Monday, April 25, 2005

The source for oil

As a young science student, I faithfully accepted all that my teachers tought me as hard, cold fact. There was one fact that I always had trouble wrapping my mind around-how it was possible that oil was the result of dead vegetation and animal life that was put under tremendous pressures. I had two problems with it-first, now was it possible that all of this dead vegation and animal matter happened to be so abundit in such isolated locations? My second question was how was it possible that this organic matter managed to stay undecayed for so long that thousands of years of sediment could layer on top of it to create the pressure necessary to result in oil. Logic would dictate that even if a cataclismic event like a massive volcano eruption or large meteor strike had kicked up sediment, decay would still occur below the surface.

I first read about the abiotic theory about a year ago. It makes sense-in fact, to my mind, it makes more sense than the above.

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