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dt030 t1_iuj67vb wrote

Would you be interested to know that the coal we dig out of the ground is compressed wood but it was from before bacteria knew how to decompose wood. So the wood just piled high on top of each other and compressed into coal (it did not rot).

Alcohol kills bacteria.

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OrneryGringo OP t1_iuj80w4 wrote

This comment only made me that more interessted in to know how bacteria did not "knew how to decompose wood". Is this like a evolution theory kind of story?

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dt030 t1_iuj88ya wrote

> But when those trees died, the bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that today would have chewed the dead wood into smaller and smaller bits were missing, or as Ward and Kirschvink put it, they “were not yet present.”

> Where Are They? Bacteria existed, of course, but microbes that could ingest lignin and cellulose—the key wood-eaters—had yet to evolve. It’s a curious mismatch. Food to eat but no eaters to eat it. And so enormous loads of wood stayed whole. “Trees would fall and not decompose back,” write Ward and Kirschvink.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/the-fantastically-strange-origin-of-most-coal-on-earth

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fyhjik98 t1_iuk6dtq wrote

Perhaps we are in the same age regarding plastic

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OrneryGringo OP t1_iuj8rt6 wrote

Does this mean, that with the bacteria today, the ground isn't able to "make" coal any more?

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dt030 t1_iuj9hu3 wrote

It certainly wouldn’t form the same way to the same level as it did in that period.

I’m not sure if there is none being formed or whether, meteor, nuclear winter, biblical flood could result in the formation of new layers of coal.

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SomeDumbGamer t1_iujshyg wrote

I think it could still form in places like peat bogs or salt marshes that have a lot of organic matter but little oxygen.

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