Is Titan's Hydrocarbon-Rich Composition Evidence for Abiotic Oil Formation?

[OSalcido]

Doesn't the fact that Titan is full of hydrocarbons kinda prove the Abiotic oil theory?

 

[mgb_phys]

Not really - you put a couple of billion tons of hydrogen and carbon together under enourmous pressure you will form lots of stuff. Very different from rocky planets.
There is alcohol in intersteller clouds but it doesn't prove the 'beer is from space' theory!

 

[OSalcido]

Very different from rocky planets.

I don't understand this... is Titan not a rocky moon?

There is alcohol in intersteller clouds but it doesn't prove the 'beer is from space' theory!

Well this is just a strawman argument...

 

[mgb_phys]

I don't understand this... is Titan not a rocky moon?

I assumed the hydrocarbons had been formed in the gas giant and swept up by the moon it looks like they are formed by UV dissociations of methane in the thick atmosphere.
The atmopshere is presumably fairly similair to early Earth - although the oil deposits on Earth are much newer ( a few 100mya).

Well this is just a strawman argument...

It was a joke. Abiotic oil would either have to have formed in the oxidising atmopshere of the cretaceous or survived from the atmopshere of the early Earth and somehow managed to rise to the right depth to be trapped by cretaceous geology.

 

[OSalcido]

So Titan has an oxidising atmosphere?