Slashdot Mirror
Methane Bubbles Could Sink Ships
An anonymous reader writes "Joseph J Monaghan and David May, of Australia's Monash University, have proposed a novel theory for Bermuda-Triangle-like disappearance of ships at sea: They were swallowed in giant methane bubbles released by undersea vents. Monaghan & May point to sonar of a ship wreck that's sitting in the center of a known methane eruption site, and they've developed a mathematical model that predicts how an eruption could take down a ship. Hey, we ain't talkin' bovine flatulence here..."
This is not news. I've seen this theory on TLC or Discovery at least twice in the last couple of years.
Read about this when I went to highschool.. which should be.. 5-7 years ago
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
the idea presented by these researchers that the release of massive underwater methane deposits would result in a lowering of the density of seawater under a ship causeing it to sink reminds me of my undergraduate days.
As a civil engineering student, I visited a wastewater treatment plant. one of the unit processes involves bubbling massive amounts of air through the wastewater (to stimulate bacteria into eat the organic matter) in large open-air tanks. As a result of the aeration, the density of water is much lower than the density of the human body. Therefore, anyone falling into one of these aeration tanks would immediately sink to the bottom. My first thought (and that of many others I've spoken with) is that the aeration tanks are perfect places to murder / dispose of bodies in. You're guaranteed they'll drown; plus you've got the bacteria already there in a nice chomping mood. I have no idea how long this would take to completely dispose of a body (or at least down to bones), but it sure is an underutilized method...
The Bermuda Triangle episode is on every few months and they cover the methane angle.
Looks like it was first proposed in 1981.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Many people have known about this theory for years. So they calculated oh itll take... say 5 minutes for this ship and 10 for another... who cares, when they have video of a ship sinking then that should be on /.!
1. Giant undersea release of methane or any other gas bubbles upward.
2. Unfortunate ship finds itself directly above said bubbles, weighs more than water/gas mixture and is suddenly no longer boyant.
3. Ship literally falls into the sea.
But there are many questions, none of which the article seems to answer. If these enormous methan releases exist, why has nobody every seen one? (Well, because they only occur once in a while, and they happen out at sea, and anyone who might have seen one probably now sleeps with the fishes.) More to the point, now that we think they might happen, how can we get a look at one? We apparently know where there are large methane deposits, so can we put a buoy with a camera nearby? Can we find evidence of a release on satellite photos? Can we hear them with underwater microphones? Or with seismographs? Are ships that might have been sunk by this sort of thing equipped with "black boxes" that would help us know how and why they sank?
To me Bermuda-Triangle-like means John Edward's style BS from the 70s that's been fully debunked.
Moral of the story...
The divers in the Bermuda Triangle need to stop eating so many beans before diving.
What would it take to adapt this as a weapon? Heck all you really need are lots of pressurized tanks with a few senors to determine if a ship was expected to pass over. It said it sinks the ship by reducing the density of the water. Wouldn't having tanks of pressurized air which was released as bubbles or may be a plant whose sole purpose was to make lots of little bubbles to sink ships. Would it work? What kind of environmental effects would happen?
So you're saying that deep under the sea, in the Bermuda Triangle, lies hordes of mutant water-breathing, ship-sinking killer farting cows ?
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
I doubt it, but I have to ask. Since they mentioned the Bermuda Triangle; any possible linkage w/ planes flying through these methane-bubble infested waters? *shrug*
Si hoc legere scis nimum eruditionis habes sed iliud latine dici non potest.
Seriously, the methane angle has already been proposed a long time ago. And anytime you hear something fantasitical, you should at least consult the skepdic site to see what rational people are thinking. Here's the link for Bermuda Triangle accidents. Most skeptics think pirates are the real cause of disappearances.
GMD
watch this
Isn't methane gas less dense than water? If that's the case, wouldn't it simply float upward and have no effect on the ship? Just curious.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
discovered by Australian scientists
the Bermuda-Triangle, then maybe they should see if they can't find some of the ships that came up missing in that area.
1. If they find any, they may be able to determine what cause it to sink.
2. If they find any, they can prove that they didn't just disappear.
3. Even if they don't find any, maybe they can determine if there is a large deposite of methane in that area.
What the heck, it would give them something to do, and maybe lead to other research involving the ocean.
'And all the monkeys aren't in the zoo Every day you meet quite a few...'
Thank god there are no ships cruising around in my bathtub. They'd sink pretty soon when all those methane bubbles would hit them.
That's just want the cia-funded alien-descended atlantians WANT you to believe!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
2003 saw the first scientifically reported incidence of a whale flatulence. A picture and writeup can be found here. Warning: the picture caption is bound to induce fits of giggles in young children...or people like me who still find poop jokes funny.
The real mystery of the Bermuda Triangle is why it's a mystery at all. Modern record keeping shows there haven't been more lost ships then one should expect for an area that large (500,000 square miles) with as much traffic as it gets (which is a lot, though no figures for you today!)
It's just one of those weird cultural meme's that people shouldn't waste time trying to explain.
Perhaps he is innocent(of this form of treatment plant utilization) and didn't really think it through.
;-)
Or...
He HAS utilized a plant this way, has also utilized other disposal "methods", is speaking from experience, and he's trying to cover himself.
If the former, then he should be modded up as "interesting".
If the latter, then he should be modded up as "informative".
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
"The ice-like methane deposits can break off and become gaseous as they rise, creating bubbles at the surface."
Pretty pathetic that this "scientist" just rehashes a decades-old theory dealing with methyl-hydrate, without even calling it by name.
One cool thing about the program on Discovery that others have already mentioned, is that they show a chunk of the stuff that a guy pulled up from the bottom... he lit it while holding it in his hand!
Flaming snowballs are cool!
(literally!)
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Same here. And it was in a book that was a few decades old at the time.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Uhh.. Yeah, cuz it's written in the Necromonicon.. or something..
And the tobacco industry claims that smoking does not kill.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-
What would Yossarian do?
I, for one, welcome our new flatulent ship-eating overlords.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
bang
...Was that you?!?
toresbe
Any bubble of methane big enough to sink the ss minnow would probley sucked into the engine and at a 15% mix with atmosphere would ignite. If our bubble was big enough the resulting shock wave would kill the crew (can you say fuel/air bomb?) and probley damage it enough to sink the now crewless ship.
boboq
We already knew that loose lips sunk ships. Now it seems that hips are a possibility also.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Navy has underwater sound surveillance networks that have been in place for decades. I believe they have a program for making declassified data available to scientists.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
They can sink careers too. I farted once during a job interview in a poorly ventellated room.
Table-ized A.I.
Designers and workers on big ocean oil rigs have known and feared methane deposits for many, many years. Applying the same arguments to ships is not exactly new or innovative.
(As you might imagine, hitting a patch of methane while drilling for oil can be hazard to the rig's -- and the workers' -- health. And it's not an uncommon occurrence.)
what about all of the airplane downings in the same area? What's that you say? It was only a movie? Oh
Both guys work in areas associated with modeling and fluid dynamics so you can see that they might have been associated with it but if it was good enough to get into the news you'd think they would have some reference to it on their sites or their schools sites.
If either one took a slug of combustible mixture into the cabin and someone had a cigarette, kiss the craft goodbye.
You're right, they don't. On the other hand, flight through clouds of toxic gas is not a hazard which affects many people. I'm not sure how fast methane would poison you anyway; if it would take longer to render the pilot(s) incapable of controlling the aircraft than it would take to glide out of the cloud, then it's survivable regardless.No idea what ignition would do. Most aircraft's flying speed is faster than the normal flame speed, so unless the cloud was well-mixed to form a combustible mixture throughout it might not do very much except burn at the edges (which one would rapidly glide away from).
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Answered my own question. This from the abstract to the article in Amer Jnl of Physics (it was referenced in the MSN article on the topic)
So the article is not so much about the discovery that methane might sink ships but about the conditions under which it can happen together with the mathmatics of the situation.
Its probably good math and advances the usefulness of smoothed particle hydrodynamics. We can say that bubbles sink ships but these guys are trying to find out how big the bubble has to be etc. Discovery channel probably put a hugh bubble in their tank so that the effect would be obvious.
Its a pity it got reported as a discovery and instantly attracts derision because its been around for 10 years as a theory.
Must have been a slow science news day Tuesday.
Playing in the bath tub with some platic ships, all I did was fart. That was enough turbulance to sink any ship.
So that's what happened to my rubber duckie!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!