Why do planets devoid of life have methane?

Question

It seems that methane requires some biological beginnings to be produced (ie; it's carbon based and seems to be the result of living creatures (either through their processing of foods or dying)).

How does methane then occur on planets that have not had life (to the best of our knowledge), and could we expect to find crude oil on planets, too? (I'm not suggesting for off-planet drilling)

Answer 1

Methane is a fairly simple chemical.  There are lots of ways it can be produced without biology.

We don't know for a fact that Titan does not have life.  But as the Sun is 100 times dimmer than on Earth, there's not much energy for life.  It has been estimated that if life got started there at the same time as it got started on Earth, from an energy point of view, it would be only a few million years old.  On Earth, even a billion years still only got us single celled life forms.

We wouldn't need to drill for methane on Titan.  We wouldn't even need to land.   We could scoop it up from the Titan atmosphere.  Yet, it's hard to imagine that we could obtain a net gain in energy bringing this stuff back to Earth to burn.  It's a long way out.

Answer 2

I read somewhere that methane on planets devoid of life could be the result of comet strikes.

Answer 3

Are you sure?.

Who said so?.

My planet ''Koosvane'' is methane air.

Why are watery planets devoid of intelligence?.

Answer 4

I feel that not all planets, simply because they are devoid of life, have methane.  Nor, neither do I feel that "crude Oil" could conceivably be produced anywhere we could get to readily.  Doesn't "crude oil" require the use of some organic substance to have been produced?  Don't think that it's been proven that there is anywhere that "organic substances" have even been found (except here on Earth).    

Methane is a light hydro-carbon substance.  I'm not sure, however, I feel that perhaps there is a form of life that actually uses methane as it's energy source.  An extreme-o-phial, as there is a possibility that it could be called.

However, the moon Titan, which I presume you are speaking of, in fact, does have a great deal of Methane.  However, it is one of the coldest places in the universe, not counting that it is so very far away to actually be explored by humans.