The Deep Hot Biosphere
- Book Review,
by Thomas Gold
From Publishers 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. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Physics World
If he is right, the consequences could be dramatic ... This book serves to set the record straight.
Science News, January 16, 1999
In The Deep Hot Biosphere, he reveals evidence supporting a subterranean biosphere and speculates on how energy may be produced in a region void of photosynthesis. He speculates on the ramifications his concepts could have in predicting earthquakes, deciphering Earth's origins, and finding extraterrestrial life.
Oil & Gas Journal, December 7, 1998
This is the first book on Thomas Gold's controversial and astonishing theories. In it he describes the creative process by which he synthesizes the scientific evidence that supports his theory and extends his perhaps even more controversial view that petroleum originates from deep within the earth, not from compressed biological matter.
From a letter to the author from Robert A. Hefner III, The GHK Companies, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
As you are aware, my knowledge and experience of natural gas, gained from drilling and operating many of the world's deepest and highest pressure natural gas wells, lends more credence to your ideas than the conventional theories of the biological/thermogenic origin of natural gas. Your theory explains best what we actually encountered in deep drilling operations
From a letter to the author from John P. Miller, Director, Center of Computational Biology, Montana State University
The book, The Deep Hot Biosphere, is a real eye-opener. Actually my fundamental reaction is that NONE of this should seem controversial: it makes such good sense that I feel embarrassed for the biology community for not having established this as a fundamental alternate hypothesis 20 years ago. I have a sickening sensation that, in a decade or so, scientists will be looking back on the state of the field at the turn of the century as if we were intellectual barbarians, much the way we look back on those who questioned Darwin's work when it was first presented
Robert Matthews, The Sunday Telegraph, London, January 17, 1999
Within the scientific community, Gold has a reputation as a brilliantly clever renegade, having put forward radical theories in fields ranging from cosmology to physiology
Jeanne Mackin, Ithaca Times, May 13, 1999
Gold's theory, as explained in The Deep Hot Biosphere, offers new and radical ideas to our incomplete notions of what causes earthquakes and where we would look for life in outer space: not on planets, but in them
Nigel Hawkes, The Times of London, November 25, 1999
His university career has taken him to Cambridge, Harvard and Cornell, and through research in zoology, physics, astronomy, radio-physics, space research and cosmology. He is, says Bondi, one of the outstanding scientists of our time.
Paul Davies, Physics World, February 1999
Because of the controversial nature of his work, he is often denied credit for the trailblazing research he did on the deep hot biosphere, the existence of which could prove to be one of the monumental scientific discoveries of our age. This book serves to set the record straight
From a letter to the author from Norman Pace, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
I look forward to using it as a resource for the microbial diversity course that I teach
Book Description
Could there exist, deep within the earth's crust, a second biosphere--composed of very primitive, thermophilic (heat-loving) bacteria, and containing more living matter than the entire surface of the planet? This radical idea, which initially met with skepticism when it was first proposed by the author in the early 1980s, is now supported by a growing body of evidence. The implications are astonishing. The theory proposes answers to often-asked questions about life on other planets and the origins of surface life on earth. Is the deep biosphere where life originated? Can Mars and other seemingly barren planets contain deep biospheres? Is there yet another--deeper, hotter--biosphere within the earth, based on silicon instead of carbon? In the first book on this very controversial and intriguing theory, pioneering physicist Thomas Gold explores the likelihood of a subterranean biosphere, one that exists in a gaseous atmosphere at very high temperature and pressure, and survives on chemical energy--hydrocarbons. This stunning book offers new insights into the origins of life, the origins of natural gas and petroleum, and the distribution of life in the universe.
Card catalog description
Deep within the earth's crust there exists a second biosphere, composed of very primitive heat-loving bacteria and containing perhaps more living matter than is present on the earth's entire surface. That is the astounding premise of this new book by Thomas Gold, one of the twentieth century's most distinguished scientists and a man with a long history of proposing seemingly preposterous theories that later prove correct. Gold joins the deep hot biosphere argument to another, perhaps even more controversial theory for which he has marshalled evidence: that so-called fossil fuels originate not from compressed biological matter at all but from deep within the earth, present there since the planet's formation, long before our oxygen-rich surface biosphere came into existence. The deep hot biosphere and deep-earth gas theories shed light on the nature of earthquakes, they suggest that reservoirs of petroleum and certain metal ores are much vaster (though not necessarily more accessible) than generally claimed, and they help to answer two of the most profound mysteries of the biological sciences: the origins of life on earth and the prospects of extraterrestrial life.
About the Author
Thomas Gold is one of the most wide-ranging distinguished scientists of the 20th century. A member of Britain's Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, he has made important discoveries in physiology (theory of hearing), astrophysics (theory of pulsars), cosmology (steady-state theory), and a theory of time, as well as the revolutionary contributions to geology and biology which appear in this book. He initiated the Space Sciences Program at Cornell University, where he now serves as Professor Emeritus.
Excerpted from The Deep Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The creatures that we see living on the surface are only a small part of the biosphere. The greater and more ancient part of the biosphere is deep and hot.....Gold's theories are always original, always important, usually controversial and usually right. It is my belief, based on fifty years of observation of Gold as a friend and colleague, that the deep hot biosphere is all of the above: original, important, controversial and right (From Freeman Dyson's Foreword to The Deep Hot Biosphere).
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