Tens of thousands of gallons more oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday after an undersea robot bumped a venting system, forcing BP to remove the cap that had been containing some of the crude.
The setback, yet another in the nine-week effort to stop the gusher, came as thick pools of oil washed up on Pensacola Beach in Florida and the Obama administration tried to figure out how to resurrect a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.
When the robot bumped the system just before 10 a.m. Wednesday, gas rose through the vent that carries warm water down to prevent ice-like crystals from forming, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said.
Crews were checking to see if crystals had formed before putting it back on. BP spokesman Bill Salvin could not say how long that might take. [ ASSOCIATED PRESS ]
A magnitude-5.0 earthquake struck at the Ontario-Quebec border region of Canada on Wednesday, shaking homes and businesses from Toronto to the states of New York and Michigan, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The midday quake was felt in Canada and in a number of U.S. states, including Michigan, Vermont and parts of upstate New York.
The USGS said the quake occurred at a depth of about 12 miles (19.2 kilometers). The agency initially said the quake had a 5.5 magnitude, but later reduced it to a magnitude-5.0. The quake occurred at 1:41 p.m. EDT (1741 GMT), the USGS said.
Hurricane Season 2010 - Update and Possible Development Later This Week.
Forecasters are keeping an eye near the Yucatan Peninsula as an area of strong thunderstorms has formed.
Computer models bring this area of storms and associated surface low pressure center into the Gulf Of Mexico within a week.
As the storm nears, the National Hurricane Center has stated that they will issue the proper warnings if needed. Some forecasters at the center have told said that they fully expect the area to develop within the next few days after it crosses over the peninsula. [ NOAA ] [ ACCUWEATHER VIDEO ] **Click Image to Enlarge**
Tropical system in the Caribbean may move into the Gulf Of Mexico this weekend and impact the oil area next week. Judging by the overall weather pattern and ideas from several computer models, the odds are increasing for tropical cyclone formation in the western Atlantic Basin before the end of the month.
At the very least, a period of rough seas and strong thunderstorms will affect part of the Gulf of Mexico next week. AccuWeather.com Hurricane and Long Range Expert Meteorologist Joe Bastardi assimilates the current weather pattern in the Atlantic Basin to a "tropical brew that is ready to boil over."
Stories of hurricane winds and rain lashing the coasts of Florida, Louisiana and other southeastern states pop up in the news constantly during the summer, but warnings of Pacific storms such as Jimena are few and far between.
How many hurricanes will there be in 2010?
AccuWeather.com Chief Hurricane Meteorologist Joe Bastardi has upped his original forecast from 16-18 storms, to 18-21, with at least eight impacts and six hurricanes, and two or three of those hurricanes will have major landfalls. Only five years in the 160 years of records had 18 or more storms in a season.
"The hurricane season should have several hits on the U.S. coast from July through September, mainly in the Southeast and Gulf," said Bastardi.
Enormous black holes, some of the most powerful sources of radiation in the universe, apparently switch on after galaxies collide, researchers have found.
The centers of as many as a tenth of all galaxies generate more energy than can be explained by stars, with some of these "active galactic nuclei" releasing more radiation than the entire Milky Way galaxy combined, but from a space no larger than our solar system. Astronomers suspect this energy is released when matter falls into giant, supermassive black holes that are up to billions of times the mass of our sun at these galaxies' cores.
"These monster black holes evolve in a way that is strongly related to the amount of dark matter that surrounds them and that is intimately related to the probability of galaxies to merge," said study lead author Nico Cappelluti, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.[ MSNBC ]
A new and less well known asymmetric threat has surfaced in the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher. Methane or CH4 gas is being released in vast quantities in the Gulf waters. Seismic data shows huge pools of methane gas at the location immediately below and around the damaged "Macondo" oil well. Methane is a colourless, odourless and highly flammable substance which forms a major component in natural gas. This is the same gas that blew the top off Deepwater Horizon and killed 11 people. The "flow team" of the US Geological Survey estimates that 2,900 cubic feet of natural gas, which primarily contains methane, is being released into the Gulf waters with every barrel of oil. The constant flow of over 50,000 barrels of crude oil places the total daily amount of natural gas at over 145 million cubic feet. So far, over 8 billion cubic feet may have been released, making it one of the most vigorous methane eruptions in modern human history. If the estimates of 100,000 barrels a day -- that have emerged from a BP internal document -- are true, then the estimates for methane gas release might have to be doubled.
Older documents indicate that the subterranean geological formation below the "Macondo" well in the Gulf of Mexico may contain the presence of a huge methane deposit. It has been a well known fact that the methane in that oil deposit was problematic. As a result, there was a much higher risk of a blow out. Macondo shares its name with the cursed town in the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by the Nobel-prize winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
By some geologists' estimates, the methane could be a massive bubble trapped for thousands of years under the Gulf of Mexico sea floor. More than a year ago, geologists expressed alarm in regard to BP and Transocean putting their exploratory rig directly over this massive underground reservoir of methane. Warnings were raised before the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that the area of seabed chosen might be unstable and inherently dangerous.
Torrential rains battering south and central China have left 175 people dead and forced the evacuation of 1.7 million, as washed out roads and railways hampered rescue work Monday.
Premier Wen Jiabao called for greater efforts to battle flooding that has also left 107 people missing since June 13, as more rains are forecast in the next few days, the government said.
"In the coming days another round of heavy rain will hit areas in the south. We are facing a bigger test, so we need to make better preparations to avoid disaster," Wen said on state television. [ YAHOO NEWS ]
The millions upon millions of gallons of oil hemorrhaging into the Gulf of Mexico every day is a crude reminder of the many ways humans are fouling the planet. As forests are cleared, cities and suburbs paved and expanded, as the air and sea warm and become increasingly polluted with cancer-causing chemicals and garbage, and with species dropping like flies, the planet’s health is being challenged in ways that have not occurred in its entire 4.5-billion-year existence.
The first comprehensive synthesis on the effects of climate change on the world's oceans has found they are now changing at a rate not seen for several million years.
In an article published June 18 in Science magazine, scientists reveal the growing atmospheric concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases are driving irreversible and dramatic changes to the way the ocean functions, with potentially dire impacts for hundreds of millions of people across the planet.
The findings of the report emerged from a synthesis of recent research on the world's oceans, carried out by two of the world's leading marine scientists, one from The University of Queensland in Australia, and one from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the USA.
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, lead author of the report and Director of The University of Queensland's Global Change Institute, says the findings have enormous implications for mankind, particularly if the trend continues. [ SCIENCE DAILY ]
More than a million people living along rivers in China's south have been evacuated with water rising to dangerous levels, state media said Saturday, as torrential rains left at least 88 dead.
The government said more than 1.4 million residents living on river banks and in low-lying areas had had to move, according to the official China Daily.
Zhang Zhitong, deputy director of the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, said China's second-largest waterway, the Pearl River, which crosses the south, had breached warning marks on Thursday. [ YAHOO NEWS ]
Police and National Guard soldiers blocked off neighborhoods Friday as city officials organized a cleanup from tornadoes that ripped through the city the night before, part of a turbulent system that fueled twisters across the state and killed at least three people.
Dozens more were injured in Thursday's heavy weather. The National Weather Service collected 36 reports of tornado sightings, with northwestern and southern Minnesota hit hardest. If the sightings are all confirmed, it would exceed the previous state record of 27 in one day, in 1992.
In northwestern Minnesota, a woman was killed in Almora and a gas station owner was killed in Mentor. In southern Minnesota, a woman was killed when her home west of Albert Lea was destroyed.
Wadena, a town of about 4,300 people that lies 70 miles southeast of Fargo, appeared to suffer the most extensive property damage. The storms destroyed or damaged dozens of homes and other buildings, toppled power lines and left a big chunk of the town without trees. Officials met Friday morning to plan the town's next step. [ YAHOO NEWS ]
A "Doomsday " moment will take place in 2014, and will determine whether the 21st century is full of violence and poverty or will be peaceful and prosperous - according to a Cambridge University professor.
In the last 500 years there has been a cataclysmic "Great Event" of international significance at the start of each century, he claims.
Occurring in the middle of the second decade of each century, they include events which sparked wars, religious conflict and brought peace.
Professor Nicholas Boyle of Cambridge University, who carried out the research, has pinpointed the global financial crisis as the trigger for the next 'Great Event'. And he claims the U.S., with its waning economic influence but unrivalled military power, holds the key to determining the course and character of the next 90 years.
The Pan-STARRS 1 telescope will map large portions of the sky each night to track not only close space objects, but also exploding stars (supernovae).
The telescope has been taking science data for six months but is now operating from dusk-dawn each night. Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) is expected to map one-sixth of the sky every month. The facility boasts a huge digital camera: a 1,400 megapixel (1.4 gigapixel) device that can photograph an area of the sky as large as 36 full Moons in a single exposure. [ BBC NEWS ]
Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.
Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange - and troubling - phenomena. Fish and other wildlife are fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast. But that is not the hopeful sign it might appear to be, researchers say.
The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily get devoured by predators.
"A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable," said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist. [ AP NEWS ]
