Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowperson
Where did the oil go?
A scientist says a newly discovered microbe ate it. Loves the stuff.
The Gulf of Mexico ecosystem was ready and waiting for something like the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and seems to have made the most of it, a new scientific study suggests.
Petroleum-eating bacteria - which had dined for eons on oil seeping naturally through the seafloor - proliferated in the cloud of oil that drifted underwater for months after the April 20 accident. They not only outcompeted fellow microbes, they each ramped up their own internal metabolic machinery to digest the oil as efficiently as possible.
The result was a nature-made cleanup crew capable of reducing the amount of oil in the undersea "plume" by half about every three days, according to research published online Tuesday by the journal Science.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?nav=hcmodule
Cowperson |
Wait.... so does this mean the tar sands actually
are worse than the Gulf Coast Oil Spill?!??!
In all seriousness, that is amazing--and I'm no scientist, but it sure sounds like good news to me.