How Steven Chu Used Gamma Rays to Diagnose the BP Oil Spill

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/05/exclusive-how-steven-chu-used-gamma-rays-to-save-the-planet/56685/

by rywang • 16 years ago

28 8 16 years ago

theatlantic.com

RK• 16 years ago

I'm guessing this author must not be their science editor.

tptacek2• 16 years ago

Nope. Dem politics writer.

tptacek2• 16 years ago

Chu:

Here's what's happening. After the [Space Shuttle] Challenger accident, the U.S. government formed a panel of very, very bright scientists and engineers to come together and figure out what happened and what could be done in the future to prevent it. Most of the people on that panel were not aeronautics experts, not rocket experts or NASA experts. They were very smart people who had a broad range of knowledge and experience. This is actually what you want: you want a set of fresh eyes, people who can propose potential out-of-the-box solutions, who might foresee what might go wrong. If you're an expert and you're used to certain things done certain ways, that limits your ability to cast a wider net, and so one of the most important things that we're doing at the national laboratories is putting together these scientific teams, many of whom would be considered non-experts. In times like this, those are many of the people you want. BP and the oil industry have the lion's share of the experts that are exactly germane to this. So this is how we think we can best add value.

Chu here is talking about the committee for which Feynman gave the famous O-ring demonstration.

I think whatever you think about Obama's politics, you've gotta be happy that we have someone like Chu running DOE.

brown9-2• 16 years ago

For those like me that didn't know about the famous O-ring demonstration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission#Role_of_Richa...

URSpider94• 16 years ago

The sad joke is, if you read Feynman's account of that committee, it's pretty clear that they were intended to come in, look around, and declare the whole thing an un-preventable accident. Feynman pulled his o-ring stunt because he felt that he HAD TO in order to get the story out.

In this case, it seems like the government labs are providing some honest-to-goodness assistance that hasn't been available from any other source so far.

asdf333• 16 years ago

what a badass

mieses2• 16 years ago

Did they discuss using underground nuclear explosion to pinch off the well? It seems like a simple and proven solution.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0513/Why-don-t-we-just...

Would this not work? Is it just politically incorrect?

mieses2• 16 years ago

to answer my own question ... Apparently the concern is that the rock layer above the oil is thin. (Any sources for how thin?). A nuke could fracture the rock layer and release all the oil at once.

How Steven Chu Used Gamma Rays to Diagnose the BP Oil Spill

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