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The Deep Hot Biosphere

Name: The Deep Hot Biosphere
Author: Freeman Dyson
ISBN: 9780387985466

by Freeman Dyson

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Overview

Suppose someone claimed that we are not running out of petroleum? Or that life on Earth began below the surface of our planet? Or that oil and gas are not "fossil fuels"? Or that if we find extraterrestrial life it is likely to be within, not on, other planets? You might expect to hear statements like these from an author of science fiction. But what if they came from a renowned physicist, an indisputably brilliant scientist who has been called "one of the world's most original minds"?
In the The Deep Hot Biosphere, Thomas Gold sets forth truly controversial and astonishing theories about where oil and gas come from, and how they acquire their organic "signatures." The conclusions he reaches in this book might be at first difficult to believe, but they are supported by a growing body of evidence, and by the indisputabel stature and seriousness Gold brings to any scientific enterprise. In this book we see a brilliant and boldly orginal thinker, increasingly a rarity in modern science, as he developes a revolutionary new view about the fundamental workings of our planet.
Thomas Gold is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and an Emertius Professor at Cornell University. Regarded as one of the most creative and wide-ranging scientists of his generation, he has taughtat Cambridge University and Harvard, and for 20 years was the Director of the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research.

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Editorials

Current Science

Thomas Gold has questioned the very foundations of the entrenched conventional models.... The Deep Hot Biosphere is evidently one of the most controversial of all books published in recent history. It is bound to cause much debate, and, if found correct, is likely to revolutionize the face of science.

Nature

...you have to appreciate his fresh and comprehensive approach.... This book demonstrates that scientific debate is alive and well.

Physics World

Whatever the status of the upwelling gas theory, many of Gold's ideas deserve to be taken seriously.... the existence of The Deep Hot Biosphere could prove to be one of the monumental discoveries of our age. This book serves to set the record straight.

USA Today

Gold might have grown tired of tilting at windmills long ago had he not destroyed so many.

Wall Street Journal

...Thomas Gold, a respected astronomer and professor emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., has held for years that oil is actually a renewable, primordial syrup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and pressures.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

When scientists discovered thermophiles--primitive microorganisms that live in deep seafloor vents and eat hydrocarbons (chemicals like gasoline)--experts assumed the mysterious bugs had little to tell us about ourselves or about the earth's core. Cornell University Professor Emeritus Gold, however, who for 20 years directed the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, here proposes the striking theory that "a full functioning... biosphere, feeding on hydrocarbons, exists deep within the earth, and that a primordial source of hydrocarbons lies even deeper." Most scientists think the oil we drill for comes from decomposed prehistoric plants. Gold believes it has been there since the earth's formation, that it supports its own ecosystem far underground and that life there preceded life on the earth's surface. The "deep hot biosphere" hypothesis would explain the thermophiles, the minerals and the oil Swedish drillers found in 1990 under rock where no one expected them. The hot goo and massed gas far under our feet would also explain some mysterious historical earthquakes (notably the New Madrid, Mo., shocker of 1811), and it would tell puzzled geologists why so many oil reserves just happen to sit underneath coal fields. As later chapters explain, if Gold is right, the planet's oil reserves are far larger than policymakers expect, and earthquake-prediction procedures require a shakeup; moreover, astronomers hoping for extraterrestrial contacts might want to stop seeking life on other planets and inquire about life in them. (Nov.)