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For more information on these science news and feature story tips, please contact the public information officer at the end of each item at (703) 292-8070. Contents of this News Tip:
NEW FUEL FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR?The bottom of the ocean may hold enough fuel to provide power to the world for several centuries. But no one will know for certain until scientists from the NSF Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) figure out a way of getting so-called gas hydrates up to the surface. Gas hydrates -- gray crystals formed from a combination of methane gas and water under pressure -- are estimated to contain twice as much carbon as all the known deposits of oil, gas and coal. The crystals are stored in the ocean crust under extremely high pressures. A team of ODP scientists is drilling four deep holes and seven shallow ones off the North Carolina coast. When they succeed in getting a sample, they will have to work quickly; the crystals will decompose within a few hours. Gas hydrates decompose rapidly in conditions comfortable for humans, say the scientists. Their "hostile" environment is the main reason geologists know so little about gas hydrates. Most geologists, in fact, have never seen a sample. [Cheryl Dybas] LANE CALLS FOR OUTREACH BY SCIENCE COMMUNITYIn a nationwide teleconference to discuss current issues in national research policy, NSF Director Neal Lane called on the science community to meet the challenges presented by a limited budget and changing national rationale for science. He encouraged scientists and engineers to help increase public understanding of science and to explain how budget reductions can atrophy the R&D; enterprise in the same way that injury destroys muscle tissue. "Once inflicted, the damage cannot easily be reversed," said Lane. "The original capability is almost never achieved again, often resulting in a limp for the rest of one's life. We can't afford to have the U.S. limping into the 21st century." Lane opened the discussion during a November 1 teleconference organized by the scientific research society Sigma Xi, during which participants from nearly 90 universities and other research sites posed questions to panel members. The conference highlighted the anxieties of a science community struggling with change and a projected 30 percent cut in non defense R&D.; Panelists strove for optimism in the face of an uncertain future. "The Golden Age of Science may be over, but there are new and exciting opportunities," said Thomas Meyer, a Vice Chancellor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. [Mary Hanson] Copies of Dr. Lane's remarks are available on NSF's www home page at http://www.nsf.gov/ (under "overview" and "director"). ANCIENT MANTLE CONDUIT DISCOVERED UNDER SOUTH AMERICAIn a challenge to a major aspect of the theory of plate tectonics, NSF-supported scientists have discovered the presence of an ancient conduit deep in the Earth's mantle beneath Brazil. The conduit appears to have remained geographically fixed with respect to the overlying continent despite thousands of kilometers of South American plate motion. This observation runs contrary to a major tenet of plate tectonic theory -- that the motion of lithospheric plates is essentially independent of flow in the upper mantle beneath the plates - - and implies that the upper mantle and the overlying South American continent have remained coupled since the break-up of the Gondwanaland supercontinent and opening of the South Atlantic Ocean some 120 million years ago. This result also implies that large-scale convection in the mantle may be responsible for the motion of the great continental plates such as South America, where the driving force for plate motion has not been well understood. These findings are reported in the November 2nd issue of the journal Nature by geophysicists John VanDecar and David James of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. The data for their analysis were collected from an array of state-of-the-art portable seismograph systems deployed across southeastern Brazil. [Cheryl Dybas]
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