Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels by Thomas Gold

I'm not sure how this slipped through the cracks - for me, at least...   Alexander Cockburn has mentioned Tommy Gold's work a number of times at Counterpunch.com, but I'm just reading this now.  It's a pretty compelling tale...

Gold says HydroCarbons were part of the primordial structure of the earth. They continue to seep upwards and are probably more plentiful than we currently imagine. They fueled chemical life deep in the oceans near deep methane vents -- including microbes as well as worms, clams and other chemo-synthetic creatures. Gold conjectures the entire "deep hot biosphere" contains as much mass of life (microbial, mostly) as the entire surface of the earth. In fact, he theorizes that surface life evolved _from_ that deep hot life, and not the other way around.  And if all this is true, there's a lot more life in the universe -- and even just our solar system -- hidden deep beneath the ice, gas, chemical oceans and rock on the surfaces of the known planets, than we've been prepared to acknowledge.

Update:

Cory Panshin sends along these articles about worms called Nematodes that live a mile down.