Re: Re: Can we mine gold and oil from other planets?

It probably is possible for us to economically exhaust certain resources, that is, the remaining amounts will become so expensive that nearly everyone will stop using them. I think it is much more likely that alternatives will be found before this stage is reached for most substances, or industrialised society will break down and the demand will vanish.

Mining on other planets is theoretically possible, it has been proved that we can deliver complex robots or humans to the surface of the Moon, Mars, and a moon of Saturn, and if the resources are there it should be possible to discover and mine them. Most of the resources you mention are only useful in very large quantities and it is difficult to see how they could be carried back to Earth without resorting to science fiction ideas.

As regards gold and other very heavy metals, their relative atomic mass does influence their dispersal between the planets, but even on a planet with, say, ten times as much gold in its makeup as Earth, it would still be an extremely rare substance and would require an immense amount of prospecting and extraction, as it does on Earth.

Carbon seems to be an abundant element throughout the solar system, but your question as to whether organic life is necessary for the formation of oil is an interesting one. We will never be short of carbon on Earth, it is just that we are converting it from a highly reduced form to an oxidised form, and it makes more sense to find new energy sources on Earth to replace the burning of carbon or permit synthesis of organic raw materials.

It seems that on Titan, the moon of Saturn under investigation by the astoundingly successful Cassini-Huygens mission, hydrocarbons are extremely abundant on the surface, with probable methane lakes and rivers, as well as other more complex molecules. Whether you can find oil there depends on what you call "oil." What comes out of the ground in Abu Dhabi is a complex mixture of heavy and light hydrocarbons, including molecules such as terpanes and hopanes which are derived from bacterial membranes and suggest that the oil must be the result of living systems.

Bacteria which can live on inorganic molecules do exist underground on Earth, and in other seemingly hostile environments such as hot volcanic springs. The exciting thing about this is that the undergound environments of the Earth and other rocky planets and moons are probably very similar---so if here---then why not elsewhere ? Also, remember that underground living things are protected from radiation and the variable chemistry of the surface. However, at this point, we have no reason to expect that there are bacteria on Titan or any other body in the solar system, so it seems unlikely that there would be oil elsewhere in the solar system.

Interesting questions, answered most succinctly by confirming that the other rocky planets in the solar system seem to be made of the same substances as the Earth. Transport of millions of tons of materials between planets is currently impossible, and there is no reason to assume that it ever will be possible.