[freebeard]

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Originally Posted by Freeman F-ing Dyson

a few months ago I was at
Cornell University celebrating the life of Tommie gold a famous astronomer who
died at a ripe old age he was famous as a heretic promoting unpopular ideas the
usually turned out to be right long ago I was a guinea pig in Tommy's experiments on human hearing
...
later in his life he promoted another heretical idea that the
oil and natural gas in the ground come up from deep in the mantle of the earth and have nothing to do with biology
again the experts are sure he is wrong and he didn't live long enough to change
their minds but just a few months ago some chemists at the clinic Institution
in Washington did a beautiful experiment in a diamond anvil cell they mixed
together tiny quantities of three things that we know exist in the mantle of the earth and observed them at the pressure
and temperature appropriate to the mantle about 200 kilometers down the three things were calcium carbonate
which is sedimentary rock an oxide which is a component of igneous rock and water
those three things are certainly present when a slab of subducted ocean floor
descends from a deep ocean trench into the mantle the experiment shows that
they react quickly to produce lots of methane which is natural gas so big
quantities of natural gas certainly exist in the mantle the chemist sent an
email to Tommy go to tell him their result and got back a message that he had died three days earlier now that
he's dead we need more heretics to take his place so now I must get ahead with
my own heresies