Cosmic Contributions to the Deposition of Petroleum Source Rocks: Review and Analysis

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 m illion years, and during sea level high stands and maxima of global magmatism with a period of 300 m illion years. The 150 m illion year periodicity appears to be related to the path of the solar system through the spiral arms of the Milky Way and the 300 m illion 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.