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Shrouded in haze and mystery, GJ 1214b has finally begun to reveal its secrets.
Scientists uncover the mechanics behind Siberia's explosive craters as warming drives methane release.
Methane is a big problem for our climate. This satellite can now see it from above.
Hydrothermal vents are some of the most interesting geological phenomena on the planet.
The most infuriating thing about this is that methane leaks aren't all that hard to fix.
They do not do the
Why not turn a problem into an asset?
If countries deliver, it could make a big difference to the climate crisis.
Potent greenhouse gas is leaking from rock formations
We only found this out by accident.
Uncapped oil wells could be leaking millions of kilograms of methane into the atmosphere and surface water each year.
We don’t know exactly how deep because our radar couldn't pierce through all of it.
This is bad news. We could be reaching a 4 degrees warming by 2100.
Platforms emit twice as much methane than previously thought.
"Most of the methane emissions are anthropogenic, so we have more control," the authors say.
This is bad.
1% might sound small, but taken on a planetary level -- it's a whole lot.
It's not the best solution, but it could help.
Exciting times for Mars science.
These measures "failed to produce a detectable decrease or decline in methane emissions associated with coal production," the team writes.
This isn't the first time we've tried copying termites.
When glaciers fall to the dark side, methane happens.
An understudied phenomenon may double the amount of methane released into the atmosphere by the thawing Arctic permafrost.
The emissions total around 13 million metric tons.
The intriguing moon Titan just became even more interesting.
We don't want to say there's life on Mars... but there could be life on Mars.
Uh-oh.
Some of the craters are 50 meters deep.
A major blow for the Trump administration.
NASA's ever-resourceful Cassini probe found steep-sided canyons on Saturn's moon Titan.
Pluto really is crazy!
It's way older than divers thought.
The Environmental Defense Fund’s Oil and Gas program has released a new nation-wide report of the most common sites of methane leaks at oil and gas pads. Surprisingly, most of the leaks were traced back to faulty piping, vents or doors on gas tanks in newer, not older, wells.
Following a three-year-long trial in the rice of fields of China, scientists report a new genetically modified strain that promises to dramatically reduce the otherwise huge carbon footprint of rice farming. The new GMO crop emits only 1% of the methane - a highly potent greenhouse gas - that an unaltered rice paddies leaches out into the atmosphere. So far, the crop looks extremely advantageous but the unfavorable social climate against GMOs doesn't help at all, particularly in China where the public is very sensitive and no genetically modified rice variety has been allowed on its fields apart from this trial. China is the second largest producer of rice in the world.
Researchers from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have been trying to figure out how Titan's seas formed - more exactly, how the depressions in which the seas are formed.
A "massive methane hotspot" sounds pretty bad... and bad it is - much worse than previously thought. In 2014, NASA reported that the methane hotspot is responsible for producing the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane seen over the United States – more than triple the standard ground-based estimate. But the methane, a potent greenhouse gas, might have even more drastic consequences on the climate of our planet.
After an exhaustive analysis conducted over a year and a half, NASA's Curiosity Rover has finally confirmed the existence of methane on Mars, somewthing which indicates that life may have existed (or still exist) on Mars.
NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover has discovered a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical which may indicate that there actually was life on Mars – or still is. The rover detected this high concentration in the atmosphere, as well as in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory’s drill. Curiosity on the Red Planet Curiosity has […]
Princeton University researchers have uncovered a previously unknown and potentially substantial source of methane emissions: abandoned oil and gas wells. After analyzing wells from Pennsylvania, they found that a worrying amount of them leaked significant quantities of the greenhouse gas. A previous Stanford study estimated about 3 million abandoned wells in the United States alone, so if […]
Scientists have finally climbed to the bottom of one of Siberia’s mysterious holes, and they have come up with some interesting information – and some amazing pics. In case you’re not up to date, scientists started observing some mysterious craters in Siberia. The pseudoscience media had a field day – and so did conspiracy theorists. […]
A cloud of methane gas about the size of Delaware was detected over the Four Corners area of the American southwest years ago. But people didn’t take it seriously, because (believe it or not) – it was so big that they thought it was an instrument error. “We didn’t focus on it because we weren’t sure […]
Stanford researchers traced back methane leaks from contaminated drinking water in Pennsylvania and Texas to shale gas wells. However, they note that they did not find a link between the contamination and the technique used to drill for shale gas itself, called hydraulic fracturing or more commonly known as fracking. Instead, the researchers concluded that […]
A worrying report states that over 500 bubbling methane vents were found on the seafloor off the US east coast. The unexpected finding suggests that there are large volumes of the gas contained in a type of sludgy ice called methane hydrate and as global waters continue to heat up, the methane will be released in large […]
The "mysterious" craters in Siberia have actually been caused by methane seeping from the melting permafrost. No rockets, no meteorites, no aliens - sorry, just global warming at it again.
Hydraulic fracking has grown to unimaginable hights in the past few years, growing by some 20% a year, and reaching a total market cap of $37 billion today. Recent tumbling prices for natural-gas have slightly detered exploration, but North America at least, which accounted for 87 percent of the fracking market last year, shows no […]
The United States is spewing 50 percent more methane than the official federal government estimates, a new study concludes. The paper, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows that most of the emissions come from cows, refineries and drilling spew and occurs in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. This not […]
There’s been a lot of praise and finger pointing alike around the hydrogen economy, and whether or not fuel cells can be scaled to reasonable levels i.e. becoming actually useful. There are a lot of problems with fuel cells in terms of their economy. Fuel cells are some of the most efficient energy converters current […]
It’s been a while since we posted something about the Curiosity rover – now, Curiosity has reported that the Martian atmosphere lacks methane. This is a surprise to researchers because previous data seemed to indicate the contrary. The 4 wheel laboratory conducted extensive tests for traces of Martian methane, and the results were conclusive; the […]
Scientists have found hints that methane deposits, tucked away in seabed sediments, have began to breakdown from their frozen state. The shifting of the Gulf Stream from colder to warmer waters is to blame, the researchers note. While a significant greenhouse gas influx into the atmosphere might occur, the researchers conclude, based on their models and […]
A lot of the climate change models today are based under the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions weren’t that significant pre-1850, when the industrial age boom began. A new study from scientists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands found otherwise, and reported that human activity was responsible for plenty of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere […]
