Main constituent of natural gas

Usage examples of methane.

A small amount of methane was always normally present in the atmosphere of Earth.

Much of the methane released into the atmosphere came from swamps and coal mines.

By reacting with free oxygen atoms in the stratosphere, the intrusive methane reduced the quantity available for ozone formation.

Moreover, methane reactions in the stratosphere yielded water vapor that further depleted the ozone.

Department of Agriculture, domesticated ruminants in the late twentieth century were generating more than eighty-five million tons of methane a year.

The fourth probe, the Tanker, would land near the peak of Mons Olympus and use its nuclear power plant to convert martian atmosphere and six tonnes of liquid hydrogen into ninety-six tonnes of methane and liquid oxygen.

The Tanker module-which carries a nuclear reactor and six tonnes of liquid hydrogen, to make ninety-six tonnes of methane and liquid oxygen from the martian atmosphere, was evolved from plans outlined in Mars Direct, by Robert Zubrin.

She was down on the plains, where the methane simply boiled into the air, and the ground was covered with thick, gooey tholin.

This time, it was a drizzle of pure methane from the lower cloud deck at fifteen kilometers.

It was the methane that eroded and shaped the ice, carving gullies and caves.

Every few minutes a flare of swamp-gas methane would erupt from the garbage on that side of the curve and flame into a white fireball.

Most of this region around Miranda Canyon was a combination of rock and frozen methane slush.

It was literally heat, because some clever fremden gristwright had figured out that the big methane snowfall of the past two weeks was not methane at all, but military grist.

To simulate snow, it had been given the same physical properties as methane, and one sure way to get rid of the stuff was to melt it.

Pluto was mostly ice water in the dark band around the equator, methane at the poles, exotics mixed throughout.