Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [36]
Evidence for Gold’s theory comes from numerous sources: petroleum from deeper levels in the crust contains fewer signs of biological origin than petroleum from shallower levels; oil from different regions of the planet should show differing chemical signs because of the different forms of life from which it was allegedly formed, yet all oil shows a common chemical signature, which you would expect if it had a common origin deep inside the earth; one would expect to find oil at geological levels of abundant plant life but, in fact, it is found below such layers; the natural gas methane is found in many locations where life most likely did not thrive; diamonds are carbon crushed under high pressure, which Gold thinks implies the presence of carbon hundreds of kilometers below the surface.
Perhaps most striking, Gold notes that most oil fields contain far more reserves than oil companies anticipated because, he argues, they are refilled from the much larger hydrocarbon supply lying below—the drop in pressure in the oil cavity caused by drilling draws the hydrocarbons from the higher-pressure cavities below. Finally, the earth’s surface is very rich in carbonate rocks, which, as their name implies, are loaded with carbon. Gold believes that the source of the carbon is not biological but astronomical—the earth was formed by an accretion of rocks similar to the meteorites that bombard the planet today (so-called shooting stars), one type of which is a carbonaceous chondrite. When heated under the extreme pressure of a condensing earth they would have released substantial quantities of hydrocarbons. Lighter than the surrounding material, they would then rise toward the surface, thus accounting for the high carbon content of the earth’s crust.
Geologists and earth scientists have explanations for these anomalies, but I’m impressed with Gold’s track record of being right about other heresies he has proposed, such as the nature of pulsar stars, the extent of the layer of moon dust the Apollo astronauts would encounter, and even a new theory of hearing. Like any good scientist, Gold admits that the only way to find out if his theory is correct is to drill deep into the earth’s surface and see what’s down there. In other words, the theory will stand or fall on the evidence. Although my Caltech colleagues and other geologists I have consulted remain extremely skeptical, Gold’s logic and evidence lead me to give this heresy a fuzzy factor of .5.
Heresy 5. Cancer Is an Infectious Disease
Have you ever wondered why it is that if cancer and heart disease are the result of genetics, diet, and age, young, healthy, strong people on good diets occasionally drop dead of cancer and heart disease at an early age? Amherst College medical researcher Paul Ewald thinks he knows why—some cancers, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses are the result of infections. You can “catch” cancer, says Ewald. You can down boxes of granola and jog a hundred miles a week and still drop dead of a heart attack before you’re forty—witness Jim Fixx and other exercise gurus and diet fanatics who did not live long enough to witness the seemingly ageless George Burns smoke, drink, and womanize his way to age ninety-nine.
There is irony in this heresy because it falls under the umbrella of the germ theory of disease, not accepted until well into the nineteenth century and resisted for decades by leading medical researchers and practitioners (before the germ theory, for example, medical experts believed that malaria—Italian for “bad air”—was caused by malodorous fumes, not the bite of a protozoa-infested mosquito). Once the germ theory was embraced, however, the search for deadly pathogens raged throughout the twentieth century. So why not apply the theory to cancer and heart disease? If you think about it, this is not such a shocking idea. It was not so long ago that the accepted medical dogma was that peptic ulcers