Pakistan quake island off Gwadar 'emits flammable gas'
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
> Though they couldn't smell methane, they did put a match to the fissures from where the gas was oozing, and set it on fire.
> "We put the fire out in the end, but it was quite a hassle. Not even the water could kill it, unless one poured buckets over it."
Yes, this is what I always do when I encounter dead fish and an unknown source of hissing gas: light it with a match.
"Move fast and break things!"
You would be a fool to try the match trick in your apartment, but on an island? we just don't have that much experience of the earth blowing up around us.
then again the group of people who are first onto a volcanic island that popped out of the sea are a pretty self selecting bunch of foolhardy idiots :-)
From the 1974 movie, Flesh Gordon.
[after stepping off the space ship and taking a deep breath]
Dr. Flexi Jerkoff: Good, there's oxygen on this planet.
Makes me think of Beavis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTkEN_wB2A4
What I'd like to see is that the locals could advantage of it and setup a natural gas mining operation, because they may have found a large pocket of it.
You can't smell methane - it's an odorless gas. The methane you use for cooking ("natural gas") has an odor added to it artificially for safety.
As for what they smelled, maybe they are other gasses as well considering what those rocks and earth went through (sulfur?)
Also, I really wish HN mods would not reflexively rewrite headlines. The news here was the remarkably sudden appearance of a decent-sized island, the fact that it emits flammable gas is distinctly beside the point.
Another real estate cliché proven wrong ;-)
IIRC, Pakistan is demographically a very young country, with overall low education levels and a lot of challenges. I will voice my hope that this oddity somehow brings them more help with the aftermath of the quake than they might otherwise be likely to get.
Have a great evening/day/whatever.
I can't say its making a lot of sense. what is the inflammable gas? not methane presumably. I guess it's some form of honeycombed rock with lots of little pockets, presumably lava that has rolled over seabed, so not really "attached". I mean how does it all work?
(and that's the driver for all science in a nutshell)
When I tried to replay the video, I only got commercials...
Methane coming up from the earth is not uncommon. Considering that 10,000s or 100,000s or more years worth of decayed plants and animals were buried under the earth. Strange that it is coming to the surface of a brand new island.