Gulf Spill Round Up

One year on, we take a look at the technologies used to combat the worst oil spill in US history.

Why Capping a Blown Oil Well at the Bottom of the Ocean is so Insanely Difficult Last year's Deepwater Horizon oil spill dumped an estimated 2.6 million gallons of oil A DAY into the Gulf of Mexico - you'd think someone would have gotten on that faster. Oh, they did? More »

Prototype Robot Swarm Could Clean Up Oil Spill in a Month This solar-powered fellow is part of a robot group called Seaswarm. He and his buddies are cheap, autonomous, and communicate via GPS and Wi-Fi. And 5000 of them could theoretically clean up the Gulf oil spill in a month. More »

BP Sand Shark Hunts Tarball Prey On Devastated Gulf Coast Beaches Meet the Sand Shark. Unveiled this week on the sands of Alabama, this imperfect tool is perhaps the best weapon yet against the oily disaster BP has wrought against the Gulf coast. Updated. More »

Using Power Plant Waste To Clean Up the Gulf How are we going to clean up the Gulf oil mess? Easy. With waste material from power plants, of course. Oh, and it's a certifiably eco-friendly method. That's right: we're finally getting a real-life toxic avenger. More »

Ultraviolet Spotlight Reveals Oil Spill At Its Most Psychedelic The oil disaster in the Gulf has produced some profoundly distressing imagery, from photographs of oil-soaked animals to satellite shots of the slick's sprawling tendrils. But these are a little bit different. More »

Cleaning Up the Gulf Oil Disaster With Dustbusters How is the scrappy Plaquemines Parish Inland Waterway Strike Force cleaning up BP's mess as oil creeps into their backyard-the wetlands of southeastern Louisiana? With dustbusters. And they say they're "knocking the socks off" BP's cleanup crews. More »

Lightning Interview: How James Dyson Could've Fixed the Oil Disaster Sir James Dyson, the man behind the bagless vacuum and the bladeless fan, designs products that solve problems. We caught up with him and talked about one of the biggest engineering problems the world currently faces: the Gulf oil disaster. More »

How BP's Deepwater Horizon Failsafe Failed It's been two months since BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig started spewing toxicity into the Gulf of Mexico. And we're just now learning how the rig's last line of defence failed to prevent one modern history's biggest ecological disasters. More »

The Pac-Man Ship That Eats Oil Spills The Bottsand class oil recovery ships cruise just like any other vessel, until they reach an oil spill. Then, they open like Pac-Man, transforming into a machine that can clean the oil from 140 cubic metres of water More »

The Undersea Robot Pilots Working in the BP Oil Disaster The Gulf oil disaster is both a testament of humans' inability to control nature and BP's recklessness and incompetence. Now, it's time for technology to fix this mess. One of the essential tools to stop the disaster: Underwater robots. More »

6m Shears May Be Used To Cut Leaking Oil Pipe After Robot Saw Got Stuck BP's latest attempt to fix the oil disaster in the Gulf involves cutting the tip off the broken oil riser pipe and shoving on a containment dome. One of the problems? The robot saw cutting the pipe got stuck. More »

How BP Will Stop the Oil Eruption: The Top-Kill Method BP will attempt to shut down the oil well that's been spewing into the Gulf of Mexico later today. Step one: the "top-kill" method, wherein heavy drilling mud is forced deep into the well. Let's pray it works. Video explanation: More »

This Machine May Save Us From the Gulf's Oil Disaster Kevin Costner says he has the solution that will save the Gulf of Mexico from BP's ruinous oil catastrophe. He's not kidding. Watch him talk about this machine that, according to him, extracts 97 per cent of oil from the water. More »

How to Fix the BP-Halliburton Louisiana Oil Disaster - Kind Of Cleaning up the effect of the disastrous oil eruption in the Gulf Coast - thanks BP-Halliburton!- is a huge job. Here are some of the tech options available when it comes to cleaning up a gigantic mess like this More »