SOUNDBITES

‹ It has been an embarrassment to science, and I think an embarrassment for Princeton.›

Robert Park, a physicist at the

University of Maryland, on the closure

of Princeton University’s Engineering

Anomalies Research programme, which

for 28 years has tried to demonstrate

that human thoughts can affect

machine behaviour (The New York Times, 10 February)

‹ If you can take a midday nap, do so.›

Dimitrios Trichopoulos of the Harvard

School of Public Health and co-author

of a study in Greece showing that the

death rate in people who take siestas is

two-thirds that of people who don’t

(The Seattle Times, 12 February)

‹ You can buy model breasts, but they cost around £35 each, which is quite prohibitive.›

Midwife Kate McFadden on why she

and others are knitting fake breasts for

the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, UK, to

teach women how to breastfeed and

express milk (BBC online, 7 February)

‹ Maybe it is eternal hatred that had them locked together in a death grip.›

An internet commentator not affected

by the Valentine mood speculates on

the reasons why the 5000-year-old

human skeletons found at a

construction site near Mantua,

northern Italy, were embracing

(Reuters, 13 February)

‹ This is the first time anyone has demonstrated that a change in women’s hormonal levels is induced by sniffing an identified compound of male sweat.›

Claire Wyart of the University of

California, Berkeley, on a study

published in The Journal of Neuroscience offering the first

direct evidence that human scent

can affect the sexual arousal of the

opposite sex (AP, 13 February)

THE idea of literally burying the

carbon dioxide emissions

problem – by storing the gas deep

underground – got a double boost

this week. On 10 February, an

amendment to international law

came into force that allows the

greenhouse gas to be buried

beneath the sea floor. At the same

time, a new study counters one of

the main fears over carbon

burial – that the gas will simply

leak out again, to boost future

global warming.

Some companies have been

experimenting with storage in

undersea aquifers and porous

rocks for more than a decade,

but the law was unclear over

whether carbon dioxide should

be considered a pollutant, leaving

companies open to accusations

of illegal dumping.

Even with the new laws,

burying carbon dioxide under

the seabed is likely to remain

controversial because of concerns

that it will eventually leak out

(New Scientist, 20 November

2006, p 6). However, a team of

environmental engineers now

claims that these worries are

unfounded, and that natural

reactions will lock away the

carbon dioxide within aquifers

for millennia.

Ruben Juanes at the

Massachusetts Institute of

Technology and his colleagues

made a computer model of the

movement of carbon dioxide

injected into a layer of permeable

rock saturated with salt water. The

gas is less dense than brine and so

starts to rise in a plume towards the

rock surface, but the model shows

that it will not continue moving.

The brine clings to the insides of

the rock pores, narrowing their

diameter so that the plume of gas

is pinched into small bubbles,

which remain trapped within the

pores (Water Resources Research,

vol 42, p W12418).

“This is a permanent storage

mechanism,” says Juanes. “Carbon

dioxide will stay underground

indefinitely.” Nevertheless, Günter

Pusch at Clausthal University of

Technology in Germany believes

that the gas may still leak. “If the

rising plume hits a fault or

fracture network, it can accelerate

the upward migration,” he says.

If the gas does leak out into the

oceans, a team led by Toste

Tanhua at the University of Kiel in

Germany has found that it will

remain dissolved in seawater for

longer than previously thought.

This leads to increased acidity at

greater depths, harming deep-

water corals and marine life

(Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences, DOI:

10.1073/pnas.0606574104).

Juanes, however, is undeterred.

“So long as the gas is injected

deep enough underground, it is

hard to imagine a major leak

making it to the surface,” he says.

“Sequestration is by no means an

answer to all problems, but it is an

integral part of the solution.” ●

www.newscientist.com 17 February 2007 | NewScientist | 9

PHIL MCKENNA

Green light for carbon burial

/KIM

LA

LAN

D/S

TATO

IL

“This is a permanent storage

mechanism. Carbon dioxide will

stay underground indefinitely”

–Oil companies favour undersea storage–