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..."

Comments

this reminds of my undergraduate days...

[fireduck]

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...

You need a model for that?

[YouHaveSnail]

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?

Plausible, but...

[mind21_98]

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.

Re:Possible Naval Defensive Weapon?

[NarcolepticTerrorPoo]

Already done. Modern torpedo's work in a similar fashion. They explode underneath a ship creating a bubble of gas. While the bow and stern are still boyant the center of the ship is not so the ship breaks in two under the stress.

Methyl-Hydrate

[Kevin Burtch]

"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!)