Sentences with phrase «abiotic methane»

Researchers from the Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate (CAGE) at the Arctic University of Norway have discovered a growing Arctic abiotic methane - and methane hydrate — charged sediment drift on oceanic crust in the deep Fram Strait of the Arctic Ocean.

«We show that methane mixing ratios greater than 10 - 3 are potentially biogenic, whereas those exceeding 10 - 2 are likely biogenic due to the difficulty in maintaining large abiotic methane fluxes to support high methane levels in anoxic atmospheres,» the researchers wrote in their study.

«There could be considerable quantities of abiotic methane elsewhere in the world,» says Etiope.

Further calculations by Catling and his team conclude that no abiotic methane sources on a rocky planet could produce enough of the gas to counteract this process — whether it is volcanic outgassing from a planet's interior, chemical reactions in hydrothermal vents, even asteroid impacts.

Not exact matches

Work on methane is close to yielding a tool for distinguishing gas made by microbes from «abiotic» methane made from mineral reactions deep in Earth.

They were looking for a site with a venting process that produces a lot of hydrogen because of the potential it holds for the chemical, or abiotic, creation of organic molecules like methane — possible precursors to the prebiotic compounds from which life on Earth emerged.

Their research further reveals that another organic abiotic compound is formed during the vent circulation process at adjacent lower temperature, higher pH vents, but reaction rates are too slow to completely reduce the carbon all the way to methane.