What is Digg?Sponsored by HowLifeWorks
How Private Online Shopping Clubs Work view!
howlifeworks.com - How to become a member and get discounts of up to 80% on must-have luxury goods
57 Comments
- neoform, on 10/12/2007, -2/+81Shame google answers just announced that they're shutting down..
- spudnic, on 10/12/2007, -4/+73Ha, actually I think it's the question that's brilliant rather than the answer
- pureliquidhw, on 10/12/2007, -2/+48it's alright. i forgive you. Just promise me you will make more time for digg tomorrow.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+48I was busy this morning. Sohhhhh-reeee.
- goonie916, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21"Put a T-rex in your tank!"
- SkyWalk423, on 10/12/2007, -6/+23Agree 100%, the question is the real gem here.
- pureliquidhw, on 10/12/2007, -8/+23wow, this was on the frontpage this morning. goes to show how many people actually read the articles. The google blog linked to this when they announced they were shutting google answers down.
- massysett, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Wow, I wouldn't have done all that work for $10, even in 2002...
- markp93, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14every time you fill up, god kills a t. rex.
- JupiterLander, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11"How Many Tyrannosaurs In a Gallon of Gasoline?"
according to this article, none.
http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/systems/energy_capture/capture.html
"In spite of some popular misconceptions, oil doesn't come from dead dinosaurs. In fact, most scientists agree that oil comes from creatures the size of a pinhead. These one-celled creatures, known as diatoms, aren't really plants, but share one very important characteristic with them - they take light from the sun and convert it into energy."
I never heard of this until I googled, I wonder if it is true. - samstafford, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I don't think the author accounted for the Brontosaur propensity back then, unless you don't count dinosaurs that the tyrannosaur already ate....
- flameboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9eh?
do you have a source for that or anything? - jaydj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7So.... let's think about the fossil fuel needs of the future (70 million years after we kill each other).
Average human... 0.082 tons
6/.082 = 73.171 people per dinosaur
460/73.171 = 6.287 gallons per person (go us)
Let's use 2002 US car consumption as an estimate for future need because it's handy.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004727.html
167,730,000,000/6.287
That's 26.679 billion people a year to supply the US with fuel to drive. - Hegemony, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Apparently my car gets .054 tyrannosaurs to the mile... they're right, you get a better gut feel when you measure things in dinosaurs.
- Feanor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6nah, just once every 460 gallons.
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7It's C. That's why you failed the test.
- webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"The human cost of driving... more at 9"
"Soylent Green Sport"
Seriously, though, it might make people think a little more about energy efficiency if it was measured in this way. Just like programmers have to convert code to 'print out length' to give some idea of the size of a program. - gwinerreniwg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4jaydj - Morbid though it is, this an even better point than the article. THIS drives it home for me!
- tehJR, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I think he's talking about the fee the guy made to give the answer.
- jaydj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@mocheeze
That's 460 gallons per T-Rex and not 460 T-Rex's per gallon - PatrickFisher, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5well, in a round-about way, it kinda does...
- Tiak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This was included in his answer, though he summarized this as "plankton" because it as periferal to the question.
- webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Whoa... one truth and two falsities.
Oil is compressed, aged detritus; millions of years old animal matter. Generally, any land creature that died would have been eaten and not buried, so the oil fields we have were formed from layers upon layers of small dead sea-borne creatures covered by sediment. It's roughly the same process as coal formation, which is instead layers of compressed plant matter - peat is the early stages. In the Carboniferous period current coal fields were covered by swamps where plants died and were subsumed.
Oil is to coal as Bovril is to Marmite. It's an analogous process, even down to the relative consistencies.
Oil fields do not refill - oil companies simply find ways to get to oil they couldn't already, drill deeper, or use more efficient extraction techniques.
-edit
Posted before reading down. The next post (JupiterLander) has it. - tehJR, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4See, the thing is... it wasn't funny and it doesn't make sense.
- flameboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Someone else above said something similar a few posts up. If this is true, then its new information for me. Please provide a link?
- crashflow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2data from fueleconomy.gov
make/model // Average User MPT (miles per t-rex)
Toyota Prius 2007 // 21574
2007 Toyota Camry // 11776
2005 Toyota Sequoia 4WD // 7360
2006 Ford Expedition 4WD // 6992
2007 Chevrolet Suburban 1500 4WD // 6578
2WD // 7774
2006 BMW X3 // 9200
2006 Hummer H3 4WD // 7452 - Wavey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2My car gets 16,100 miles per Tyrannosaur! (MPT)
- crashflow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Soyland Petroluem
"for the people, by the people." - uncoolcentral, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Oh, I went ahead and asked my own google question while I still could. Why not?
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=786767 - webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You could convert it to steam power and burn dung. I've heard in pellet form it's quite potent.
Probably more trouble than it's worth, though. - webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It may be true, simply quashed by the oil companies who want to keep prices high and people panicking about oil running out. Where's the fun in oil being renewable energy?
- andyperfect, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Eh, doesn't matter, they're both getting dugg down anyway. ;)
- gwinerreniwg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Here's a link to an old Wired article interviewing one of the leading proponents of the "abiogenic" theory of petroleum generation Thomas Gold:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/gold.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=
Also a link to Wikipedia that references abiogenic petroleum theories:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
These theories are in decline and some models have been disproven by some studies and reviews.
After reading some of the mentioned studies, my own personal opinion is that both theories are likely true - There's probably both biogenic AND abiogenic processes at work in the world's petroleum reserves. - Tiak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2It would've been better if the inefficiencies were taken into an account so we could get an actual estimate rather than a carbon to carbon estimate.... But still, nice answer.
- jaydj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1oil... like global warming.... comes from BREATHING!!!! (TM Exxon Mobil)
- crashflow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1killed...
past tense - phunlee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That was very entertaining. I love Google Answers. Is it really shutting down?
- LuxFX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This doesn't take into account the amount of carbon that's lost during the creation of the fuel. This is wildly off track! Another study (a real study this time, not somebody with Google and a calculator) estimated 98 tons of plant matter per gallon.
http://www.digg.com/general_sciences/study_shows_98_tons_of_plant_matter_per_gallon - shazam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A thorough answer and brilliant question. However, both the question and response neglect to adequately address the forest for the trees: that the T-Rex to Gasoline conversion requires boatloads of T-Rexes, and not just because T-Rexes aren't 100% carbon. The main reason is that the majority of fossils laid when the dinosaurs were around didn't end up becoming fossil fuels. Fossil fuels require a very specific confluence of different environmental, geological, and "pure luck-ical" forces in order to be able to form over vast churnings of time. Hence, there are many orders of magnitude more dinosaurs actually required to create the fossil fuels, then oil, then gasoline, than was presupposed by the commentators.
- webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'd never heard of that stuff; thank you. Makes a lot of sense when you consider extra-terrestrial bodies.
- MalaysianMafia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3now if only i could get my jeep to run on unleaded animal by-products
- fershizzle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1thanks again Google!!!! now, if i ever need to know that (which i seriously doubt) ill know!
- osubuku, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Most organisms on the jurassic period were actually micro organisms and fauna, so no one is driving on dinosaurs remains...
http://www.dinosaurhome.com/forums/func,view/catid ... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1how.. disgusting.
time for renewables (and fusion 'to harness the power of the sun' and blahblah) - pevail, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2By the way guys,oil is formed deep below ground,close to the mantle,in a process that does not require any dinos.The correct answer is zero dinos.
Schools and universities have lied to you-the process is called ABIOTIC OIL. - jaydj, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@webcrumb
Great googly moogly!!!! Oil comes from the bodies of E.T.? How many E.T.s in my tank?
Elliot..... ouch.... - webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1"most scientists agree"
Others insist oil is simply the Earth's pimple grease. - crilen007, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3It was a joke you useless idiots.
- danobrien23, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1this is really a simple math question if you take into consideration that everything in the world is made of carbon i.e. when scientists created artificial diamonds by applying massive amounts of atomic mass per square inch to peanut butter.......it's math, it's carbon, BFD
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Ergh. Reverse the first instance of T-Rexes and Gallons in my previous post.
-
Show 51 - 57 of 57 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is