they start pumping it in from Titan.

And that scene from Independence Day sounds about right. But, hypothetically of course, if it was an uninhabited planet or moon, what's the harm?

I bet that we could build big ships, go to Titan, use the hydrocarbons on Titan to build enormous plastic ships, fill them with hydrocarbons, and transport gazillions of barrels back to earth (and other parts of the solar system) for less than 4 trillion dollars. Upon arrival at earth, they could be pumped down lines attached to geosynchronously orbiting space tethers.

By comparison the USA alone will spend over 4 trillion in the next decade merely on oil imports. Wouldn't it be cooler to set up a gigantic space industry and infrastructure while not having to fund corrupt regimes in unstable nations or destroy large tracks of earth in our quest for hydrocarbons here on Earth?

And yes... Nuclear fusion would be better. But until then... Makes a lot more sense than "wind power" or "biofuels" that have an ecological footprint bigger than Weird Al's awesomeness.

All the best.
-Some guy in Canada