[...] Thus far, three large calcite grains, 700, 500, and 400 nm in size, two 500 nm dolomite grains, seven 200 nm sized calcite grains, two 100 nm sized calcite grains, and <20 nm sized ferroan magnesite grains have been identified in Wild 2 samples. Many more smaller (<20 nm in size) carbonates have been tentatively identified in two of the tracks. The identification is tentative because these small crystals fall apart in the electron beam and because of their size they are below the spatial resolution of the STXM. But, Cluster Analysis of STXM stack data identifies a large area that likely contains <20 nm in size carbonate grains and this area is similar to the area where TEM data tentatively identifies small calcite crystals
Lloyd
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
* See CONCRETIONS at TPOD subject archives. My tentative conclusion is that megalightning forms coal balls within stratified coal beds, just as it forms other concretions within sandstone and other material. However, one description of a coal ball a few posts back said a plant root fossil continued within the coal ball into the surrounding coal bed. Isn't that what it said? I wonder if lightning could form such a coal ball without severing a root fossil. How else can a sphere be formed naturally, without lightning? http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2007/arch07/070629stoneeg~: Jun 29, 2007 - China's Stone Eggs
... Most conventional theories ascribe their formation to the slow accumulation of minerals and are deem them to be "concretions" of carbonate or other water-soluble compounds. ... In a previous Thunderbolts Picture of the Day [http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050325blueber~: Mar 25, 2005 - Martian "Blueberries" in the Lab], a description of glassified spherules, created by Dr. C. J. Ransom's experiments with high voltage discharges, lent credence to the theory of lightning strikes as the means by which stone eggs form.
... In previous Picture of the Day articles, we have identified several unique sites where stone spheres have been discovered washing out of hillsides or embedded within a sandstone matrix. 40 kilometers south of Oamaru, New Zealand, is a beach where hundreds of calcium carbonate spheres have fallen out of a cliff face and rolled down into the water. They range in size from small nodules to giant balls over 4 meters in diameter. ... Electric arcs of great power will smash matter into the center of a vortex and crush it into spherical shapes. It may also melt the material to a greater or lesser degree. Because of these "z-pinch" zones of compression, several kinds of "stone ball" might result and they will be composed of different substances, depending on their location. For example, there are Moqui balls – iron spheres with sandstone cores, cannonballs, blueberries, thunder eggs, Apache tears and geodes.
* Oh, here's the relevant quote from my previous post.
Many coal-balls are barren of recognizable plant remains but others contain fragments of stems, roots, petioles, foliage, seeds, sporangia, and liberated spores (Fig. 10). The parts are often partially crushed and the outermost tissues have generally disappeared. Portions of stems frequently extend completely through the coal-balls and for some distance into the surrounding coal where they, too, have been altered into coal.
* Although this says coal balls often have no Recognizable plant remains, I believe it means that the constituent plants have been smashed or otherwise altered into unrecognizable forms. * Anyway, this quote mentions stems, not roots, that extend into surrounding coal.
mharratsc
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
Bake me a round buttermilk biscuit. Not circular... round!
Find me a rock in any stream that is a geometric sphere... without rock tumbling, I don't think it's physically possible. Flash creation during a z-pinch has more going for it, evidentially.
My two cents on the matter, anyway.
Lloyd
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
Mike said: Flash creation during a z-pinch has more going for it, evidentially.
* Yeah, but how can lightning form a ball in something without severing fossils etc that extend from within the ball into the surrounding material? * Furthermore, coal definitely seems to be formed biologically, i.e. from biological, mostly plant matter, as I showed on the previous page.
mharratsc
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
Not an electrical physicist... not sure. :
However, if the root was fossilized prior to the geodes formation, then perhaps the current simply worked around the fossil in the more conductive strata and simply ignored the root-shaped 'rock' in the way?
We have to remember that we're talking about soft coal, not some of the more crystallized materials more commonly associated with z-pinch phenomena in geology. I'm sure that it is less destructive to the surrounding environs than some of the events that create crystalline geodes are.
starbiter
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
Part of the coal ball is magnesium carbonate, or dolomite. This might suggest comet dust converted to coal. The CARBONate might be a factor. I don't think vegetation would produce dolomite. Who loves you Anaconda?
The stick in the coal ball might be a stick in the coal ball.
Hello Anaconda: From what i can see, 8,000 ft. of sediment above coal is not a problem. The continental shelves are even deeper in places. This is slurry runoff from recent events, IMO.
The ocean levels have been higher and lower in the past. Earlier events could have produced coal at different levels.
If the coal is flooded by changing water levels it might liquify, then re-solidify.
- Coal ball: (geology) A subspherical mass containing mineral matter embedded with plant material, found in coal seams and overlying beds of the late Paleozoic. ... [T]he individual plant cells in coal balls have not been crushed....
* whereas, it was stated in a quote in my earlier post yesterday that the cells in normal coal are crushed. * And this is from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/122951/coal-ball. [C]oal ball, a lump of petrified plant matter, frequently spheroid, found in coal seams of the Upper Carboniferous Period (from 325,000,000 to 280,000,000 years ago). Coal balls are important sources of fossil information relating to the forests preceding the Coal Age. As a result of a variety of conditions, small pockets of plant debris in Carboniferous swamps, infiltrated by mineral salts, became petrified rather than changed into coal. These petrifactions, ranging from a few grams to several hundred kilograms, have been uncovered in the central United States, in England, in a broad area from Belgium to the Ukraine [etc].... * This article, at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3721/is_200001/ai_n~, mentions a coal mine in Franklin County, Illinois that had 1500 cubic meters of coal balls in one branch. That's like 15 m x 100 m x 1 m deep. It said they're usually rounded when isolated, but in large numbers they tend to have non-spherical shapes. * So the carbonates and other minerals in coal balls are the same ones found in petrified wood. So much for the abiotic theory for coal balls. * Fulgurites are petrified sand etc; concretions are petrified soil etc; petrified wood is petrified trees; and coal balls are petrified coal plant matter. HOW COAL AND COAL BALLS FORMED * Evidently, layered beds of plant matter formed catastrophically by flood etc, then lightning strikes formed coal balls at various points in the beds, then electrical breakdown turned the entire beds into coal, similar to how sedimentary rock was turned into granite. * When some coal balls formed by lightning, some of the plant stems beyond the balls were also petrified by the lightning, similar to fulgurites, which explains how the balls formed without severing the stems that protruded from the balls. * In the Mummified Dinosaurs thread, I posted a message last year, that I titled: Eureka - How Trees Fossilized! [i.e. became petrified] at http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=1~, and I said as follows.
* This http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f12/petrified-wood-700~ says: Not all the minerals in petrified wood are quartz. They can be calcite, magnesium, potassium, carbonates, silicates and many others. That's where all the different colors come from. * This http://www.northern.edu/natsource/earth/Petrif1.htm looks like a better source: What Minerals Are In Petrified Wood? The mineral content of petrified wood is easily identified using a mass spectrometer or X-ray diffraction technology. Silica, in the form of silicon dioxide (SiO2), commonly known as quartz, is the most common replacement mineral. Often traces of other minerals give petrified wood its unique color and characteristics. Iron oxide will cause reds, browns, yellows and earth tones. Copper and chrome oxide create greens, silicates of aluminum produce whites, and manganese dioxide makes black. * The silicon in petrified wood seems to be like glass, which may mean that the silicates melted, which would have required considerable heat, which electric discharges could provide.
* So notice that carbonates are more common in coal balls and silica is less common, while in petrified wood it's the reverse. If I recall rightly, Louis Kervran's book stated that trees tend to transmute carbon into silicon, while other plants transmute silicon into carbon. I don't know if there may be a connection with normal transmutation and lightning petrification.
starbiter
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
Hello Lloyd: Coal deriving primarily or entirely from plant matter is fine with me. But when i hear magnesium or calcium carbonate [dolomite or limestone] which contains carbon, i now think comet dust.
The quotes below are from your earlier post.
[...] Important sources of plant fossils in coal are coal-balls. These are irregular or subspherical masses of mineral matter, usually of calcium or magnesium carbonate and iron pyrites, which vary in size from a fraction of an inch to 2 or 3 feet, and in weight from an ounce to two or more tons. Most of them, however, weigh but a few pounds.
Many coal-balls are barren of recognizable plant remains but others contain fragments of stems, roots, petioles, foliage, seeds, sporangia, and liberated spores.
However, in Illinois the coal-balls are not overlain by marine beds and the petrifying minerals must have come from some other source. These coal-balls also contain considerable pyrites and some are composed almost entirely of this mineral.
me again,
The last graph says the source of carbonates is a problem. And the pyrites mentioned [iron and sulfur] don't seem organic.
michael
Lloyd
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
* The source of carbonates etc is not a problem if you take transmutation into account. Iron for example transmutes from silicon etc. Electrical breakdown likely transmuted the live and dead cell matter in trees into minerals. The same with coal balls from plant matter. No dust needed. Not to say that there wasn't dust, but the dust was not from comets to speak of. It was from EDM erosion of Earth's or another planet's surface. * Something for later: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/carboniferous/mazon.html
starbiter
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
I'm surprised you dismiss comet dust Lloyd.
kiwi
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
As regards the Moeraki boulders, a friend had one he split open to find inside a fully outstretched crab, the "rock" was about 10 inches Diameter, with the legs of the crab extending to the perimeter , and when the boulder was whole it was the line of small "dots" on the outside that marked the legs extremety, and told him there was a crab inside, he had found a few of these and detected them from the clues as noted above
I think there must be more than one mechanism in nature that produces round concretions.
webolife
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
No-one except me has included in their explanations the power of steam infused into sediments... I have found this in the diatomite beds forming "concretions" of lens-shaped diatomaceous opal in the middle of beds of diatomaceous earth sandwiched between layers of basalt [E. Washington], as I have mentioned on another thread. I do not discount at all the potential action of subterranean electric discharges here, but simply call to account the more obvious facts that: 1. Sediments are aqueous "slurries" [as Starbiter likes to call them], and... 2. Temperatures underground are hot [300 deg F not a-typical], even without a proposed electric cause for the heat. This plays a bigger part in the weathering and erosion of basalts, and the processes of metamorphosis and plutonism, than is typically allowed by formulations of the standard model. The latter builds its case around assumptions of long slow processes in which the contribution of heat is downplayed by its supposed dispersion over time. With respect to hydrocarbons then, the transmutation process seems to be a good correlater to electrical activity, but the agent of steam infusion seems to be a more direct factor, as seen in laboratory production of hydrocarbons, together with an abundance of silica in the matrix, such as clays, lavas or volcanic ash, which seem to act as a catalyst, or else are themselves the in-products/reactants of transmutation. The biotic nature of coal seems to speak for itself, as also indicated in Lloyd's posts, but the ongoing infusion of carbonate rich sediments with primordial methane, as presented by Thomas Gold, et. al., appears to be a major contributor as well. This is why I favor a model of both biotic and abiotic factors in hydrocarbon production. And I agree with Starbiter that a mile or so of depth is not so much an issue.
Lloyd
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
* You all agree then that Albertite is asphalt, not coal, that coal is formed from plants mostly, and that coal balls are concretions of petrified plants. Right? * I should have stated earlier that trees transmute silicon into calcium, not carbon; and grasses transmute calcium into silicon. That's if I remember Kervran's findings correctly. Carbonates are usually calcium or magnesium carbonate, I believe. * Mike, although Velikovsky supposed that Venus was a comet and dispersed a lot of dust on Earth 3,500 years ago, Cardona et al concluded in the 80s, if not the 70s, that such a supposition is partly wrong. Venus and Mars may have come close to Earth 4,500 years ago (a few hundred years before Abraham), but no later than that. Venus was comet-like, but there's likely no evidence that it dusted Earth. The dust of the Exodus event was likely from vulcanism, such as the Santorini eruption on Thera Island. Gary Gilligan has theorized that there was a lot of dust in Earth's orbit for 2,000 years, which dust may have come from all 3 planets et al. But most of the dust on each planet likely came from its own surface via EDM. And most such dust was deposited electrically to form sedimentary rocks. This is Thornhill's contention, it seems, which I base on many TPODs. The Great Flood was involved too, but the flood did not erode Earth's surface significantly, I think. Instead, EDM eroded it mostly, and the flood washed it around the globe. * Do you all agree that the sedimentary rocks on the Moon, Mars etc were likely deposited electrically, not by floods, as suggested in some TPODs? And do you remember TPODs that suggested that rock strata around Meteor Crater in Arizona and the strata within mesas and the like were deposited electrically? Actually, they suggested that the mesas were raised up electrically from the surrounding strata, so that the strata within the mesas are the same as the surrounding strata, but raised up above it. The surrounding land was not washed away, leaving the mesas. Instead, the mesas were raised up. And the surrounding strata was deposited electrically too. Also, they suggest that rock arches and natural bridges are formed electrically. * Kiwi, do you mean a live crab was found within a concretion? That's plausible, because my Dad said his older brother found a live frog or toad in a concretion, when working in a rock quarry in the 1930s. He kept it for a while and then gave it to a friend. Amphibians can hibernate and apparently they can achieve suspended animation indefinitely. Maybe crabs can do that too. Don't discount the possibility that electrical forces can sometimes make concretions with relatively cool centers. * Webo, you're not suggesting that steam can form concretions, are you? Do you agree that the silica in petrified wood seems to have melted to form glass? Certainly, steam could not melt silicas. Quartz melts at over 1,600 degrees C. We know that lightning forms fulgurites in sand etc. And it seems to form geodes that contain crystals in the centers. And caves may be formed by lightning in a similar way, esp. crystal caves. And CJ Ransom demonstrated that high powered electrical discharge can form hematite like Martian blueberries, small concretions. And stalactites and stalagmites may be crystals formed electrically. So why would coal balls not be formed electrically? It seems to me that lightning could also do such things under water. Could it not? Esp. in dirty water?[/u]
Lloyd
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
Webo: ongoing infusion of carbonate rich sediments with primordial methane, as presented by Thomas Gold, et. al., appears to be a major contributor as well [to petrification of plants in coal balls?]
* I thought we settled that issue in the Mummified Dinosaurs thread. It sounds like you're talking about permineralization, the conventional view of how fossilization occurs, i.e. by minerals infusing bones and plants over long periods of time. Remember the fossilized human foot in a 1950s cowboy boot that had apparently hit a power line and gotten fossilized, similar to a tree root that was fossilized by a downed power line? Did minerals infuse the foot and the root? I think not. It was simply electrical transmutation that turned bone, ligaments and root into minerals.
webolife
Re: Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth?
Actually no, not permineralization in the conventional sense of long slow replacement of minerals into cellular tissue. The "infusion" I was speaking of was the abiotic infusion of methane into sediments containing the plant and other materials causing a more rapid "transmutation" as it were of carbohydrates into hydrocarbons. The "glassy" appearance of petrified wood, however, is belied by the FACT that microscopic cellular structures are often preserved in the fossilized wood. The better describer of these woods is "opal" [quartz included with water]. This can be done in hours in the lab, and hot silica-saturated water in a matrix of clay is the main agent. The stuff I've collected over in Frenchmen Hills in E. Washington has many structures well detailed in cross-sections, including "separated" pithy materials that come out almost like toothpicks. Anyway, I'm open to electrification as a heat source, but still in wondering mode about the mechanisms of direct electrical transmutation.
that a mile or so of depth is not so much an issue.
