What's happening ... to the oil?

摘要

The magnitude of the catastrophe will depend on the oil's fate: the amount of oil released, how the oil is transformed chemically and physically, and how far and wide it travels. To date, scientists are far from answering any of these questions.rnThe oft-cited 5000 barrels per day of oil spewing from the leaking well is almost certainly an underestimate. Scientists eyeballing videos of the sea-floor gusher or gauging the extent of the surface slick in satellite images see five or even 10 times as much oil coming out 3.5 weeks into the disaster. Continued analysis will improve those estimates, and ongoing efforts to stanch the flow may be informative, but as one oceanographer puts it, for now, "it is what it is."