From the University of Michigan, and the “department of models that can’t ever be verified”, comes this claim
![F7.large[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/f7-large1.jpg?quality=83)
ANN ARBOR–As much as two-thirds of Earth’s carbon may be hidden in the inner core, making it the planet’s largest carbon reservoir, according to a new model that even its backers acknowledge is “provocative and speculative.”
In a paper scheduled for online publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues suggest that iron carbide, Fe7C3, provides a good match for the density and sound velocities of Earth’s inner core under the relevant conditions.
The model, if correct, could help resolve observations that have troubled researchers for decades, according to authors of the PNAS paper.
The first author is Bin Chen, who did much of the work at the University of Michigan before taking a faculty position at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The principal investigator of the project, Jie Li, is an associate professor in U-M’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
“The model of a carbide inner core is compatible with existing cosmochemical, geochemical and petrological constraints, but this provocative and speculative hypothesis still requires further testing,” Li said. “Should it hold up to various tests, the model would imply that as much as two-thirds of the planet’s carbon is hidden in its center sphere, making it the largest reservoir of carbon on Earth.”
It is now widely accepted that Earth’s inner core consists of crystalline iron alloyed with a small amount of nickel and some lighter elements. However, seismic waves called S waves travel through the inner core at about half the speed expected for most iron-rich alloys under relevant pressures.
Some researchers have attributed the S-wave velocities to the presence of liquid, calling into question the solidity of the inner core. In recent years, the presence of various light elements–including sulfur, carbon, silicon, oxygen and hydrogen–has been proposed to account for the density deficit of Earth’s core.
Iron carbide has recently emerged as a leading candidate component of the inner core. In the PNAS paper, the researchers conclude that the presence of iron carbide could explain the anomalously slow S waves, thus eliminating the need to invoke partial melting.
“This model challenges the conventional view that the Earth is highly depleted in carbon, and therefore bears on our understanding of Earth’s accretion and early differentiation,” the PNAS authors wrote.
In their study, the researchers used a variety of experimental techniques to obtain sound velocities for iron carbide up to core pressures. In addition, they detected the anomalous effect of spin transition of iron on sound velocities.
They used diamond-anvil cell techniques in combination with a suite of advanced synchrotron methods including nuclear resonant inelastic X-ray scattering, synchrotron Mössbauser spectroscopy and X-ray emission spectroscopy.
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On the other hand, Sir Fred Hoyle has been arguing that all the methane in the solar system is biotic. I was there when he was questioned on this and he responded with “Yes, the CH4 on the outer planets was created biologically” Personally, I’d like to see more evidence.
Well, microbial life is not only possible but highly likely throughout the universe. It is now thought that it can survive travel in the interior of meteors etc. Drillers have found it at every depth they have gone and it was recently discovered buried deep under the Antarctic ice sheet.
Panspermia remains an attractive hypothesis. Among other advantages, it gets around the surprisingly (to some) rapid appearance of life on earth so shortly after its surface cooled to temperatures at which organisms could survive. It also allows ten billion years for living things to develop on comets or asteroids throughout not just the galaxy but the universe.
However, life on Titan would need to be a lot different from life on earth or any watery planet.
I don’t mean to suggest that Titan’s methane is of biotic origin.
Where can we sequester it so it won’t escape?
Interestingly, there is carbon known in the upper mantle in the form of diamonds. Diamonds occur in stable thick comparatively cool crustal rocks of the Precambrian shields around the world. Diamond pipes are carrot-shaped violent explosive intrusions that have transported diamonds and kimberlite from their source a distance of 150km below the surface in the matter of a couple of hours. It is interesting to speculate that there is a comparatively continuous bed of diamondiferous rock at this depth and that the diamond pipes are just samples of this layer. Also, in fluorite veins mined in Newfoundland and in Kentucky/southern Illinois, and possibly elsewhere, there is some petroleum – a small amount. A ship transporting fluorite from Newfoundland eventually noticed some accumulation of unrefined petroleum in the bilge.
The upshot:
There is so much unsettled science that bears on climatology that any so-called “scientist” who ever voiced the “settled science” lie should be forever barred from receiving grant money.
So now what? Carbon core credits? LOL.
Current climate theory is:
Solar energy in = Energy out.
Perhaps it is:
Solar energy in = Storage + energy out
If all that coal and oil ultimately came from organic life on the surface of the planet, requiring energy from the sun, then someone needs to explain things differently.
It is of course possible to determine using chemical thermal dynamic analysis to determine whether a chemical reaction will or will not occur, at a specific temperature and pressure (see this attached peer reviewed paper for the analysis). Plant residue will not change to liquid petroleum at the temperature and pressures where the liquid petroleum is found. The fact there is no natural reaction that will convert biological residue to liquid petroleum in the conditions where the liquid petroleum is found is show stopper number one for the biogenic hypothesis for the origin of oil.
The biogenic supporters will not discuss biogenic show stopper number 1 as there is no solution. Perhaps show stopper number 2 would be trying to explain the super, super, large middle east, Alberta, and Venezuela petroleum deposits. (See my above comments for other observations and logic that supports the assertion that natural gas deposits and liquid petroleum are created from deep earth CH4 that is extruded from the core as it solidifies. The high pressure of the core provides the energy to push the CH4 through the mantel. At very high pressure specific metals are picked up and concentrated by the CH4 movement which explains why gold deposits are often found near petroleum deposits and explains why there are heavy metals in some liquid petroleum and explains why there is more heavy metals in ‘heavy’ oil.
As this paper notes chemical thermal dynamic analysis shows that long chain carbon molecules will not spontaneously be formed, except at great pressures (at pressures that occur at roughly 100 km below the surface of the earth.). To support their assertion they perform an experiment that produces long chain hydrocarbons from CH4 using a diamond anvil that can recreate the pressure at great depths.
The following are excerpts from this paper.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/99/17/10976
Thanks, Anthony. Very intersting article and discussion.
Thank you, Dr. Watts. Interesting read. I lean towards speculative.
Paul
Are they?
Maybe I missed it, but I did not see any references to gas hydrates seen in a lot of places offshore just below the ocean floor. Sometimes they are (were?) called bottom simulating reflections because they have the same topography as the sea floor, but lie a short distance below it. Pretty hard to come up with an organic source if the sea floor is basalt or something similar. We do live in a most curious place and we are quite fortunate to have Anthony and WUWT to offer such exquisite brain food.
Tom Bakewell, retired geophysicist
IMO the hydrates are found in the seafloor sediments overlying the bedrock.
http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/hydrates/primer.html
How to Find Gas Hydrate
Researchers lack a fully reliable method for locating gas hydrate in marine sediments or the sediments of permafrost regions. Ideally, the existence and saturation of gas hydrate can be inferred without direct sampling (drilling). In marine settings, seismic reflection techniques have long been used to determine the minimum areal extent of gas hydrates. A bottom simulating reflector (BSR) is a negative polarity (seismically-faster material like hydrate-charged sediments over seismically-slower material like gas-charged sediments) “interface” found in some marine sedimentary sections. The BSR is widely interpreted as the base of the gas hydrate stability zone and derives its name from the fact that it often mimics the gross morphology of the sea floor. Because of BSRs represent a phase transition, they often cross-cut the layering of sediments. The existence of a BSR means that gas hydrate almost assuredly occurs in the overlying sedimentary section. However, gas hydrate has been sampled at many locations lacking a BSR. Thus, BSR distribution provides only a minimum estimate of the area in which gas hydrate might occur. To date, BSRs have not been found in areas with permafrost-associated gas hydrates.
A disadvantage of seismic methods for locating gas hydrate is that the saturation of methane hydrate in pore space must generally exceed about 40% for the most common measure of seismic velocity to be significantly altered. This means that some seismic techniques may miss a significant amount of methane hydrate in areas where the saturation is less than ~40%. Laboratory studies show that electrical methods are more sensitive to lower saturations of gas hydrate. This has fueled interest in the application of electromagnetic (EM) methods for regional characterization of gas hydrate deposits or the joint application of EM and seismic techniques. The sensitivity of electrical properties to a wide range of hydrate saturations is also manifest by the widespread reliance of borehole resistivity logging to identify hydrate-bearing sediments in both marine and permafrost-associated settings.
Tom
The bottom simulating reflection as much as 500 ft above the layer of methane hydrates which is as much as 500 meters thick off the coasts of the US.
The amount of gas contained therein equals thousands of years of energy for the US when the market discovers a safe way to recover it.
The answer is likely to be simple, but dangerous to ascertain. The best candidate I have read about to date is using CO2 to free the methane from the clathrate cage.
The source of the gas is the upwelling from below.
No biological mass from above is allowed to accumulate.
As seen in the huge BP spill of gas and oil in the Gulf, the massive plume which greenies expected to last for years, was eaten by a massive microbe bloom within three months of the cessation of the spill.
Give the microbes hydrocarbons to eat, and they bloom to the limit of the food.
The methane could be cat cracked into much more portable and more stable fuel such as diesel or ethenal with a modest expense of BTU’s to convert
Thanks for the above comments. The point I wanted to make is that clathrates are found in areas where no reasonable biogenic source can be found. That seems to add evidence to the aboigenic model as proposed by Gold. It may not be the only source for hydrocarbons, but it may be one of several sourcing mechanisms.
Vladimir Larin hypothesized, with a great deal of data analysis, the concept that the Earth (and other terrestrial planets) congealed from an interplanetary medium that was mostly hydrogen (plausible). This means the planetary cores were composed of metallic hydrides, which are far more compressible than elemental metals. Under energetic stimulus (e.g., radioactivity) the hydrides break down into hydrogen and elemental metal. The hydrogen diffuses out of the core toward the surface, reducing available carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen into methane, ammonia, and water and driving them upwards out of the crust. (Incidentally, the increasing metalization of the core causes it to expand, leading to a steadily increasing Earth radius.) It is a very interesting theory, worth reading about.
J. Marvin Herndon has a somewhat competing theory in which the Earth formed with an initial overburden of gas giant atmosphere, later blown away by solar wind. (He bases his model on an analysis of the chemical composition of meteorites.) The overburden compressed the earth and infused methane into the crust (also leading to planetary expansion on the rebound). Planetary mass segregation also formed a natural fission reactor in the core, which drives the planetary magnetic field.
Larin and Herndon would probably argue with each other all night long, but what is interesting is that their theories are not necessarily exclusive. It goes to show that alternatives to the conventional view are available if you are willing to look for them and consider them.
(By the way, don’t argue with me over their views. Argue with them. Read their books first to understand what evidence they can bring to the subject. Uninformed argument is, well,…nothing commendable.)
Expanding Earth?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7kL7qDeI05U
When will it go ‘pop’?
(For that matter, when will the expanding universe pop?)
We are most decidedly doomed.
Ha, ha, RoHa. I watched the Neal Adams video and the snarky debunker video following it, neither of which had anything to do with Larin or Herndon. This amounts to an equivocal straw-man sophism, which is…nothing commendable. You might like to consider what a real geologist, C. Warren Hunt, has to say on the matter. All their books can be found at http://www.polarpublishing.com and http://www.nuclearplanet.com. (By the way, neither Larin nor Herndon posit increasing terrestrial mass. Herndon’s theory actually supposes a massive primordial mass loss.) A wascally wabbit, you are.
@RoHA — Expanding Earth? When will it go ‘pop’?
If you are more than a flake and are interested in a real answer not a flippant remark you should obtain a copy of the late Tom Van Flandern’s book: Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets — 2nd Edition (1999). Check out his web site as it is still available: http://www.metaresearch.org/publications/books/books.asp
http://www.metaresearch.org/home.asp
Dr. Tom Van Flandern died in 2009 age 69, a true scientific loss. But there is so much on his website that is still available to view. Van Flandern developed the exploding planet hypothesis. There is also much on the GPS system on the site here: http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/gps-relativity.asp
Dan Kurt
But I thought the generally accepted theory was that the entire Solar System was formed from the accretion of junk dumped by early space travellers. (In contrast to the wild claim that the Earth was constructed by the Magratheans.)
Dare I point out that “generally accepted theory” = “consensus science”? And what website is this, again? There are prevailing theories, based on King of the Mountain strategies for selecting supporting evidence, but, sadly, astrophysics is almost as badly compromised as “climate science” and Darwinism: lots of pompous claims of settled science and a complete lack of discussion of the evidence that does not fit. Were you aware that Edwin Hubble did not agree with the hypothesis (named after him, ironically) that interstellar redshift was due to the Doppler effect of recession velocity? (“It’s assumptions, all the way down.”)