A rise in the seafloor that much, if it was as it appeared over the entire region, would create a tsunami.
Since the gulf coast is still there, id say it was just a frame-of-reference mind-trick.

LOL! Oh, come on, JD. Stupiest video ever? EVER? Personally, I enjoyed the video. Love thinking about stuff like this hearing what others think up. This is a pretty horrible disaster, and I have no doubt there are millions and millions of armchair engineers (and real engineers) around the world who have both good and not-so-good ideas on how to solve it. I wouldn't diss or belittle any of them their noble, well-meaning, and often frustrated efforts and ideas. That said, I wonder if the benefits of Venturi effect (lower pressure of increasing fluid flow) when inserting the dreidel outweigh the adverse effect of Pascal (fluid at rest acting on the much larger surface area of the cone) when the dreidel is fully inserted. Not an expert, just thinking out loud.

Idiots? Basic concepts of physic? Really? REALLY?

You're right the sea floor isn't like rock, but it's not like they just jammed a pipe a few feet into the seabed and called her good. That well is likely many thousands of feet below the seafloor (lined with pipe the whole way). While it undoubtedly passes through layers of porous rock, that oil has remained where it is for millions of years under impermeable (to the oil) rock. If it wasn't impermeable, the oil wouldn't be there.

I have no idea what the pressure of the oil is, but, as you said in your comment, it's the differential pressure that matters. The BOP would not explode. No effin' way. It's not the same as Popeye putting his finger in Bluto's gun barrel and the barrel blows up like a balloon 'til it explodes in poor Bluto's face. Pascal's Law just doesn't work that way. And although you used it as an example, rather than an estimate of well pressure, 400 PSI ain't shit. If you were bemoaning the total pressure on the inside of a pipe with relatively large surface area, be rest-assured that people smarter than us long ago figured out appropriate pipewall thickness/diameter ratios for anticipated operating pressures for a given material (with slide-rules and shit). The current devastation notwithstanding, imho, it's not due to a pipe rupturing (at the seafloor). 5000' of oil head is lighter than 5000' feet of water head, so the pressure difference of a cap at the BOP would be even lower. I'm on my second glass of Cuvee, so I may have that exactly backwards. W/E.

The cement thingy... LOL! I hope you were just being smarmy, because unless you're using super Star Trek Horta cement or something, the only way I can think of to stop the flow after cutting off the BOP (short of relief wells) is to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.


>> ^joedirt:

Stupidest video I've ever seen on the sift.
Do you idiots have any basic concepts of physics? Seriously, 21" pipe, 66 in^2, 5000 psi (maybe 400psi relative to water pressure). First of all, the sea floor there isn't like rock, secondly the BOP would explode if they plugged the leak (and is probably already leaking), thirdly, the sink a ship on it is better solution then some idiot sitting around with a hose and sticking his thumb in it to come up with ideas.
If they thought the oil wouldn't leak out from somewhere else, they would just cut off the BOP and get a giant bag and start pumping down cement down to cover the sea floor around the well head.

From <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.vg.no/iphone/article.php?<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.vg.no/iphone/article.php?artid=591795">http://www.vg.no/iphone/article.php?artid=591795">VGNett

Translation of the quotes from scientists:

"the only sensational thing about this case is that its presented as a sensation.." , "Jørgen Berge, professor in marine biology at UNIS, Svalbard.

"Norwegian scientists have been studying these animals for 30 years, and the idea that this is news probably stems from old beliefs about how nothing could live under the ice"

"- If they had turned the camera around and looked at the seafloor they would have found a rich community of animals. Even if this drill is done well into the ice(far from the open sea) there are under-ice paths out to the ocean"

Here are the translated lyrics:

In the space of just one slipped beat of the tongue
there is big bang and total entropy
from red giants to white dwarfs
the whole scale
of cosmic dimensions are falling
out of my mouth
in the description of a kiss
of the interimlovers

of the interimlovers
in the interim

between microphone and macrocosm
between chaos and on no course
between plankton und philisophia
between semtex and utopia

there they are
the interimlovers

in their communal mouth
lives a hummingbird
with each humming beat of its wings
too swift for the eye to see
cultures flourish and perish
whole continents vanish
here are no harmless words
all by far too large
an example most simple explodes
in 10^14 for
the interimlovers

the interimlovers
in the interim

between toothache and oil of cloves
between genesis and sixsixsix
between c'' and vitamin c
between ultramarine and navy frigate

the interimlovers are intimate

the interimlovers
in the
INTERIM

in the course of just one winking beat of an eye
they have putsched
the government was felled
parliament dissolved
elections held
results annulled
new elections called
then finally exiled
in history reviled
I wade through the filth of mighty
metaphors
meta, meta, meta by metre
with gestures far too wide
for the interimlovers

the interimlovers
are lovers in the interim

between temporary and tenpura
between rope and sword dance
between times and on the seafloor
between semtex and utopia
they lay in each others arms

thirstily devour
that last little drop of light
they are not there yesterday
and tomorrow not yet
the lovers
the interimlovers
they are not there yesterday
and tomorrow not yet
not really
the interimlovers
they are not there yesterday
and tomorrow not yet)