The scuppers bog down and begin to swamp. Assuming that you had adequate insulation and were able to survive the temperature of the liquid water, you would still not be able to swim in it since liquid methane has a density of 0.5 that of water on Earth. I was too far upwind to save them. Gasp! Methane is non-toxic, but it is explosive. A fury, deep and abiding. A selection of space nerdery from your favorite ocean blog. At what point do humans, heavily augmented with hardware and software, stop being human? It must be because of fracking. And, at very high concentrations, it can cause death by asphyxiation (since there isn't enough oxygen to get to your lungs). There’s a salvage job out there, waiting for me. In the chart, the worst sample had 70 mg of methane per liter of drinking water. Snow isn’t the right word. A hybrid of Inuit and Celtic origins, the skin-on-frame craft trades wooden stays for infinitely-adaptable carbon nanotubes and heavy hides for continuously-repaired polymetallic sheets. Let's do a conservative estimate of 1500 sq ft. And we'll assume a 10-foot-tall ceiling. Is it? She glides across the methane waves, her micron-thin skin barely touching the surface. A standard human cannot carry enough buoyancy to survive a plunge into liquid methane. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Waves measured in centimeters that never break. (Perhaps Gasland Part II will correct the record.). Her grudges are measured in epochs. Titanic weeks. Like so many controversial topics, it is hard to get good information on fracking. How does art evolve in a future obsessed with technology? The slightest variation in surface tension can send the ship tumbling off axis. Wow, that's a lot of air. We recommend Feedly for RSS management. Ships of substance can glide across an angry swell, can punch through breakers that rise taller than the highest peaks of Titan. Here’s Why It’s Wrong. Even a vacuum suit will eventually fail. Trade Winds is as far from me as a coastal colony can be. Tear gassing fish, new NOAA chief, and Facebook’s flop – What’s Up With the Oceans this Week? But, most likely, the residents of the house will be perfectly fine. "Increased stray gas abundance in a subset of drinking water wells near Marcellus shale gas extraction." In honor of this new launch, my other novella, Prepared, an adventure in doomsday prepping, seasteading, and catastrophic sea level rise, is free to download all week long. Whatever advantage physics granted the craft is gone, lost in a feather light slick that floods the hull. What rights are retained when a person contains no human parts? PNAS June 24, 2013. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1221635110, (H/T: Special thanks to Rhett Allain and Hank Campbell for double-checking my calculations. To determine what percent is methane, all we do is divide: Now, one thing left out of the analysis is this: How much air inside the house is exchanged with the air outside on a daily basis? And, does methane escape more/less than other gases in the air? The methane in his tap water seeped there naturally by a process called methane migration. It's like Google Reader, except it still exists. At the end of a day, about 148 liters of methane has escaped into the house. I’ve been waiting weeks for this wind. The average new American home is 2,480 square feet. Scientifically dubious activist websites, such as Desmogblog, are already touting the study as a "damning" indictment against fracking. That's not very much at all, and it's far, far below levels that would be considered dangerous. There's Methane in Your Drinking Water. One of the main concerns is the presence of methane in drinking water. I love the way it stings my tongue and burns my lungs. What's the volume of the house? The authors sampled well water and plotted the amount of methane in the water (y-axis) as a function of the distance in kilometers (x-axis) from a gas well. I love the chill on my skin. I love the cold against my face. It ends in moments. The captain and crew knew, they knew as soon as the first wave rolled, but still they could do nothing. She was fast and graceful; her keel, long and aggressive. Titan’s winds are slow and stately. You cannot swim in liquid methane. That’s not to say that death is inevitable on the seas of Titan. The augmentations were expensive, but I have no regrets. Sharks, Squalene, and a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, Creating Healthy Working Cultures in Marine Science Education, Come to the geek side of #scicomm: Marine science education by Dungeons & Dragons, Egosystem management. Posted on March 21, 2016 by Andrew David Thaler. On Naming Boats, or why we love Boaty McBoatface. Read an excerpt from my latest novella, below: No. She was heavy. First, we need to know what percentage of the air in their house would contain methane. When they blow, they blow for days. The Earth may be angry, but Titan relentlessly unsympathetic. They marked every milestone of a textbook failure as they accepted their fate. ), 1500 sq ft x 10 ft = 15,000 cubic feet = 424,753 L, At the end of a single day, assuming the house is airtight, 0.035% of the air will be composed of methane. When the wind blows across Kraken Mare, it falls. They look up into the universe and see only stillness. Should this worry us? The gondola rises. But it wasn't. And, the average American family of four uses 400 gallons (1514 L) of water per day. Even if the nitrogen-laden atmosphere had enough oxygen to supply a standard human, their lungs would freeze on first breath. Anti-fracking scaremongering about methane in drinking water fails scrutiny from basic chemistry. No prop could gain enough purchase to propel such a craft through the methane sea. An exposure suit may save you from drowning, just long enough for the cold and the deep to kill you. Seconds if you’re lucky, minutes if you’re not. Besides, there's another big point to consider, and almost nobody ever does: What level of methane contamination is actually dangerous? But as I was only a chemistry minor, please don't blame them for my opinions or mistakes. On Titan, we simply call it the sea. Wind means a chance to sail clear across the Kraken. All the times gender bias has reared its ugly head. Most wells had methane levels that were far below the "action level" recommended by the US Department of the Interior. Methane is non-toxic, but it is explosive. Infamously (and dishonestly) portrayed in the "documentary" Gasland, a guy in Colorado lights his tap water on fire. Calliope surges forward. You cannot float in liquid methane. (See chart.) So What? On Earth, I once captained an old-fashioned sailing yacht with a hull formed of concrete and steel.
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