I have a sneaking suspicion it's another one of those cognitive biases - get off a boat onto land and you feel safer. even if the boat will still be floating years after the land is.
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 :-)
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.
Naturally occurring natural gas typically contains impurities such as thiols, mercaptans, and hydrogen sulfide which are strongly smelling. These impurities are not always present though, and they tend to be removed during industrial processing, which is why additional odorants are added.
I am from Pakistan, and this damn island is all everyone is talking about. My facebook feed is flooded with people planning to go visit the island :P. Personally, i dont see what all the fuss is about. Might just be the rise of planet of the apes people :P
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.
From a different article about the island: When a devastating earthquake struck the remote Awaran district in Pakistan's Baluchistan province on Tuesday, it killed hundreds of people and left thousands homeless, as the government struggles to rescue those who need help.
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.
Actually, Pakistan has reasonable resources to handle this kind of situation. The devastating earth quake of 2005 precipitated the formation of National Disaster Management Authority. With army supporting operations, I am sure things will be handled well.
Hoping someone gets additional assistance is not the same thing as calling them incomptent. I used to have friends in Pakistan and I read a bit about the country in relation to the world economy etc. I drew some alarming conclusions about Pakistan and other countries with a similarly young demographic in terms of potential disproportionate impact on global stability and the like. Your implied objections to my well wishes aside, I still hope this oddity calls attention to Pakistan and brings them additional support.
could any seismologists / other geographers go into some more detail: pockets of inflammable gas are stored under 200m of seafloor, seismic activity heats them up and they rise the whole seabed to the ocean surface. and then drift down again?
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)
Methane hydrate. Basically an ice-like substance of methane trapped in water crystals. It can stay in that form when trapped under ocean sediments (there are vast amounts in the ocean), but when pressure is released and it's exposed to warmth, the methane can escape the water structure.
Babies are also conceived near fracking sites. I wonder if there is a connection ...
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.
> 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!"