Editing Thomas Gold (section)

===Abiogenic origins of petroleum===
{{Main|Abiogenic petroleum origin}}

Thomas Gold first became interested in the origins of [[petroleum]] in the 1950s, postulating a theory on the [[Abiogenic petroleum origin|abiogenic formation of fossil fuels]]. Gold engaged in thorough discussion on the matter with [[Fred Hoyle]], who even included a chapter on "Gold's Pore Theory" in his 1955 book ''Frontiers in Astronomy''.{{sfn|Dermott|2004}}

[[File:Nur04512.jpg|thumb|right|[[Siboglinidae|Tube worms]] feeding at base of a [[black smoker]] [[hydrothermal vent]]]]
While Russian scientists had long been at work explicating possible abiogenic origins of petroleum,<ref name=Kudryavtsev>{{cite journal |title=Considerations About Recent Predictions of Impending Shortages of Petroleum Evaluated from the Perspective of Modern Petroleum Science |url=https://www.gasresources.net/energy_resources.htm |journal=Energy World|last=Kenney |first=J.F.|year=1996 |volume=240 |pages=16–18}}</ref> the [[Cold War]] blocked knowledge of their publications until the 1990s. Thus, Thomas Gold was credited with the idea in the United States when  current events prompted him to submit an opinion piece to the ''[[Wall Street Journal]]'' in June 1977 titled, "Rethinking the origins of oil and gas."<ref name="Sephton-Hazen-2013">{{cite journal |last1=Sephton |first1=Mark A |last2=Hazen |first2=Robert M| title=On the Origins of Deep Hydrocarbons |journal=Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry |date=2013 |volume=75 |issue=1 |pages=449–465 |doi=10.2138/rmg.2013.75.14 |bibcode=2013RvMG...75..449S |url=http://www.minsocam.org/msa/rim/RiMG075/RiMG075_Ch14.pdf}}</ref> Concern about [[1973 oil crisis|gasoline shortages]] that began in 1973 were still troubling the economy. A striking discovery in the deep-sea just four months earlier (February 1977) was another impetus: Exploration and photography of a [[deep-sea community|deep-sea hydrothermal vent]] showed a dense amount of life living on chemical energy. Stationary organisms depending on vent outflows included albino clams and tube worms larger than ever seen in surface marine ecosystems. Most astonishing was that such ecosystems were based on microbial life living entirely on [[chemosynthesis|chemosynthetic]] rather than photosynthetic ways of capturing energy and building living cells.{{sfn|Ringle|1999}}

Science communicator [[Paul Davies]] explained Gold's theory in this way: "Conventional wisdom has it that oil and coal are remnants of ancient surface life that became buried and subjected to extremes of temperature and pressure. Gold maintains that these deposits are not fossil fuels in the normal sense, but the products of primordial hydrocarbons dating from the time of the Earth's formation. He claims that over the aeons the volatile gases migrate towards the surface through cracks in the crust, and either leak into the atmosphere as methane, become trapped in sub-surface gas fields, or are robbed of their hydrogen to become oil, tar or carbonaceous material like coal."<ref name="Davies-1999">{{cite journal |last1=Davies |first1=Paul |title=Science gets hot under the crust |journal=Physics World |date=3 February 1999 |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=39–40 |doi=10.1088/2058-7058/12/2/30 |url=https://physicsworld.com/a/science-gets-hot-under-the-crust/}}</ref>

As to the ubiquity of abiotic hydrocarbons in the solar system, a 1999 profile of Gold in the ''[[Washington Post]]'' quoted him as saying, "it always seemed absurd to me to see petroleum hydrocarbons on other planets, where there was obviously never any vegetation, even as we insist that on Earth they must be biological in origin."{{sfn|Ringle|1999}}