Hello . It's November 2nd . This is Dr. Stout , and I would like to talk about how serpent modernization makes the jade for me , but also may save the world and maybe the origin of life itself . This is sort of a technical supplement . I'm going to be talking about some things outside of my specialty , my geology , chemistry , a range of really specialized technical information .
That is not my usual topic , but I'm really interested in these subjects , obviously , because I like to carve jade and also because I'm interested in the origin of life and saving the world . So what is serpentine is Asian , so suspension is Asian is when water comes down from the surface and encounters a batch of iron containing rocks in the sort of a set set of conditions of decent amount of pressure and a high temperature , but not too high .
And then the rock , the iron in the rock becomes oxidized and the oxygen is coming from the water . And so it releases hydrogen . And so this was in the news recently where a new drill hole in France that was looking for natural gas actually found hydrogen instead . And so this is very exciting . And it may well be the saving of the world because it is clean hydrogen that doesn't need other forms of energy to produce it .
Obviously , there's a little bit of energy in getting it out of the ground in the first place . But other than that , it is the perfect green energy source . When you burn hydrogen , it just combined with oxygen to make water again . So there's no pollution , there's no particulate matter . It is just about the perfect fuel . It has a couple of problems with storage and things like that . It's very , very bulky .
But in terms of just a perfect fuel , it's really hard to beat the cleanness of hydrogen . So why am I so interested in serpentine ization ? It happens really anywhere . Water can encounter iron , particularly in a silicates rock form , and it's mimicking the same kind of actions that happen when life in a marsh or in a deep sea area also has iron encountering water .
So microbes in low oxygen or no oxygen environments can actually use iron and combine it in various ways with water as a form of energy . Sometimes this is an abiotic process that releases hydrogen that the bacteria can then use themselves . So it's also a form of food for the bacteria if it's abiotic . But I suspect in many cases it is a biotic mediated process that is changing iron f e to oxidized forms first , f , e two , and then fe3 .
So the two forms of ferric and then ferrous iron that have very different looks and the fair ferric iron , the fe2 is red , while ferrous iron becomes fe3 and is , is , is green . And that is what the green in my jade is . So this is a process that is happening really everywhere that there is both water and iron and the bacteria are using these as energy forms .
And the interesting thing is there is a competition between abiotic processes and life and any energy that's just there to be scavenged . Life would like to use it , but sometimes it just , you know , things burn on their own without life being involved in oxidizing something or moving electrons around .
So in the in the deep sea , it turns out and in in marshes and in where Yes , again everywhere this is happening , it turns out that under slightly acidic conditions , bacteria can often produce the abiotic sources . And then what they'll do is they'll turn F2 to F3 .
The part I'm particularly interested in and in the production of F3 , the iron becomes less toxic to the bacteria , it becomes less soluble and it ends up ends up being excreted as a iron oxide and actually does these really weird things . It makes these long braided strands as the bacteria get rid of the excess iron . So as they're essentially eating iron there , there , there , they're iron poop , looks like long threads and this forms bacterial mats .
You might have actually seen this sometimes streams in the summertime as they're running low . I will be a little bit acidic and you'll start to see a sort of red slime forming on the base bottom of the stream that is actually iron oxidizing bacteria making that reddish slime . But in other conditions that would be green . Now , obviously , you know , in a in a stream on the surface , you're going can have enough oxygen that it can form other other forms of of of iron oxide .
And then the green one . But the green one happens preferentially under very deep conditions , preferentially at about what is about 18 K bar , which I had to look up at , that's about 18,000 times 14 and a half pounds is the actual pressure comparing it to sort of PSI . So pounds per square inch it would be 18,000 times 14 and a half to give you a total pressure and happens about 300 degrees centigrade . So it's an eight K bar and 300 C , so it's hot , but not incredibly hot .
And these are temperatures that life might actually be able to exist at those pressures . Water doesn't boil . So the the cells wouldn't burst . And if life is able to outcompete the abiotic factors under these circumstances , it's a very useful form of energy . So there is a ton of energy released in the process of oxidizing iron . It's a very exothermic reaction .
And one of the interesting aspects of it is that as the reaction occurs , it releases the heat to the to more or less the temperature that it needs . And obviously there's different depths where you can find the right temperature , but it makes its own heat and it releases about 300 degrees worth of heat and it delivered about 300 degrees , 303 50 . So if it gets too hot , the process slows down . And if it cools down , the process slows down .
So there's an optimal temperature , but it's able to simply because the process exists , the process will expand the region of that optimal temperature by producing its own heat . So it's a really interesting reaction that has similarities to the way bodies work , right ? So that bodies are working at a particular temperature at which they work best to produce that particular temperature . It's it's a homeostasis .
And there is also a changing from one thing to another and changing the iron into the iron three and changing taking the oxygen out of the water and releasing hydrogen . That's metabolism . So there's many aspects of this that really resemble life and to me are almost a , you know , interesting way of thinking about how the earth is in a certain way alive . And it might actually be life , it might actually be bacteria helping this process .
And one of the sort of interesting side things about this is serpentine is Asian making serpentine involves a sort of fibrous matted look to the the resulting minerals , particularly jade . If you look at jade , it looks like almost like felt like like fibers that have been laid down flat and all tangled together . And that's what gives Jade its toughness .
And if you look at bacterial mats that have been oxidizing iron as these threads come out of the bacteria , they also form these kinds of matted kinds of felted looks . And I find the the similarity somewhat compelling . I mean , obviously I can't prove anything because they happen to both have these thin matted threads .
But it's the kind of thing that is at least , you know , circumstantial evidence that these are bacterial mediated reactions that might be producing the very rocks I carve , which I find very interesting . The the matting process produces iron that is pretty resistant . It's insoluble . And so these would make excellent fossils . And one of one of the ideas about Jade is that it's often what's called metal somatic .
It's a wonderful world word meta , meaning , you know , changing or going beyond and somatic meaning body and it's when one rock replaces another rock . And so Jade is often seen as being metal , somatic and , and replacing other other other other things .
And it may well have been associated with this kind of iron matting or a little further out , a little more science fictiony , the silica in jade and the iron in jade together might be some sort of I bacterial or living , let's say , form of production archaea are also down there doing some of these things and there may well be other forms of life similar to life that we know we're not , not , not , not to science fiction , but , you know , DNA based life with cells that we don't even know
about . Right . So archaea were only found in the seventies . Now we're realizing they're everywhere . But there could well be things that are down there that we don't know about it . Those pressures and those temperatures are even more science fiction . There might be some sort of thing that's involving transformation of silica itself . You know , back in the early days of science fiction , that was often one of the speculations that there was some sort of silica life .
I'm not saying there is Everything I see could easily be done by bacteria , but it's kind of fun to think about that . The very beginnings of of of life may have involved some some aspects of silica chemistry .
I haven't really talked about that part of it or why why I keep mentioning this at the beginning of life , not just something producing free hydrogen that'll give us clean energy , but the idea is that when this hydrogen is produced , it's often produced both in coastal margins and at sea for seafloor spreading areas and near hydrothermal vents . And when this hydrogen is produced , it's a rich source of food for bacteria .
And so chemo , synthetic bacteria , it's bacteria that are able to eat chemicals as opposed to , say , photosynthetic bacteria that are eating life sorry , heating light the chemo synthetic bacteria are using I generally assumed to be abiotic produced chemicals such as hydrogen as as direct sources of energy . I'm wondering if this hydrogen isn't also being produced by other other living organisms . And that would that would go along with a lot of the way life works , right ?
Life tends to make its own habitat , right ? It life makes soil that plants can grow in , plants feed the animals , etc. . So it life makes the habitat for itself . Perhaps the hydrogen that is being produced is actually being produced by bacteria that I think there are some cases where that is definitely the case and that these this hydrogen then provides a ecosystem for a whole wealth of other bacteria and then higher forms of life above that .
And so one speculation is that these oases of of of life may have provided a way for living chemistry to develop in the very early days of of of Earth at the very beginning , the Earth was not habitable by anything , by any any forms of life . And there were , you know , asteroids hitting all the time , comets hitting all the time . It would have been a , you know , a terrible place for for life to evolve .
But having a protective blanket of an ocean on top of you would have would have allowed life to exist in a somewhat more stable environment . The problem is it's not exposed to any sunlight , so there wouldn't be any forms of energy to be used that we normally think of . As you know , everything is based on on the sun's energy . So it would have to be the chemo , synthetic energy . And so one of the leading theories for the beginning of life is that it happened at these underwater sites .
Sometimes people have , say , hy vents , or it could be ocean seafloor spreading areas where it was it was stable and gave a place for life to develop over time . Another really interesting thing is there's been periods , periodic times when there was the life , the earth was covered with ice and snow , and there would have been in any place for life to exist on the surface .
And during these times , the hydrothermal vent communities and these chemo's synthetic vent communities may well have been a way for life to survive during these times when Earth would have not been habitable in any way . That was ice from pole to pole . So it's really interesting to think about how these things are connected . Suspension ization , the the the formation of serpentine releases .
Naturally hydrogen , it's about somewhere around a half , a half a gram per kilo of of serpentine , of hydrogen that gets produced and that's a tonne . Right . So rock is heavy and for every kilo of it you're going to get a half , a half gram of , of , of hydrogen , which is a tremendous , tremendous production rate . So this is , this is , this is a very hopeful thing to think about . And it's making jade for me , which is just wonderful . The chemistry is is is very involved .
I definitely do not understand all the aspects of it , but it's really neat to see all the bits that I that I can can understand when I , when I notice something . You know , for example , one of the side chains is making something called magnesite , not magnetite . And I would have thought that magnesite was almost the same thing as magnetite . Magnetite is another oxidized form of of iron , perhaps produced by bacteria .
There are bacteria that definitely produce magnetite , but magnesite is a magnesium carbonate . And so magnesite when it forms is going to be taking CO2 out of out of the water . So this may be a way that global warming can be addressed as well , that the carbonate rocks may be a way to sequester CO2 . So the entire process is is is wonderfully interesting . And , you know , in the news today and as related to evolution in general , the development of life , the beginning of life .
And I thought it would be worth talking about a little bit as sort of a side technical note before we get back to some of my other other discussions . Thank you .