TITLE:
Cosmic Contributions to the Deposition of Petroleum Source Rocks: Review and Analysis
AUTHORS:
Heinz-Jürgen Brink
KEYWORDS:
Cosmic Rays, Cosmic Dust, Milky Way, Spiral Arms, Stars, Phosphorus, Uranium, Petroleum Source Rock
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Geosciences,
Vol.14 No.11,
November
27,
2023
ABSTRACT: The development of globally distributed Phanerozoic
petroleum source rocks is concentrated on time intervals, which correlate
convincingly with climatic driven glaciation epochs of Earth’s history,
repeated every 150 million years, and during sea level high stands and maxima of global
magmatism with a period of 300 million
years. The 150 million year periodicity appears to be related to the path of the solar
system through the spiral arms of the Milky Way and the 300 million
year periodicity to changes of the spiral system. The spiral arms are preferred
birth places of new stars, of which the larger ones have only smaller
lifespans. Their preliminary deaths ended with explosions and selectively with
the development of so-called white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes. The
times of the explosions of intermediate (sun-like) stars can be determined by
measuring the present brightness of the dwarfs. Not surprisingly the last two
maxima of recordable near solar system star explosions took place during the
presumably spiral arms driven glacial epochs in Eocene to present and Upper
Jurassic times. Such near solar system star explosions may have been the source
of intense neutrino showers, cosmic rays and star dust. This dust contained all
kinds of chemical elements, including phosphorus and uranium. Such cosmic phosphorus
may have supported, through fertilizing, the distribution of life on Earth
additionally to local phosphorus resources via bloom of biota in lakes and
oceans and the enhanced growth of plants on land across all climatic zones.
Subsequently it maintained the development of petroleum source rocks of all
organic matter types within black shales and coals. Via the distribution of
remnants of exploding stars—mainly white dwarfs, but neutron stars and
black holes have to be counted as well—a cosmic contribution can therefore casually linked to the deposition of
petroleum source rocks on Earth, not only purely correlatively by their
contemporaneous appearances.