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METHANE
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A colorless odorless gas used as a fuel
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("methane" is a kind of...):
gas (a fluid in the gaseous state having neither independent shape nor volume and being able to expand indefinitely)
alkane; alkane series; methane series; paraffin; paraffin series (a series of non-aromatic saturated hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH(2n+2))
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "methane"):
marsh gas (methane gas produced when vegetation decomposes in water)
Holonyms ("methane" is a substance of...):
gas; natural gas (a fossil fuel in the gaseous state; used for cooking and heating homes)
Context examples:
They found that if phosphine were produced at relatively small amounts equivalent to the amount of methane produced on Earth today, it would produce a signal in the atmosphere that would be clear enough to be detected by an advanced observatory such as the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, if that planet were within 5 parsecs, or about 16 light years from Earth—a sphere of space that covers a multitude of stars, likely hosting rocky planets.
(Poisonous Earthly Molecule May Be Sign of Extraterrestrial Life, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
HL-60/MX2 cells are cross-resistant to etoposide, teniposide, bisantrene, dactinomycin, 4'-(9-acridinylamino)methane- sulfon-m-anisidide, and the anthracyclines daunorubicin and doxorubicin but retain sensitivity to the Vinca alkaloids vincristine and vinblastine, melphalan, mitomycin C and cisplatin.
(HL-60/MX2, NCI Thesaurus)
Scientists have long believed that the moon has gone through epochs of cooling and warming, as methane is depleted by solar-driven chemistry and then resupplied.
(New Models Suggest Titan Lakes Are Explosion Craters, NASA)
Small shallow lakes dominate the world’s freshwater area, and the sediments within them already produce at least one-quarter of all carbon-dioxide, and more than two-thirds of all methane that come from lakes.
(Climate change could double greenhouse gas emissions from freshwater ecosystems, University of Cambridge)
In addition, the team used data from Cassini's visible and infrared instruments, which were able to capture some of Titan's larger geologic features through the methane haze.
(The First Global Geologic Map of Titan Completed, NASA)
An interdisciplinary team of researchers has concluded that bacteria in a lake 800 meters (2,600 feet) beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may digest methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, preventing its release into the atmosphere.
(Methane-eating bacteria in lake deep beneath Antarctic ice sheet may reduce greenhouse gas emissions, National Science Foundation)
Compositional data from the New Horizons spacecraft, shown in the right inset, indicate that the plateau uplands south of Piri Rupes are rich in methane ice (shown in false color as purple).
(What’s Eating at Pluto?, NASA)
The bright clouds form when the flow of ambient air is perturbed and diverted upward over the dark vortex, causing gases to freeze into methane ice crystals.
(Hubble Reveals Dynamic Atmospheres of Uranus, Neptune, NASA)
Most existing models that lay out the origin of Titan's lakes show liquid methane dissolving the moon's bedrock of ice and solid organic compounds, carving reservoirs that fill with the liquid.
(New Models Suggest Titan Lakes Are Explosion Craters, NASA)
"The Cassini mission revealed that Titan is a geologically active world, where hydrocarbons like methane and ethane take the role that water has on Earth," Williams said.
(The First Global Geologic Map of Titan Completed, NASA)
