What you need to know:
There is frozen methane below the ocean floor. A lot of it. We’re talking, like, secret laboratory run by an evil genius type amount. Now, real quick, let me explain what a hydrate is in case you don’t know. Hydrates belong to a group called clathrates, which are molecules that create a crystal-like cage structure around another molecule. If the cage-forming molecule is water, then it’s a hydrate. If it’s gas, then it’s a gas hydrates. So, these are methane hydrates.
Starting at about 500 meters deep in the ocean, these methane hydrates begin to form under the ocean floor. When harvested, methane hydrates look like ice covered in oil.
In the deepest parts of the ocean there is no methane because methane is not plentiful enough due to the lack of organic matter (dead algae, animals, excrement, etc.) at those depths. Most of the hydrates are broken down by other organisms on their way down; therefore, methane hydrates mainly occur on the continental slopes or areas where the continental plates meet the deep-sea regions.
What happens when the frozen methane melts:
When methane hydrates are “released” from the ocean floor, one of two things usually happens: anaerobic oxidation by algae and archaea on the ocean floor or aerobic oxidation by bacteria in the water column. Most of the methane is usually dissolved in the water by these two processes, but some end up as bubbles instead. Additionally, a small amount does end up going into the atmosphere, but that’s not what we care about.
For those of you chemistry buffs, you’re probably thinking, “But methane is less dense than water, so what happens when that mix reaches the surface?” Well, let’s hypothesize.
Let’s say we’ve got two people in a fishing boat. Now, they just caught a bunch of fish, and they’re about to go home from their deep-sea fishing trip. Well, they go over an area of methane hydrates, and there is some melted methane on the surface (but they don’t see it, because it’s not that noticeable when mixed with water). They sail over it…
All boats and ships are designed to float on water. WATER. But water has a different density than a mix of water and methane. Ships aren’t designed to float through that mixture. So…they sink.
It’s not an immediate fall to the bottom of the ocean, but it happens pretty quickly. Usually, there is some methane below the surface as well as on the surface (like a straight line down to where it was released, depending on ocean currents). Assuming the boat in our example is an average deep sea fishing boat, our passengers have probably survived the sinking. But imagine if this happened to, let’s say, a cruise ship. There are usually thousands of passengers on these vessels, many of the below deck. What happens to them? The same thing that happened to the second- and third-class people on the Titanic. They drown.
The cool part:
This science was pretty mind-blowing to me when I learned about it, but the part you guys are probably here to satisfy your curiosity about is the Bermuda Triangle part.
Yes, this is a theory for the missing ships in the Bermuda. The Bermuda Triangle is a prime location for methane hydrates to form due to its placement near the equator and nearby shorelines, so it is theorized that there are large deposits under that part of the ocean floor. The more deposits, the more there are that will break off, and the more dangerous the area would be for passing ships.
So there you go! Now you can develop your own conspiracy theories about the Titanic actually sinking because of methane (and the Illuminati).
