Oil spill 2010

BP has failed to manually shut the blowout preventer, and it could take three months to drill a relief well. Before then, BP will try to put a giant hood over the leaking wellhead, or perhaps even install a second preventer. But no short-term options have a proven track record to stop an oil spill. [CSM]

The pipeline from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded 80 kilometres offshore on 20 April and sank two days later has been spewing out a plume of crude oil at a rate of at least 5,000 barrels of oil (800,000 litres) each day. Some estimates put that rate much higher: based on analyses of satellite data, the nonprofit organization SkyTruth, based in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, said at the weekend that as much as 26,000 barrels (4.1 million litres) a day could be escaping from the wellhead. Efforts to plug the leak with remotely operated vehicles have been unsuccessful, and a relief well that BP plans to drill to stop the flow could take three months to complete. [NN]

According to NYT, Some experts have been quick to predict apocalypse, painting grim pictures of 1,000 miles of irreplaceable wetlands and beaches at risk, fisheries damaged for seasons, fragile species wiped out and a region and an industry economically crippled for years.

NASA Science Balloon Crashes – video

A huge NASA balloon loaded with a telescope painstakingly built to scan the sky at wavelengths invisible to the human eye crashed in the Australian outback Thursday, destroying the astronomy experiment and just missing nearby onlookers, according to Australian media reports.

The balloon was carrying the Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT), a gamma-ray telescope built by astronomer Steven Boggs and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, California to study astrophysical sources in space.

Life on Mars

Is there life on mars?

A slushy cocktail of water-ice and organic materials has been directly detected on the surface of an asteroid for the first time. The finding strengthens the theory that asteroids delivered the ingredients for Earth’s oceans and life, and could make astronomers rethink conventional models for how the Solar System evolved.

A special mission to the Red Planet has revealed the likely presence of a form of pond scum – the building blocks of life as we know it.

Mice produce morphine

Mice may make morphine

Mammals could have opiate factories.

Mice can synthesize morphine from various intermediate chemicals.N. Grobe & N. Weir
Mammals may possess the biochemical machinery to produce morphine — a painkiller found in the opium poppy, according to a new study.