蟲子吃光了墨西哥灣泄漏的甲烷
根據最近公佈的一項調查結果，在對墨西哥灣“深水地平線”鑽井平臺石油泄漏成功封堵後的調查發現微生物基本上吞噬掉了泄漏的甲烷，在四個月內把海水所含的甲烷含量降到了漏油事件前的水平。
Follow-up cruises in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was plugged found that microorganisms consumed all of the excess methane, reducing levels to background within about four months of the start of the spill, according to findings published recently。
“真是讓人吃驚，”課題研究的帶頭人，得克薩斯大學的約翰·凱瑟勒在《科學》雜誌上這樣寫道，“我們本來是認爲仍舊有很多泄漏出來的甲烷在那裏的，可事實是甲烷都消失了。”
“It was remarkable," said John Kessler of Texas A&M University in College Station, lead author of the study, in Science. "We had gone out there assuming that there would be plenty of methane still there and the fact was that it was all gone."
甲烷吞噬微生物在科學已知的微生物族羣裏是佔比最大的。團隊探測到的氧氣水平只能解釋爲甲烷的完全的被吞噬。這樣的證據證實了是微生物使得泄漏的甲烷消失的。凱瑟勒說。“對於原油泄漏來說，這消息不錯”，特別是甲烷是“深水地平線”鑽井平臺泄漏原油的最大組成部分。
Methane-consuming microbes comprised the highest proportion researchers had ever seen in the overall microbial community, and the oxygen levels the team measured could only be explained by complete consumption of the methane. This evidence supported the idea that it was microbes that made the methane disappear, Kessler said."For the oil spill, it was a rather good story," he said, especially since methane was the largest component of the Deepwater Horizon spill。
海面以下有大量的甲烷，一種就可以含有所有陸地的化石燃料兩倍的碳。比如說煤炭，石油和天然氣，包括永遠也不可能開採的那部分。甲烷是一種強有力的溫室氣體，是二氧化碳對溫度升高效果的25倍。
There are massive amounts of undersea methane. One type alone may hold double the carbon of all of the terrestrial fossil fuel, such as coal, oil and natural gas, including stores that could never be recovered. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, contributing 25 times more toward warming than carbon dioxide, kilogram for kilogram over a century。
凱瑟勒表示，在地質學歷史上水下的甲烷釋放曾發生過，有時是噴發，有時是千萬年地絲絲泄漏。並且氣象學家已經表示一種大量的水下和甲烷結合的物質——像冰一樣的被稱爲“可燃冰”，會隨着大洋的變暖而變得可能融化而泄漏。
Underwater methane releases have occurred in geologic history, sometimes as big burps of gas and sometimes as seeps lasting hundreds or thousands of years, Kessler said. Also, climate scientists have suggested that releases of vast stores of one type of water-associated methane -- an ice-like form called methane clathrate -- could happen as warming oceans allow some of these to melt。
儘管團隊的發現表明甲烷吞噬微生物有潛在的吞噬大量泄漏的甲烷的可能。“但是我們不可能把這條規律應用到整個世界”。
While the team's findings suggest that methane-chomping microorganisms have the potential to consume large quantities of released methane, "We can't generalize these findings to the greater planet," he said。
