Sentences with phrase «formed by methane»
Nor do we adequately understand the relative contributions of microbes (i.e., biogenic methanogenesis), fossil sources, and the dissociation of gas hydrates (an ice - like substance formed by methane and water under pressure).
https://www.searcharcticscience.org/ Not exact matches
It is entirely possible that a random triggering event or series of events (lightning or some form of electricity charging a primordial soup of methane, ammonia, etc.; bombardment by cosmic radiation and other hypothetically random occurrences) was the occasion through which a whole new dimension, that of the biosphere, flooded onto the terrestrial scene.
Before the methane storage project was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in October 2014, hundreds of citizens tried every possible legal means to prevent the expansion of fracked gas storage at Seneca Lake, a source of drinking water for 100,000 people and to object to a form of industrialization that places us in harm's way.
The Methods: Photochemical modeling by a Caltech team indicates that ethane, a hydrocarbon detected on Titan by both of the Voyager spacecraft and the European Infrared Space Observatory, is created when solar ultraviolet light breaks down methane, a minor component of Titan's nitrogen - rich atmosphere, into a stew of organic molecules that form a dense orange - brown smog.
Most carbon emissions linked to human activity are in the form of carbon dioxide gas (CO2), but other forms of carbon include the methane gas (CH4) and the particles generated by such fires — the tiny bits of soot, called black carbon, and motes of associated substances known as brown carbon.
Because they form by leakage of methane into seawater it implies that something at that time caused a large release of methane into the ocean.
Chemical analyses revealed that this was a carbonate rock formed by the oxidation of methane, and the spaghetti texture was formed by fossil tube worms.
Scientists can determine ancient atmospheric concentrations by measuring CO2 and methane levels in tiny air bubbles trapped in such ice, formed when the ice fell to the earth as snow.
Natural methane hydrates were first discovered by Russian scientists in the late 1960s in Siberian permafrost — where the ground is so cold that hydrates can form at shallower depths and at lower pressures than under the sea — and then, in the 1970s, at the bottom of the Black Sea.
Ozone, the triplet form of oxygen, indicates that life - giving oxygen is also in abundance, and methane, a complex hydrocarbon, is a by - product of life processes.
«It is true that they do warm climate by strong methane emissions when they first form, but on a longer - term scale, they switch to become climate coolers because they ultimately soak up more carbon from the atmosphere than they ever release.»
However, Sagan and Christopher Chyba believe organic compounds, formed at high altitudes by the action of solar ultraviolet radiation on methane and ammonia can provide an ultraviolet «shield» to protect the methane and ammonia in the lower atmosphere.
For example, it might be converted decentrally with the carbon dioxide produced by the about 800,000 biogas facilities and stored in the form of methane.
Now a research team led by scientists at MIT and including colleagues from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Toronto, and elsewhere has developed an instrument that can rapidly and precisely analyze samples of environmental methane to determine how the gas was formed.
The researchers applied this new interpretation to methane formed by microbes in the lab, and found good agreement between the isotopes detected and the rates at which the gas formed.
The researchers estimate that cutting those 14 together could avoid between 700,000 and 4.7 million premature deaths (largely from smoky, unhealthy air) and increase crop yields by between 30 million and 135 million metric tons (due to concomitant reductions in ground - level ozone, otherwise known as smog, which forms from fugitive methane and blights crops in Brazil, China, India, the U.S. and elsewhere).
When ruminants digest their feed, methane is formed as a natural by - product of the microbial process in the rumen, and since methane is a 25 times more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, there is a need to devise methods to reduce such emissions from cattle.
(Methane forms as a by - product of anaerobic bacterial decomposition of organic matter in the soil and reaches the atmosphere through the roots and stems of the rice plants.)
However, many of the sources along the continental slope lie at cold depths in which ices have formed at high pressures within sea - floor sediments, which once trapped methane produced by microbes living there.
Once formed by either serpentinization or microbes, methane could be stored as a stable clathrate hydrate — a chemical structure that traps methane molecules like animals in a cage — for later release to the atmosphere, perhaps by gradual outgassing through cracks and fissures or by episodic bursts triggered by volcanism.
Lower in the atmosphere, oxygen atoms and hydroxyl radicals (OH), which form when water molecules are broken apart by ultraviolet photons, oxidize methane.
In the above citied letter to Nature the authors concluded out of their experiments: «Here we demonstrate using stable carbon isotopes that methane is readily formed in situ in terrestrial plants under oxic conditions by a hitherto unrecognized process.»
On December 16, NASA announced another potential whiff of Martian life in the form of methane sniffed by the rover Curiosity.
Methane hydrates are formed by bonding with water to make an ice - like substance in certain temperature / pressure conditions that can be found at shallow water depths in
On the dwarf planet, the reddish color is likely caused by tholins, which are formed when cosmic rays and solar ultraviolet light interact with methane in Pluto's atmosphere and on its surface.
The findings were headed by Bruce Macintosh, a professor of physics at Stanford University, and show the new planet, 51 Eridani b, is one million times fainter than its parent star and shows the strongest methane signature ever detected on an alien planet, which should yield additional clues as to how the planet formed.
Scientists can hunt for extraterrestrial cellular life forms, such as bacteria or more complex life, by looking for certain chemicals on a planet or in its atmosphere, but virions do not create by - products like methane or oxygen.
• Significantly, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, ESAS, has up to 1000 Gt of methane reserves, and it is highly believable that 1 % of this (or up to 10 Gt) is in the form of free gas trapped underneath the currently degrading subsea permafrost cap, which could be released within the next few decades by a combination of increasing Arctic Ocean water temperatures, increased storm activity, and possible increases in seismic activity.
Methane production is accelerated even more in areas dominated by sedges, grasslike plants that exude more easily altered forms of dissolved organic carbon from their roots.
Because the carbon that stimulates methane production is primarily dissolved organic carbon carried downward through the peat by rainwater rather than the solid - phase carbon that forms peat, this change in transport depth doubled the peak production zones for methane.
Finally, they tracked radiocarbon, which is also carried downward by precipitation, as a representative of young, easily altered, and mobile forms of carbon that stimulate methane production.
Unlike biomethane produced by anaerobic digestion, Bio-SNG is formed by the conversion of thermally - derived syngas — i.e., via the gasification of biomass waste — into methane.
«When methane makes its way into the upper atmosphere, it is oxidized by a complex series of reactions to form water vapor,» Russell added.
Our significant methane reduction achievement on the Norwegian Continental Shelf will form the basis for our contribution to this joint effort by partners from industry, government and civil society.
Fortunately, as depicted in Figure 2 (orange «thermal down surface» arrow), some of this energy does stay in the atmosphere, where it is sent back toward Earth by clouds, released by clouds as they condense to form rain or snow, or absorbed by atmospheric gases composed of three or more atoms, such as water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), and methane (CH4).
«As methane has been permanently originating in the seabed since it was formed, these deposits are huge and emissions of this ready - to - go methane to the water column only depend on occurence of migration pathways (provided or not provided by permafrost),» she said.
Unlike other terrestrial and marine sources, which gradually release methane as it forms, the shelf is emitting methane that has accumulated in seabed deposits for hundreds of thousands of years and until now was restricted by permafrost, says Shakhova.
Methane hydrates are believed to form by migration of gas from deep along geological faults, followed by precipitation or crystallization, on contact of the rising gas stream with cold sea water.
Around half of our grid - based electricity could be supplied by means of a few very large power systems burning methane, either in the form of natural gas or the effluvium from underground coal gasification [the only way to employ coal cleanly, he argues], and burying the carbon dioxide they produce.
Converting Hydrogen to Methane I first became of aware of the Sabatier reaction form reading a book «The Case For Mars» by Robert Zubrin.
One consideration might be the fact that some / much of the exiting methane may be forming clathrates as it hits the cold water as demonstrated by the [foolishly unanticipated?]
Simply speaking, volcanoes helped form the atmosphere while living organisms have helped shape the atmosphere to their liking in two ways: firstly by warming the planet to a liveable temperature by producing methane and carbon dioxide during the process of decay of dead matter, and secondly by creating oxygen through the process of photosynthesis by our green friends in the plant kingdom.