Editor’s Note: A team of researchers led by John Kessler, Texas A&M College of Geosciences chief scientist and assistant oceanography professor, traveled to the Deepwater Horizon disaster area to study the methane leaking into the Gulf of Mexico (along with tens thousands of barrels of crude oil) daily at the site of the damaged Macondo [...]

Editor’s Note: A team of researchers led by John Kessler, Texas A&M College of Geosciences chief scientist and assistant oceanography professor, has traveled to the Deepwater Horizon disaster area to study the methane leaking into the Gulf of Mexico (along with tens thousands of barrels of crude oil) daily at the site of the damaged [...]

Editor’s Note: A team of researchers led by John Kessler, Texas A&M College of Geosciences chief scientist and assistant oceanography professor, has traveled to the Deepwater Horizon disaster area to study the methane leaking into the Gulf of Mexico (along with tens thousands of barrels of crude oil) daily at the site of the damaged [...]

Editor’s Note: A team of researchers led by John Kessler, Texas A&M College of Geosciences chief scientist and assistant oceanography professor, has traveled to the Deepwater Horizon disaster site to study the methane leaking into the Gulf of Mexico (along with tens thousands of barrels of crude oil) daily at the site of the damaged [...]

Editor’s Note: A team of researchers led by John Kessler, Texas A&M College of Geosciences chief scientist and assistant oceanography professor, has traveled to the Deepwater Horizon disaster site to study the methane leaking into the Gulf of Mexico (along with tens thousands of barrels of crude oil) daily at the site of the damaged [...]

These days, science funding is like a cage fight—utterly brutal. It’s even harder to compete for funding when you work on microscopic nematode worms that live at the bottom of the ocean. As an undergraduate at King’s College London, I watched with great sadness as the university abolished departments—first chemistry, then biological sciences. At the [...]

BP’s Gulf of Mexico gusher may finally be dead, but its months-long release of oil and gas has created quite an in situ oceanic laboratory that scientists will be studying for years. Even as scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) quibble with those from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts over the [...]

It looks like a solar-powered treadmill, but researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) say they have created a flat, conveyor belt–like device that could clean up oil slicks far more efficiently than anything used at the Deepwater Horizon site. They key is a nanoparticle-infused, water-repelling mesh coating a conveyor belt. As important is [...]

BP is a few hours away from beginning an integrity test of its leaking Macondo well Tuesday afternoon that will determine whether it’s still feasible to shut off the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico from the top of the well, or if all hopes for stopping the gusher should continue to be [...]

As the first of the Deepwater relief wells sinks to within a few hundred meters of intersecting the leaking Macondo oil well deep below the Gulf of Mexico’s seafloor, BP’s moment of truth is coming. Unfortunately, so is tropical storm Alex and its 95 kilometer-per-hour winds. The National Weather Service’s National Hurricane Center forecasts that [...]

BP CEO Tony Hayward sat alone before the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Thursday to answer for his company’s questionable decision to continue drilling this spring at the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil well despite safety concerns and that decision’s catastrophic consequences. The hours of grilling turned up very little new information, [...]