Methane hydrate crystals and such, was Re: Dinosaurs....

From: Michael M. Butler (butler@comp-lib.org)
Date: Fri Aug 11 2000 - 02:18:48 MDT


Methane hydrates were a complete surprise to me! I did a search on
   methane crystal ocean
with google and got a slew of cool websites, including
http://www.ocean.washington.edu/people/grads/vbhat/ocean450/workshop/g3_prog.html

Thanks, Phil!

MMB
 
> The methane crytals really are there, in vast abundance, but were only
> fairly recently identified as such, because it's hard to get them to the
> surface intact. There has been a lot of speculation since their discovery
> that they might serve as a useful energy supply in the near future,
> comparable in total ergs to natural gas, but there is also the worry that
> the layers might not be all that stable...

Whew. Isn't there a story about some methane event (not sure if it's
methane hydrates or not)
with some lake, where evidence suggests that a sudden burp did seriously
bad things to the local ecology (a mass-die-off, IIRC)?

Hmm, better fire up google again...



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