Magic Statistics

Drilling has started in the Canadian Arctic and on Alaska’s North Slope to test the viability of an untapped energy source—frozen methane gas, or methyl hydrate—essentially natural gas trapped in ice.  (Gas hydrate is also called “ice that burns”.)  If technical obstacles to extraction are overcome, the vast gas hydrate deposits have the potential to replace petroleum as an energy source.

Methyl hydrate is natural gas trapped in a solid matrix of frozen water. Once released, it becomes just like normal natural gas. It is found in and under permafrost, and on the ocean floor at depths greater than 500 metres or 1,600 feet.

An increase in temperature can trigger the release of the methyl hydrate as natural gas.

The most recoverable deposits of methyl hydrate are found in coarse, porous sandstone deposits, which primarily occur on land in permafrost conditions in the Arctic.

The Canadian tests are being conducted in co-operation with Japan’s national oil and gas company.

State-run Japan Oil, Gas, and Metals Corp. and Natural Resources Canada drilled a test well inside the Arctic Circle last Thursday. In March, they plan to start extracting gas from the hydrates, an ice-like form of methane trapped in oxygen and hydrogen, by depressurizing the icy gas crystals inside a drilled hole.

Current natural gas reserves total about 370 trillion cubic metres (tcm), enough for some 60 years.  Methyl hydrate deposits are estimated between 2800 tcm and 8.5 million tcm.  Thus, if commercial production of this resource becomes feasible, the world economy could be transformed.

Previous related post: US could be energy self-sufficient by 2025

A British historian has identified a painting less than 2 inches in diameter as an authentic portrait of England’s shortest-reigning monarch.  Lady Jane Grey, the teenager who reigned for nine days in 1553, is the only English monarch since 1485 who left no portrait universally accepted as authentic.  After a year of research, Dr David Starkey says he is “90% certain” that the subject of the miniature is indeed Lady Jane Grey, the Protestant claimant to the throne who was deposed and executed by Queen Mary I.

The portrait, less than two inches in diameter, belongs to an American collection and is known to date from the mid-16th century. The sitter has never before been named, but Dr Starkey said that he had identified her as Jane Grey from a brooch on her dress and a highly symbolic jewellery spray of foliage behind it, linking her to her husband.
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He also worked out that the "foliage" behind the brooch was the badge of the Dudley family. John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, effectively ruled England in the last days of Edward VI, the sickly boy king whose death propelled Jane to the throne. The duke married one of his four sons, Guildford Dudley, to Jane Grey, to assert his control of the throne.

The Times of London includes an additional detail tying the foliage specifically to Lady Jane’s husband.

Dr Starkey realised that the foliage included a gillyflower, a symbol for Guildford Dudley. Each of Northumberland’s sons was represented by a flower; Ambrose by a rose, Henry by honeysuckle, Robert by an acorn and Guildford by the gillyflower.

Dr Starkey first saw the miniature in a book of illustrations from the Yale Center for British Art.  The American multi-millionaire and art collector Paul Mellon had acquired the piece at Sotheby’s in 1970 for £760.

The discovery is an embarrassment for the National Portrait Gallery which last year paid £100,000 for another alleged portrait of Lady Jane Grey—one painted fifty years after her death.  If this new find is accepted as authentic, the gallery will have contemporary portraits of every British monarch since Henry VII, except Lady Jane Grey.

Previous related posts:

• Authentic portrait of Lady Jane Grey?
• A prayer of Lady Jane Grey