METHANE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does methane mean? 

• METHANE (noun)
  The noun METHANE has 1 sense:

1. a colorless odorless gas used as a fuel

  Familiarity information: METHANE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• METHANE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A colorless odorless gas used as a fuel

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

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 

Specifically, they used data from Cassini's radar imager to penetrate Titan's opaque atmosphere of nitrogen and methane.

(The First Global Geologic Map of Titan Completed, NASA)

The methane ice-rich surface on Pluto may be sublimating away into the atmosphere, exposing a layer of water-ice underneath.

(What’s Eating at Pluto?, NASA)

The bacteria obtain energy from digesting the methane.

(Methane-eating bacteria in lake deep beneath Antarctic ice sheet may reduce greenhouse gas emissions, National Science Foundation)

The authors believe that other molecules, including nitrogen and methane, may be present but they remain undetectable with current observations.

(Hubble Finds Water Vapor on Habitable-Zone Exoplanet for 1st Time, NASA)

Organic molecules are a food source for microbes in the lake sediments, which break them down and release carbon dioxide and methane as by-products.

(Climate change could double greenhouse gas emissions from freshwater ecosystems, University of Cambridge)

Over the last half-billion or billion years on Titan, methane in its atmosphere has acted as a greenhouse gas, keeping the moon relatively warm - although still cold by Earth standards.

(New Models Suggest Titan Lakes Are Explosion Craters, NASA)

The chemical formula of methane is CH[SUB]4[/SUB].

(Methane, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

A combination preparation of glucosamine, a hexosamine sugar polymer, and methyl sulfonyl methane (MSM), a derivative of dimethyl sulphoxide, with anti-arthritic and anti-inflammatory activities.

(MSM/Glucosamine, NCI Thesaurus)

The bright clouds form when the flow of ambient air is perturbed and diverted upward over the dark vortex, causing gases to likely freeze into methane ice crystals.

(Hubble Imagery Confirms New Dark Spot on Neptune, NASA)

Atmospheric methane absorbs red light but allows blue-green light to be scattered back into space, giving each planet a cyan hue.

(Hubble Reveals Dynamic Atmospheres of Uranus, Neptune, NASA)