Missing Oil, Is It Too Good To Be True

The oil-spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the worst oil related disaster in history. the broken pipeline sent millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. after it was plugged the next step was to clean up the mess. oil on the surface of the water was easy to clean. yet, oil started to sink into the gulf in massive plumes. these plumes lay stagnant for a long time and they are hard to get rid of. yet suddenly they disappeared. a microbial ecologist says he has the answer. deep-sea bacterium were enticed by the oil, and then seen eating it. yes, bacterium was eating the oil, and at an unimaginable rate. in one week a massive plume was gone. this sounds too good to be true. many people believe it is, the problem is no one knows if the oil is being eaten by beacterium or just being moved by the tide.

the leading scientist of the bacterium, Terry Hazen, has studied that not only has the bacterium been eating the oil, but the oil has a halflife of 1.2 to 6.1 days. this means that the oil is reduced by half every 2 to 6 days. another scientist, John Kessler, believes that this data is false. he says that Hazen doesn't fully understand that the oil is a very complex molecule made up of many elements. he says that some of these elements may have a short halflife but others last much longer. to prove his point Kessler called some of the scientists actually at the Gulf. they said that there still was oil, unlike what hazen said.

The oil spill was one of the worst disasters in history, and it is going to effect us even ten years from now. we need to know as much as possible about the spill to fully understand what is happening and what is being done. these studies have shown that the oil spill will be more difficult to fix then it first seemed. eventhough the missing oil sparked some hope, it was not meant to be. we still have to clean up the mess that we have made.