Fuel from methane hydrate

Popular Mechanics:

...

Carved from its surroundings, a chunk of methane hydrate looks like a hard-packed snowball--white, cold and solid. At room temperature, the resemblance fades as fast as snow itself, hissing and popping as it dissolves. Light a match and the difference is even starker: It burns. Studying this unstable substance is hardly easy. Even so, the team aboard the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program's (IODP) JOIDES Resolution is part of an international community determined to understand its many paradoxes.

"Thirty years ago, hydrates were a novelty," says Miriam Kastner, a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a geochemist on the IODP expedition last fall. "We didn't realize their significance, and no one calculated how much there could be." Then someone began to do the math. Methane bound in hydrates could provide the world with an astounding amount of natural gas--if it could be safely extracted. If released inadvertently, it could cause untold damage: hastening global warming and kick-starting tsunamis by causing seafloor slumping.

...


On the other hand, sea floor slumping could help displace sea level heights casued by melting ice.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more

Apple's huge investment in US including Texas facility

Blaze: Apple announced a $500 billion commitment to infrastructure in the United States over four years, its largest commitment to domestic spending to date. Apple said it will expand teams and facilities in Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, and Washington as part of its new spending. With a new facility in Houston, Texas, Apple will reportedly double its investment in advanced manufacturing along with increasing investments in AI and silicon engineering. The company said in a press release that the Houston facility will produce servers to support Apple Intelligence, the "personal intelligence system that helps users write, express themselves, and get things done." ... The Texas facility will be for advanced technologies.   Texas has become a place that is very supportive of the tech industries.  Austin and Houston have seen much of the tech growth in the state.  Texas universities have been active in the AI field.
Read more