fun with fuel

Here’s a concept for anyone who’s fed up with soaring gas prices: Abundant, stinky, flammable ice.

It’s a type of methane hydrate, and vast reserves of it may be buried beneath sediment covering ocean basins all over the world, including the San Miguel, San Nicolas and San Pedro basins off the Southern California coast.

The ice--which looks like dirty snow--reeks of rotten eggs. It’s primarily flammable methane from decayed organic matter trapped in cage-like structures formed by water molecules. That unusual molecular structure allows anyone to hold the ice while it burns.

Scientists estimate that the world’s marine methane-hydrate deposits are twice those of all other fossil fuels combined, and some hope that this buried undersea treasure might help fuel the planet’s cars, planes, trains and cities.

Let’s not sever ties with OPEC just yet. The ice is hard to bring up because some of it lies under half a mile of cold mud. And when you haul the ice up, it melts and the methane bubbles away.

So far, scientists haven’t found any other uses for this potential alternate fuel. But not for lack of trying. Pushing the boundaries of science, Thomas Naehr, a marine geologist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, sampled the ice on a Ritz cracker with Tabasco sauce. It didn’t taste like much, he concluded, though he felt a “tingling sensation� on his tongue.