ESA finds underground water on Mars
I alluded to this in today's sudoku post. The MARSIS radar instrument on the ESA's Mars Express probe has found a layer of nearly pure water-ice 1km thick and 250 km in diameter at a depth of 1.5 to 2.5 km below the surface of Mars. This lends weight to Gold's Hypothesis, that oil is abiogenic. How? Well, the water did not seep to that depth, not in that quantity. Nor was it covered over by 1.5 km of rock after being deposited. No, that water was there since the planet was formed in the original nebula that surrounded the sun.
Also part of that nebula were other simple chemicals such as methane and ammonia, which would have also formed large deposits just like this water deposit. The same process formed huge water deposits under the earth's surface (estimated at ten times the amount of water in the oceans today) and the deposits of natural gas. In a nutshell, Gold's Hypothesis states that the heat and pressure underground converted the existing natural gas deposits to coal and oil.
Today's prediction: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, now just over halfway to Mars, will find enormous salt domes under the surface of Mars (a telltale sign of oil deposits), thus conclusively proving Gold's abiogenic oil hypothesis.
Technorati Tags: Space, Mars
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