Fossil fuels are a number of substances and gases which, based on decomposed remains of plants and animals, are generated in some layers of the soil, serving as a type of energy nonrenewable. They are biomass that went through millions of years of transformation, a fact that makes them an object full of energy content. Its mass exploitation came with the Industrial Revolution, due to the urgent need for chemicals that had the necessary properties to keep a machine running. Currently, they are the most widely used compounds, as they are present both in everyday life and in business.
There are four types of fossil fuels: oil, natural gas, coal, and liquefied petroleum gas. There are various theories regarding how they arose, some intellectuals defend the one that dictates, all these compounds arose due to chemical causes, while others define their origin as a combination of chemical and biological causes. The latter is the most supported version. This argues that the remains of living beings that were found on the ground were buried by large layers of sediment, the product of floods that brought considerable amounts of mud; once under all this pressure, the decomposition turned those residues into viscous substances, hidden under lakes, seas and, even, pieces of land.
The ancients used to allocate these products to activities similar to those of today. The Egyptians preserved their mummies with oil and the Romans used it to light their streets. Likewise, it wasn't until powerful extraction machines and careful preservation techniques were designed that gas kicked in. Coal, from time immemorial, was present in the life of the population; even so, its use reached its maximum splendor at the end of the 18th century, due to the appearance of steam engines. Liquefied petroleum gas is much more widely used today for heating and motorized vehicles.
In recent decades, various movements have been initiated that promote the creation of new energy sources, which extinguish the use of fossil fuels, since these substances, because they are not renewable, will at some point end. If it does happen, millions of years would have to pass for humanity to find some natural fuel again.
