petroleum

The goal of the The Bering Strait Project’s International Ideas Competition this summer was to design a bridge or tunnel to connect Alaska to Russia. The purpose of the whole experiment? To bring different cultures together and to increase access to natural resources (Drill, baby, drill?).

The results, despite the seemingly outdated detente-ish rationale, were pretty fantastic.

A new study by the University of Alberta suggests that a massive undersea volcano eruption 93 million years ago was the source of much of the world’s oil.

Researchers Steven Turgeon and Robert Creaser were alerted to the prehistoric blast when they found specific levels of osmium isotopes (indicators of volcanic activity in sea water) in black shale rocks off the coast of South America and in the mountains of central Italy.