Oil From Space

South Korean crews are having a tough time with the 2.7 million gallons of oil that spilled from a supertanker last week.  The PICTURES, if you haven’t seen them, show a mix of filth, despair, and damage that scientists say could last a decade. Now, here’s one more image, taken from space.  Click on it to enlarge. The slick, spreading for close to a hundred miles along the Korean shoreline, was recorded by a European satellite called Envisat, from an altitude of about 500 miles.  It’s actually a radar image rather than a photo.  Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar can see at night and through clouds.  As the European Space Agency explains, "oil on the sea surface damps down smaller wind generated waves. It is these waves that reflect the radar signal…causing oil slicks to be seen as dark areas on an otherwise brighter sea." The largest spill ever remains the Amoco Cadiz, off the French coast in 1978.  The Exxon Valdez, banned from American waters by Congress after the spill in Alaska in 1989, was renamed the SeaRiver Mediterranean, and continued to sail until 2002. Oil companies maintain that major spills are rare, but concede that they’re still nasty business.