Creative ideas to clean up and/or stop the oil spill

The Northport native, who started reading before she could walk and who at 18 broke a 300-year-old record to become the youngest-ever college professor, proposes surrounding a pipe with deflated automobile tires, inserting it into the leaking riser, and then inflating the wheels to form a seal.

"I figured experts would know more about it than I did but their ideas didn't work," she said. "So I started thinking about it."

The prodigy, who has received awards and fellowships from NASA and the Department of Defense, decided to take a different tack from BP's latest strategy, the "lower marine riser package," in which the riser pipe is cut and a housing is placed over it to collect the oil.

"This was a thought experiment," she said. "They tried covering it and now they're trying to block it, and it seems they are trying things that go on it or around it.

"I started thinking of something that goes inside it."

The tires might not be able to fully inflate inside the pipe, but the resulting seal would be able to stem the flow of oil and redirect it into a new pipe, she said. A valve in the pipe could be closed to block the oil or open to allow it to flow, presumably to a ship on the surface.

Sabur admitted that she's not certain the inflated tires would be enough to hold the new pipe in place.

"But if it works, then it might be possible to then put something on top of it -- to brace the inserted pipe -- to do something more permanent," she said. "Obviously, I hope that what they're doing now works. It's just absolutely terrible."

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As for the PSI question, the well is currently venting oil at 9000 or so PSI, just as I reported. It is at a much, much higher pressure then you seem to believe it is.

Maybe 9000 PSI compare to surface pressure of 15 PSI but I can not see how it could be venting at 9000 PSI compare to the ocean floor pressure or no tubing or cap or concrete would or could contain it.

The important figure is not absolute pressure but relative pressure compare to it surroundings in this case the ocean floor pressure at one mile.

If so then please explain how a metal cap or placing mud and concrete in the tube could contain that amount of pressure or for that matter how a fairly thin pipe wall could contain that amount of pressure anywhere along the pipe.

It does not made any kind of sense to me that somehow a metal pipe wall not all that thick can contain 9,000 PSI.

Well, I'm no engineer, I'm just reporting to you what the news is reporting regarding the PSI of the oil gusher. You can take it up with them if you don't agree it's accurate.

I just thought of a cheap simple way - just throw a lighted match onto it.