# Nobel Laureate:  Maybe Oil DOES Come From Rocks

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobel-laureate-maybe-oil-does-come-from-rocks/327064>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [October 20, 2005, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobel-laureate-maybe-oil-does-come-from-rocks/327064 "2005-10-20T12:40:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\
**Post date:** [October 20, 2005, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobel-laureate-maybe-oil-does-come-from-rocks/327064/1 "2005-10-20T12:40:05Z")

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Even if it doesn’t, perhaps [his research](http://www.harvardmagazine.com/print/030573.html) will lead to a cheaper process for making synthetics.

> [@](#):
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> But new research coauthored by Dudley Herschbach, Baird research professor of science and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, questions that thinking. Published last fall in the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, the study describes how investigators combined three abiotic (non-living) materials – water (H2O), limestone (CaCO3), and iron oxide (FeO) – and crushed the mixture together with the same intense pressure found deep below the earth’s surface. This process created methane (CH4), the major component of natural gas. Herschbach says this offers evidence, although as yet far from proof, for a maverick theory that much of the world’s supply of so-called fossil fuels may not derive from the decay of dinosaur-era organisms after all.

I don’t know how much weight a Nobel Prize in chemistry carries these days (Linus Pauling kind of undermined his, with his Tim Leary-like attitude towards vitamin C), but this at least _hints_ at other processes being involved.

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**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\
**Post date:** [October 20, 2005, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobel-laureate-maybe-oil-does-come-from-rocks/327064/2 "2005-10-20T13:53:20Z")

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> [@Tuckerfan](#):
>
> Even if it doesn’t, perhaps [his research](http://www.harvardmagazine.com/print/030573.html) will lead to a cheaper process for making synthetics.I don’t know how much weight a Nobel Prize in chemistry carries these days (Linus Pauling kind of undermined his, with his Tim Leary-like attitude towards vitamin C), but this at least _hints_ at other processes being involved.

I have been facinated by this theory for years since I first read about it. Although I am hardly an expert, I gotta say that this theory makes far more sense to me than the dinosaur one.