Most people must have heard about the ‘Bermuda Triangle’. It is also known as ‘Devil’s Triangle ‘ or ‘Death Triangle’. It has become famous because many ships and aeroplanes along with passengers have been mysteriously vanished in this area. The area is in the shape of a triangle which has its vertices at Miami in Florida, San Juan in Puerto Rico and the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda. The area is one of the most heavily-sailed shipping lanes in the world, with ships crossing through it daily for ports in the Americas and Europe, as well as the Caribbean Islands. Along with cruise ships, many people go back and forth between Florida and the islands with their boats or small ships for pleasure trips. It is also a heavily -flown route for commercial and private aircrafts heading towards Florida, the Caribbean Islands and South America.

Christopher Columbus was the first person to document something strange in this Triangle, reporting that he and his crew observed ‘strange dancing lights on the horizon’ (flames in the sky) and at another point he wrote in his log book about bizarre compass bearings in the area. In the past, many ships have been recorded sunk and disappeared without trace along with the crew and the passengers in this area starting from 1840. Many aircrafts flying above this area have also been disappeared. Astonishingly, before disappearance, there was no message from the ships or aircrafts which gives the impression that the disappearance occurred suddenly and without any warning. The most famous disappearance is the Flight 19 of USA. Five numbers of TBM Avenger aircrafts went missing on December 5, 1945 while flying over the Atlantic within the Triangle area. Another aircraft which went to search the missing aircrafts also disappeared. In total, 27 soldiers disappeared in this incident.

Many explanations were given for the disappearance of ships and aircrafts. Some of these are hurricanes, strong Gulf Stream, magnetic imbalance, large waves, human error, piracy and deliberate acts of destruction. But no single cause could explain satisfactorily for all the disappearances and incidents. Even people started talking about super human things like men from outer space, past civilization of Atlantis or some time warp phenomena. Many talked about seeing UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) in this area.

No explanation satisfied the scientists. After many studies and research, they found out in the last decade of the last century the culprit of the Bermuda Triangle. It is ‘Methane Hydrate’.

WHAT IS METHANE HYDRATE ?

Methane hydrate is a compound formed combining water and methane gas under low temperature and high pressure. It is crystalline combination of water and methane hydrate in which methane molecules are trapped inside water molecules. It is frozen lattice like substance which looks remarkably like ice, but burns if it meets a lit match. It can be called a solid form of water and is popularly known as methane ice. It is stable at low temperature and high pressure. It is technically known as methane clathrate. It was discovered only a few decades ago and little research has been done on it till recently.

At higher pressure methane hydrate remains stable at temperatures up to 18 degree C. Its composition is 1 mole of methane for every 5.75 moles of water. Its density is around 0.9 g/cm3. One cubic meter of methane hydrate would therefore release, on average, 164 cubic meter of methane gas.

OCCURRENCE:- Originally it was thought  to occur only in the outer regions of the solar system where temperature is low and water ice is common. But extreme large deposits of methane hydrate were discovered under sediments on the ocean floors of the Earth. These deposits are located within a mid-depth zone around 300-500 m thick in the sediments where the bottom water temperature is around 2 degree C.

            Some deposits of methane hydrate have been found in polar continental sedimentary rocks at less than 800 metres depth in Siberia and Alaska. Here temperature is less than 0 degree C.

FUTURE SOURCE OF ENERGY

The whole world is now going under energy crisis. Energy demand is increasing day-by-day and resources are limited. After discovery of methane hydrate, it is being believed to be the future source of energy for the world. According to a study carried out by United States Geological Studies (USGS), extraction of methane from hydrates can provide an enormous energy. A pair of relatively small areas show intense concentration of methane  hydrates. USGS scientists estimate that these areas contain more than 1300 trillion cubic feet of methane gas, an amount representing more than 70 times the 1989 gas consumption of the USA. By some estimates, the energy locked up in methane hydrate deposits is more than twice the global reserves of all conventional gas, oil and coal deposits combined. The total deposit of methane hydrate lies between 1×105 and 5×1015 m3 (1 quadrillion to 5 quadrillion).

It is not known how much is actually recoverable. Technology for extracting methane gas from the hydrate deposits in commercial quantities has not yet been developed. A research and development project in Japan is targeting commercial-scale technology by 2016. USA is also carrying out research in this regard.

METHANE HYDRATE AND GLOBAL WARMING:- Methane is a powerful green house gas. Like carbon dioxide gas, it is behind the global warming and climate change. The sudden release of large amount of methane from methane hydrate deposits has been hypothesized as a cause of past  and possible future climate change.

METHANE HYDRATE AND BERMUDA TRIANGLE MYSTERY:- Now we can come back to Bermuda Triangle mystery and the role of methane hydrate in it. Large amount of methane hydrate deposits have been detected in the ocean bed sediments in Bermuda Triangle  area. Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proved that  bubbles can sink a scale model of ship by decreasing the density of water. It has been hypothesized that periodic methane eruptions (sometimes called ‘mud volcanoes’) due to land slide in the ocean bed may produce regions of frothy water and decrease the density of water that are no longer capable of providing  adequate buoyancy for ships. If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to sink very rapidly and without any warning. The ship may get buried in the sediments of ocean bed or the wreckage may rapidly be dispersed by the strong Gulf Stream.

Airplanes may also be susceptible to any freak methane release. Methane has also the ability to cause a piston engine to stall when released into the atmosphere, even at an atmospheric concentration as low as 1 %.

CONCLUSION:- Research on the methane hydrate has been increased in the last few years. Japan is taking a lead on this. It has a few methane hydrate resources. In August of 2006, China announced plans to spend 100 million US dollars over the next 10 years to study methane hydrates.

As scientists around the world learn more about this material, some new concerns surface. For example, ocean-based oil-drilling operations sometimes encounter methane hydrate deposits. As a drill spins through the hydrate, the process can cause it to dissociate. The free gas may explode, causing the drilling crew to loss control of the well. Another concern is that unstable hydrate layers may give way beneath oil platforms or, on a large scale, even cause tsunamis. Researchers should study these aspects also.