Are the oil and gas deposits in our earth fueling the heated center of the earths core.?

Question

by us stripping the gas and oil deposits, is it going to effect the molten activity that fuels the earths firey core. i know there is a large amount in this earth but are we dooming our live earth. AND NO< I HATE AL GORE AND I LISTEN FAITHFULLY TO RUSH LIMBAUGH> I"M A CONSERVATIVE! but it's clear we are stripping the earths natural resources and oil and gas must serve a purpose. i know i may have asked the unanswerable, but can someone help me make sense of this. thanks.

Answer 1

No.

Oil and gas are not fueling the earth&#039;s centre. The oil and gas deposits are just skin deep in comparison ti the size of earth.

The source of earth&#039;s heat is  at depths  in the interior- the crust-mantle-core while the oil and gas is confined within the thin supra crustal rocks say within the top 3-4km only.

thnks

Answer 2

the core&#039;s heat is produced my radioactive stuff. that&#039;s all i know. x) whatever the other person sounded more educated.

Answer 3

As far as we know and as far as we would expect given what we know, it won&#039;t have an effect on the molten activity below.

Up until recently we&#039;ve only had one way of assessing the composition of the earth far down below where we can navigate (about 10km so far but see the last of my links below).  This was seismic waves where we&#039;d basically set off explosions on the surface or study earthquakes and record the seismic patterns of the resulting waves.  They behave very differently depending on what type of material they travel through so we could make very good estimations of many of the properties of the materials at different levels and these properties were basically matched up to materials we know that display these properties and that we might expect to be down there anyway.  So it&#039;s sort of using technology to discover as much as possible and then linking it in with present knowledge.

Recently there has been a breakthrough with the discovery of subatomic particles called geoneutrinos that are released when rocks decay radioactively.  These are invisible and virtually weightless so they can pass through almost any material freely.  So if we can detect them traveling from below the earth, each one give us clues about its chemical origins and therefore have the potential to greatly increase the data we have to make our estimations about the make up of the earth.  However, they are very difficult to detect and many more strategically placed detectors must be built so it&#039;ll probably be a couple of decades before we have a significant amount of increased knowledge although I&#039;m sure these years will be full of interesting little insights and exciting mysteries!

Anyway, the other more obvious way we can study the earth is observation of earthquakes and volcanoes as well as drilling down as far as we can.  We do know that the crust floats on a molten magma mantle that is where lava comes from and we also know how oil forms.  Given that oil is a product of organic material on the crust, it is safely assumed to be confined to the crust but even if it did go as far down as the magma, it would be so insignificant in terms of volume and would just be mixed in and destroyed.  Gas of the kind that we mine is much the same.

As mentioned already, the radioactive decay of elements is the only known source of heat below the crust.

As regards a &quot;purpose&quot; to oil and gas, there is no more or less purpose to them than any other product of the globe including all of life but as they relate to ourselves, it is clear that we would be better off if we can conserve what we have for use in essential manufacturing by utilising more renewable forms of energy where possible.  It would also be a shame purely from a scientific point of view to lose the wells that can teach us a lot about how the world works including the study of bacteria that actually live in the oil!!!

The depletion of biodiversity is, according to a plethora of evidence, much more important a concern than global warming etc.  Any effect we have on global warming will automatically be catered for if we manage our ecosystems and biodiversity better but aside from this, increased biodiversity and species richness is directly correlated to ecosystem function and structure and as these are decreased, humans will be left with no clean water or resources to survive quite apart from all the greenhouse gases released so in my estimation we really need to get our priorities right!

Edit:  Here are some articles you may be interested in regarding exploration below the crust.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/0...

http://www.livescience.com/environment/0...

http://www.livescience.com/technology/05...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/na...

Answer 4

The oil deposits aren&#039;t that deep. The centre of the earth... &quot;The internal heat of the planet is probably produced by the radioactive decay of potassium-40, uranium-238 and thorium-232 isotopes. All three have half-life decay periods of more than a billion years&quot;