One of the year's most provocative pinup calendars features pictures that would be X-rated ... except that they're shot using X-rays. The German advertising agency Butter put together an X-ray-rated 2010 calendar to promote Eizo's high-precision displays for medical imaging. Butter's blurb notes that pinups are more often found in auto garages than medical offices. "Eizo breaks this taboo," Butter boasts. "This pinup calendar shows absolutely every detail."

The promotion made a splash on the Coloribus ad archive this month, and since then, the pinup pics have spread across the Internet like a Playboy centerfold. Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait discusses in depth how racy radiographs can get, and one of the folks at Metafilter went so far as to write Eizo an e-mail about the calendar's availability. The reply? Sorry, you can't get it here. "However, we appreciate the impact it has had on Eizo's U.S. brand recognition," the company wrote back.

Let's just hope this doesn't start a trend: We're already pushing the envelope when it comes to X-ray exposure as well as skeletal fashion models.

Managers of NASA's space shuttle program are seeking a shift in the launch schedule that would delay the fleet's final launch until February 2011 at the earliest.

The schedule shift would have the shuttle Discovery to lift off on Oct. 29 instead of Sept. 16, and schedule Endeavour's flight for no earlier than Feb. 28, 2011, rather than in November as previously scheduled. Managers asked for the shift this afternoon in a "Change of Launch" request issued to all invoved in those two flights, according to Jay Barbree, NBC News' Cape Canaveral correspondent.

Discovery is to deliver the Italian-built Leonardo logistics module to the International Space Station and install it as a permanent addition to the complex. Endeavour will bring up the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, an international physics experiment.

"These two flights will be the last for the space shuttle fleet unless a plan to launch space shuttle Atlantis on a full-up supply run a year from now is approved," Barbree says.

NASA is already getting Atlantis ready as a backup rescue shuttle in case something goes wrong during Endeavour's mission. Assuming that Atlantis isn't needed for an unprecedented rescue, NASA has been talking about using that shuttle and a minimal crew to deliver more supplies to the station in mid-2011. Members of Congress are likely to be amenable to that plan.

NASA public affairs officials said they could not comment on Barbree's report but noted that schedule changes have been under discussion for weeks. The factors that could contribute to a delay include the need to retrofit the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer for a longer stint on the space station, the potential for a space traffic jam involving Russian or Japanese supply craft, and the limited number of opportunities for launch due to unfavorable sun angles.

NASASpaceflight.com has been following the discussions over the space agency's shuttle manifest like a hawk, and we'll pass along any further information about the shuttle schedule as it becomes available.

Update for 6:30 p.m. ET: Space.com quotes Mike Curie, a spokesman at NASA Headquarters in Washington, as saying that the request for the schedule shift is still being reviewed, and that a final decision will be made July 1. "They just need a little bit more time to get some of the spare hardware ready to fly" on Discovery this fall, Curie said. He said such a delay could have a domino effect on Endeavour's later mission because of the turnaround time required between launches, plus the launch limitations in the timeframe between November and February.

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• The Onion: Eons of evolution somehow produce Mitch
• The Space Review: SpaceShipOne, government one?
• New Scientist: Stephen Hawking on God and physics
• N.Y. Times: Cold, dark and teeming with life
• Spaceflight Now: This Week in Space
• YouTube: Star Trek Tik Tok

Anthropologists say they have discovered the 3.6 million-year-old partial skeleton of a creature that came from the same species as Lucy, but was 400,000 years older and at least as good at walking upright. Their analysis suggests that upright walking, the trademark trait for humans and their extinct kin, goes back further in time than some might have assumed.

This skeleton, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has a much longer name than Lucy: It was dubbed Kadanuumuu, which means "big man" in Ethiopia's Afar language. Like the 3.3 million-year-old Lucy skeleton, Kadanuumuu was found in the East African country's Afar region, and shares the species name Australopithecus afarensis.

Australopiths are fossil species that share some traits with chimpanzees - for instance, protruding faces and small brains - but share other traits with humans. Most importantly, their skeletons appear to have been built for upright walking. Arizona State University paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, who discovered Lucy back in 1974, said the latest discovery adds to a "treasure trove" of hundreds of australopith fossils from East Africa.

"It's like the El Dorado of paleoanthropology," he told me.

Piecing together the evidence
The first bone of Kadanuumuu's skeleton was found in 2005 in the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region, about 30 miles north of where Lucy was discovered. Over the three years that followed, more than 30 additional bones were unearthed and pieced together for analysis.

CMNH / PNAS

Elements of the partial australopith skeleton known as Kadanuumuu are arranged here anatomically.

The head of the research team, Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, told me that Kadanuumuu's skeleton was clearly made for walking, based on measurements of bones including the limbs, clavicle and shoulder blade, the rib cage and the pelvis. In fact, its arrangement was better-suited for upright walking than Lucy's, even though it came from an earlier time in evolutionary history. The key measurement indicated that Kadanuumuu's lower limbs were more elongated than Lucy's - which would make walking easier.

When Lucy was found, scientists thought her species was in the midst of a transition from tree-climbing to upright walking, but Kadanuumuu's larger skeleton suggests that the transition was already made hundreds of thousands of years earlier. (Haile-Selassie and his colleagues assume that Kadanuumuu was male, based on his size as well as the configuration of his pelvis.)

"There is good grounds that advanced humanlike walking actually evolved long before people thought," Haile-Selassie said.

So why did Lucy seem less-suited for upright walking? Haile-Selassie says it's because she was exceptionally small. Over the past 35 years, other specimens of Australopithecus afarensis have been found that suggested a body size larger than Lucy, and even larger than Kadanuumuu. "This individual is among the largest, but not the largest of all the specimens that we've found so far," Haile-Selassie said.

Kadanuumuu is thought to have stood 5 to 5½ feet tall, while Lucy stood only 3½ feet tall. That's not unusual: Anthropologists have found that A. afarensis exhibited significant size differences between the male and the female of the species, a quality known as sexual dimorphism. The diminutive stature of Lucy, which is still the most complete australopith skeleton found to date, may have initially led some scientists down the wrong path, Haile-Selassie said. "Most of the misinterpretations were largely based on the size of Lucy and her sex," he told me.

Findings fit in with ancient footprints
If the conclusions made by Haile-Selassie and his colleagues are correct, the saga of how we became human is much more ancient than some might have thought. But in fact, the conclusions are consistent with another famous find, the 1976 discovery of the Laetoli footprints in Tanzania. Those prints, which were preserved in volcanic ash 3.6 million years ago, led scientists to suggest that upright walking was mastered well before Lucy's time. "What we have now is the skeletal evidence to complement those footprints," Haile-Selassie said.

Johanson agreed. "This supports much of what we've known before" about the ability of australopiths to walk upright, he told me. He's not fully convinced, however, that Kadanuumuu was significantly better-built for walking than Lucy was. "I'm not quite sure they really have enough to say that the lower limb is elongated," he said.

All this could lead anthropologists to look further back for the origins of upright walking. Perhaps Australopithecus anamensis, which lived in East Africa between 4.2 million and 3.9 million years ago, was the species that picked up the trick. Perhaps it all started with Ardipithecus ramidus, which is thought to have split its time between the trees and the ground in Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago (though there's some controversy over that claim).

That doesn't mean Australopithecus afarensis is out of the spotlight when it comes to studying human origins. Johanson said Lucy and her kin provide an "important reference for assessing other hominid species," in large part because so many specimens have been found over such a wide span of evolutionary time. Going forward, paleoanthropologists may well turn to Lucy, Kadanuumuu and other members of the species to unravel the deeper secrets of ancient human development.

"You can begin to look at the minutiae of microevolution over time," Johanson said, "which is where we're heading."

More on the human origin story:

• Cleveland Museum of Natural History: All about Lucy's great-grandfather
• Cleveland Plain Dealer: Human ancestors walked 3.6 million years ago
• National Science Foundation: Famed hominid Lucy no longer alone
• CMNH video: Yohannes Haile-Selassie recounts the discovery
• Neanderthal DNA lives on ... in some of us
• Fossils shake up our family tree
• Science star of the year: Ardi
• Lessons from Lucy

In addition to Haile-Selassie, the authors of "An Early Australopithecus Afarensis Postcranium From Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia" include Bruce M. Latimer, Mulugeta Alene, Alan L. Deino, Luis Gilbert, Stephanie M. Melillo, Beverly Z. Saylor, Gary R. Scott and C. Owen Lovejoy.

This report was last updated at 9 p.m. ET.

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The organizers of a $10 million contest for super-efficient cars are bringing two dozen teams back to a Michigan racetrack this week for the second round of trials. And this time, they're keeping score. You can keep track of the scores yourself during the Knockout round of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize.

This won't be like the typical auto race, where the first one across the finish line is the winner, no matter how much fuel is burned. These cars also have to satisfy standards for fuel efficiency, range, emissions and marketability. The key requirement is that the cars get 100 miles per gallon of gas or its equivalent (MPGe). They can run on gasoline, or biofuel, or all-electric power - and the organizers have set up a formula for calculating how much electricity is equivalent to a gallon of gas. The setup is laid out in the X Prize Foundation's contest guidelines.

Most of the cars that have come to the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich., survived the initial Shakedown tests that were conducted at the same track in April and May. Two European teams missed out on the Shakedown because of the air-traffic jam created by the Icelandic ash cloud. Seven other teams couldn't satisfy all the Shakedown requirements last month but were kept in the competition. Those teams were given makeup exams last week, and this week they'll find out if they can move on to the Knockout stage.

The competition is broken up into two classes of vehicles, "mainstream" four-seaters and "alternative" two-seaters, with Progressive's $10 million purse shared equally between those classes. During the Knockout stage's on-track tests, the mainstream X Prize cars will have to prove they can hit 67 MPGe, two-thirds of the ultimate goal. They'll also have to go for 134 miles without refueling - again, two-thirds of the ultimate goal of a 200-mile range. The two-seaters have the same mileage standard to meet, and they'll have to go 67 miles without refueling. Eventually the alternative cars will have to demonstrate a range of, you guessed it, 100 miles.

The first round of on-track tests didn't result in any official rankings of the contestants, but this time around, tallies will be kept for fuel efficiency, speed and the other factors that will be weighed to decide the winner. The X Prize Foundation has created a "Competition Tracker" that will put many of those metrics online as soon as they're available. There's also a leader board and team-by-team breakdowns. This YouTube video previews all the features coming to the Automotive X Prize website.

Who are the favorites?
All of the cars that meet the minimum requirements can go on to the final round of on-track tests, but the scores should reveal which teams are the favorites and which are the dark horses. So who are the favorites? That depends on what your definition of the word "favorite" is.

The ZAP Alias has risen to the top as the most stylish of the X Prize entrants, based on an unscientific online poll being conducted as part of the "Fan Favorite Sweepstakes." This contest is designed to reward the fans rather than the automotive teams: The more often you vote, the greater your chances of winning a drawing that offers $3,000 and an X Prize team jacket as the grand prize. Future stages of the contest will focus on the most innovative, most practical and most desirable cars.

The Alias has the added attraction of being driven by Al Unser Jr., who has two Indy 500 wins under his belt and belongs to a legendary race-driving family. He told The Associated Press that the X Prize could help ultra-efficient cars become mainstream in his generation. "It's not about speed, it's about humanity, and that's why I'm involved," he said.

Another favorite would have to be the Edison2 team, backed by Virginia real-estate developer Oliver Kuttner. All four of Edison2's Very Light Car entrants qualified for the Knockout stage, including two-seat as well as four-seat versions. Last month, just before accepting an "Innovator of the Year" award in Lynchburg, Kuttner said that his team hit the 83 MPGe mark, and that 100 MPGe could be achieved once there rough spots in the car's design were smoothed out.

"It will take some doing," The News & Advance quoted Kuttner as saying. He's thinking about selling some of his property so he can devote more attention to the automotive project.

The West Philly Hybrid X team would have to be among the sentimental favorites as well. About two dozen students from West Philadelphia High School transformed a Ford Focus and a two-seat EVX GT kit car into a pair of hybrid electric vehicles that both made it through the initial Shakedown stage of the competition. Money raised for the project so far: $400,000.

"We're going to produce a car that gets 100 MPG and is safe and affordable on a budget that is ridiculously small compared with any of the car manufacturers," Simon Hauger, the math and science teacher who created the team years ago as an after-school project, told The Christian Science Monitor.

California-based Aptera would have to be counted as a favorite, if only because the company is already showing off cars that are far more efficient than 100 MPG. It's counting on an X Prize win (as well as a federal loan) to boost its fortunes, with production tentatively slated for next year. During the Shakedown trials, however, the Aptera 2e appeared to experience handling problems - and that led some to question how the car would rate in the final standings.

The cars that survive this month's Knockout stage will go on to the on-track finals next month in Michigan, and the top finishers will be subjected to a final round of lab tests in August. We'll know which super-efficient cars have finished in the money in time for the X Prize awards gala in September.

Here's a full rundown of the X Prize field going into the Knockout stage:

Mainstream Class Teams:
Mainstream Class vehicles must carry four or more passengers, have four or more wheels, and offer a 200-mile range.

Passed:
• American HyPower, Centennial, Colorado (Gasoline, Hydrogen)
• BITW Technologies, Palmyra, Indiana (Biodiesel)
• Edison2, Lynchburg, Virginia (E85)
• Liberty Motors Group, Botkins, Ohio (Gasoline)
• West Philly Hybrid X, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Gasoline)

Given conditional pass in May:
• Cornell 100+ MPG Team, Ithaca, N.Y. (Biodiesel). Listed as "eliminated" on X Prize website.
• Illuminati Motor Works, Virden, Illinois (Electric)

Given probationary pass in May:
• Enginer, Troy, Michigan (Gasoline + Steam)
• Global-E, Mandeville, Louisiana (Gasoline & Electric)

Alternative Class Teams:
Alternative Class vehicles must carry two or more passengers and allow for a 100-mile range.

Side-by-side seating:

Passed:
• amp, Blue Ash, Ohio (Electric)
• Aptera Motors, Vista, California (Electric)
• Edison2, Lynchburg, Virginia (E85)
• OptaMotive, San Jose, California (Electric)
• RaceAbout Association, Helsinki, Finland (Electric)
• Tata Motors Limited, Coventry, United Kingdom (Electric)
• Team EVX, Dallas, Texas (Electric)
• West Philly Hybrid X (EVX), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Biodiesel)
• ZAP, Santa Rosa, California (Electric)

Given conditional pass in May:
• Li-ion Motors at EV Innovations, Mooresville, North Carolina (Electric)

Given probationary pass in May:
• Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington (Gasoline)

Tandem seating:

Passed:
• Edison2, Lynchburg, Virginia (E85)
• Spira, Banglamung, Chonburi, Thailand (Gasoline)
• Tango (Commuter Cars), Spokane, Washington (Electric)
• X-Tracer Team Switzerland, Uster, Switzerland (Electric)

Given conditional pass in May:
• FVT Racing, Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada (Gasoline)

Shakedown tests in June, due to ash-related travel delays:
• K-Way MOTUS, Turin, Italy (Gasoline)
• TW4XP, Rosenthal, Germany (Electric)

Check out our slideshow of X Prize competitors from the Shakedown stage of the competition. We'll be passing along updates throughout the course of the Knockdown stage, which is due to run as late as June 30.

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Dwarf planets are big this month.

Writing for Space.com, Starry Night Education's Geoff Gaherty points out that two of the best-known dwarf planets, Pluto and Ceres, are in prime positions for viewing over the next couple of weeks. That's because they're reaching opposition - the point in the celestial scheme of things when a celestial body is directly opposite the sun, as seen from Earth. That's generally the best time to see any planetary object because it's relatively big and close.

"Big and close" is not a term you often hear applied to Ceres, and especially to Pluto. But if you have a chance to see these dwarfs, particularly through a telescope that's big and close, this is the time to do it.

Ceres comes into opposition tonight in the constellation Sagittarius, and should be visible as a magnitude-7.2 object. That's not bright enough to see with the naked eye, but a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope should bring it into view. Gaherty recommends using a star atlas or planetarium software to check the position, and looking for it a couple of nights later to make sure the object you were seeing has moved with respect to the background stars.

Pluto is more of a challenge: It comes into opposition on June 25, when the moon is nearly full and close to Pluto's position in the sky. Moreover, Pluto is much dimmer - magnitude 14, which is why it was such a challenge for Clyde Tombaugh to discover the darn thing 80 years ago. Tombaugh found it while poring over photographic plates made with a 13-inch telescope, and you'll need a telescope with a mirror about the same size to see it this month. You'll also want to dredge up a detailed finder chart. The easiest thing to do might be to buddy up with your local astronomy club and cajole somebody with a big scope into giving you a look.

Or you could wait until 2015, when the Dawn probe (heading for Ceres) and the New Horizons probe (heading for Pluto) are due to make their closest approaches. The New Horizons probe was awakened from its slumber a few weeks ago for a thorough checkup. Just this week, the spacecraft passed the halfway point between Earth's location at the time of its 2006 launch and Pluto's projected location for the 2015 flyby. Today NASA Science News published a nice update on New Horizons' progress and what lies ahead.

One quibble I have with Gaherty's report is that he defines a dwarf planet as "a solar system object which is too small to qualify as a planet." Actually, dwarf planets are indeed big enough to be planets, because they're massive enough to crush themselves into balls through self-gravity. That's the definition the International Astronomical Union came up with four years ago, during a contentious meeting in Prague. According to the IAU, the distinction is that a dwarf planet has not "cleared the neighborhood of its orbit." Does that mean dwarfs should be ruled out as "real" planets? The IAU says yes, but I've tried to make the case that Pluto and Ceres are just different types of planets. You can read all about it in my book, "The Case for Pluto."

Another dwarf planet, Haumea, came in for a shout-out this week when astronomers reported their estimates for the size and brightness of an icy object that was apparently struck off Haumea long ago. The cleverest part of the observation was that they made their estimates based on how the object, known as 2002 TX300, blocked out the starlight shining from behind it. I ran that research past Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, the leader of the team that discovered Haumea in 2005, and here's part of what he said in his e-mailed reply:

"It's a really pretty paper. The light curve from Maui is just jaw-dropping. People have been trying this sort of thing for a long, long time and everyone has wondered when the first one would pay off. ...

"It's pretty clear that objects this small have no viable resurfacing mechanism, so the only solution is that fresh water ice is able to retain its fresh appearance in spite of bombardment. We've basically had to accept that for a while now, with all of the small water-icy Haumea family members around. TX300 is on a nicely stable orbit, so it should be around pretty much until the end of the solar system. No comet fun, like Haumea itself might get to do.

"All in all, a fun paper. I love this sort of astronomy where it takes the work of many people and many small telescopes rather than the pounding by one big telescope. A nicely satisfying result, and the fact that the clincher came from the parking lot half way up the mountain on Mauna Kea is just fabulous!"

Check out "Mike Brown's Planets" to get his perspective on 2002 TX300 as well as Haumea and the other dwarf planets, plus the reasons why he thinks they should not be considered real planets. Later this year you'll also be able to read his book, "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" ... but please, read mine first.

Update for 3:15 p.m. ET June 20: More perspectives on dwarf planets may be on the way ... longtime Plutophile Laurel Kornfeld says she's working on a book titled "The Little Planet That Would Not Die: Pluto's Story." She references her project in the comments below and includes a link to her Live Journal blog. Mark Sykes, director of the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute and a member of the Dawn science team, has long talked of writing a book about Ceres, "The Littlest Planet." You can hear Sykes discuss the subject in this "Nova" podcast.

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

• Discovery News: Seventh-graders spot cave on Mars
• Space News: Lawmakers demand spaceflight plan
• N.Y. Times: Can kller viruses be things of beauty?
• Daily Mail: World crisis is coming in, um, 2014
• Cosmos: Robot gets opening-night jitters
• Economist: Getting power from thin air
• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Kings of Camouflage'
• AARTScope Blog: Carnival of Space 158

The good news is that more than a million gallons of leaking oil are now being captured every day from the broken Gulf of Mexico well. The not-so-good news is that about 400,000 gallons of that is being burned off spectacularly by an “environmentally friendly” device that’s not all that environmentally friendly. And the even less good news is that as much as a million gallons are still leaking into the Gulf every day. That situation won’t change for a couple of weeks.

But down the road, the news should improve again. More oil-recovery ships are on the way to site, and the operation that's billed as the ultimate fix for the leaking well - a weeks-long effort to drill relief wells 13,000 feet beneath the sea floor - is ahead of schedule. The drill bit working on the deepest relief well is just 200 feet from the pipe, in fact, but the most difficult and time-consuming part of the operation is just ahead.

Here's how things stand in what's shaping up as history's biggest and most expensive single well-capping operation:

Oil-capture system near capacity
The BP oil company hit a new record on Thursday for most oil captured over a 24-hour period: About 16,020 barrels (672,840 gallons) of oil were brought up from the deep through a cap-and-riser system for processing aboard the Discoverer Enterprise, along with millions of cubic feet of natural gas that was flared off. That's close to the estimated daily capacity of 18,000 barrels. Another 9,270 barrels (389,340 gallons) of oil went through a different line to the Q4000 rig. That's also near the estimated capacity of 10,000 barrels daily. But the Q4000 doesn't have any processing facilities available, so all that oil has to be burned off.

Can burning oil be 'environmentally friendly'?
At current crude-oil prices, that burn rate suggests that $700,000 worth of petroleum is going up in smoke every day. Admittedly, it's not your usual "smoke." BP is using in a smokeless atomizing burner that is supposed to be more environmentally friendly than the usual equipment. However, the EverGreen Burner still carries an environmental cost. A report from Total E&P UK, prepared for North Sea drilling operations, says high-efficiency green burners are the "safest option" for burning oil, but they nevertheless produce irritating ozone, sulfur dioxide, greenhouse gases and nitrous oxides. Fallout from the burn can drift several miles (kilometers) away, according to the environmental study. The burning is said to pose a "moderate risk" to the environment - and that's upsetting to some activists. But in BP's view, at least, the risk is outweighed by the benefit of keeping that much more oil out of the gulf while reinforcements make their way to the site.

BP

This diagram shows how the oil-capture operation should look by the end of June. Click on image for full-size PDF graphics.

More ships are on the way
Sometime in the next 10 days, the Helix Producer processing ship is due to arrive on the scene - and start pumping up 20,000 to 25,000 barrels (840,000 to 1.05 million gallons) of oil daily from yet another line connected to the Gulf of Mexico well's broken blowout preventer. That will provide a huge boost to the oil-capture capacity. It's even conceivable that BP could discontinue the Q4000 oil-burning operation, if the output from the broken well is toward the low end of the current estimates (35,000 barrels leaking per day). By mid-July, still more processing ships (including the Toisa Pisces and the Clear Leader) will be collecting oil. The capture capacity would rise to 60,000 to 80,000 barrels a day, which would cover even the most dire estimates to date. By mid-July, the cap on the blowout preventer and the hookups to the well would be replaced with equipment designed to weather the hurricane season.

BP

This diagram shows how the oil-capture operation should look by mid-July. Click on image for full-size PDF graphics.

Relief wells close in on target
For weeks, two drilling rigs have been carving new holes through the seafloor, with the aim of intersecting with the 7-inch-wide pipe for the original, now-broken well at a depth of around 18,000 feet (which includes 5,000 feet of water plus 13,000 feet of drilling beneath the seafloor). As of Thursday, the well-drilling operations had reached depths of about 16,000 feet and 9,800 feet. More significantly, the deepest drill bit is only 200 horizontal feet away from the side of the well pipe, BP executive Kent Wells said today. But it will take weeks more to finesse those final feet. "We're actually going to go right beside it - that's what takes the time," he said.

BP spokesman Robert Wine told me that the team directing the drill is using magnetic sensors to get a fix on exactly where that pipe is in relation to the bit. Once the bit drills into the pipe, heavy mud and cement will be pumped down the relief well. It's expected that the gunk will flow up the pipe, harden and block the broken well completely. Wine said the drilling is proceeding ahead of schedule so far, but BP is still targeting August as the expected completion date. If the first relief well doesn't do the trick, then the second relief well would serve as a backup. But it could take several attempts to hit the pipe in the right place, as it did during a similar well-killing operation in Australia last August.

"It's a little bit like driving a car from the back seat," oil-industry observer Bob Cavnar told NBC News. "You can reach the steering wheel but it's a little hard to control."

Meanwhile, the disaster continues
As bad as it sounds to spray burning oil and gas into the air, burning the oil on the surface of the gulf raises more questions. "There are a couple of concerns," said marine biologist John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA's oceans campaign director. "One is the pollution. ... But also, where there is enough oil to make it worth skimming, along with the oil you find algae and other materials that tend to cause marine life to aggregate around it."

The oil and the fires pose a double threat to marine species such as sea turtles and dolphins. "Greenpeace has observed some of this from the air," Hocevar said. But the main concern is the cumulative impact of the oil that's been fouling the gulf and Louisiana's wetlands for weeks. As of Thursday, rescuers have collected 639 oiled birds and released 42 back in the wild. More than 100 sea turtles have been rescued alive, but only three have been released. Hundreds more dead birds and turtles have been collected. It's not clear, however, what role the oil spill played in their death.

When I spoke with Hocevar over the phone, he was on his way back from a tour of the barrier islands around Grand Isle, La. He estimated that there were 25,000 dead hermit crabs washed up on the shore. "It's awful to see," he said. "One of the reasons this is troubling is that this means the sand is no longer able to sustain life."

Bottom line? Let's hope that the reinforcements traveling in high gear, that the burning downshifts soon, and that the hurricane season stays stuck in low gear.

More on the disaster in the gulf:

• NBC video: BP increases capture capacity
• Methane adds to oil-spill concerns
• Interactive: The physics of oil spills
• Live leak video could hurt Obama
• Full coverage from msnbc.com

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

Plain old seeds and woven baskets from Egyptian archaeological sites are helping scientists date the reigns of mighty pharaohs more precisely.

Figuring out the dates for 3,000 years of pharaonic history can sometimes be as much an art as a science. Scholars have to draw upon textual references and inscriptions, then match them up with ancient astronomical observations and chronologies from other cultures (which kept better records).

Traditional carbon-dating techniques tend to give age estimates within a range of 100 to 200 years for the pharaonic time frame, which the researchers behind the latest study say are "too imprecise" to resolve key questions about Egyptian chronology. However, Oxford University's Christopher Bronk Ramsey and his colleagues said their new method narrows that window to decades or years.

"For the first time, radiocarbon dating has become precise enough to constrain the history of ancient Egypt to very specific dates," Bronk Ramsey said in a news release from the journal Science, which published the findings in this week's issue. "I think scholars and scientists will be glad to hear that our small team of researchers has independently corroborated a century of scholarship in just three years."

How did they do it? They went to museums around the world - from Stockholm and Berlin, Paris and Brussels, London and New York - and were able to snag samples from different eras in Egyptian history. Egypt itself was out of bounds, because of restrictions on the export of antiquities. Mummies and their wrappings were ruled out as well, because the mummification process might have scrambled up the samples. The researchers also stayed away from charcoal and wood, because that material might have come from an earlier age.

The perfect samples turned out to be short-lived plant material - seeds, baskets, textiles, plant stems and fruit, which were harvested and used during a short period of time. The material also had to be linked to a particular pharaoh's reign. Even this type of material is highly valued by researchers, and museum curators needed some convincing to part with it. "Fortunately, we only needed samples that were about the same size as a grain of wheat," Bronk Ramsey said.

More than 200 samples were analyzed at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, and the carbon-14 decay dates were mapped against the chronologies for 37 pharaohs, starting with Djoser in the Old Kingdom and also including Khufu (whose tomb was placed in the Great Pyramid of Giza), Hatshepsut (one of Egypt's best-known female pharaohs), King Tut and Rameses II (widely thought to be the Pharaoh of the Book of Exodus ... or was that Amenhotep II?).

Some of the samples were excluded because they came back with dates that were hundreds or even thousands of years off, most likely due to contamination. But for the most part, the samples matched up well with the stories that scholars have slaved over. Egyptologist Ian Shaw's highly respected timeline of pharaonic reigns was used to fill out the gaps in the chronology.

The researchers say a few events may have occurred somewhat earlier than previously estimated on the basis of historical accounts: For example, the beginning of Djoser's reign was pegged at sometime between 2691 and 2625 B.C. The commonly accepted historical date is 2630 B.C., which is on the late side of that time window. As Nature's Richard Lovett points out, archaeologists have debated whether Egypt's New Kingdom (which includes Tut and his relatives) began in 1550 B.C. or 1539 B.C., and whether the Middle Kingdom began in 2055 B.C. or 2039 B.C. In both cases, the radiocarbon results favor the earlier dates.

But the interpretation of the radiocarbon results can get complex, as Bronk Ramsey explained in this e-mail exchange:

Cosmic Log: Because the slight discrepancy in dates seems to be systemic (consistently earlier based on radiocarbon data), what might the explanation be? Might there be a systemic factor in the carbon-dating process that puts the top of the curve consistently earlier, or are there selections of key dates (based on astronomical or other dating techniques) that throw things off systemically?

Bronk Ramsey: It depends on exactly what you mean here. Are you referring to the fact that the radiocarbon chronology is earlier than some of the historical chronologies? If so, I'd point out that the chronology is very similar to the consensus published by Shaw and for the New Kingdom. Our results for, e.g., Tutankhamun are both very precise and just where you would expect them to be.

If you are referring (as I suspect) to the fact that the radiocarbon dates lie, on average, just above the calibration curve in our fits, this is an issue that we investigated in some detail. This effect is also seen for material from the last few centuries (plant specimens taken by botanists in the 18th and 19th centuries). The reason for this is, we think, due to the fact that the amount of radiocarbon in the atmosphere varies in a regular way during the year. There is less in the winter and more in the summer. In Egypt, the plants in the Nile Valley tend to grow in the winter, when the floods come, and this means that the radiocarbon ratio is slightly lower than for plants in, for example, Northern Europe where the calibration data comes from. The effect of this is that the dates in Egypt are on average about 20 years older.

Q: Do you see any results that might actually lead to an archaeological reinterpretation? For example, are there some historical events (Akhenaten, Tut and the biblical Exodus) that take on a different context? In the past, there’s been a debate over exactly which pharaoh was the pharaoh mentioned in the Bible. Could this chronology shed any light on such questions?

A: I don't think so - as the chronology and exact nature of these events are hotly debated anyway. For the New Kingdom, our chronology is very similar to many of those derived from purely historical information. We do put the start of the New Kingdom at the early end of most widely accepted estimates - but still well after the radiocarbon-based date for the eruption of Santorini. For the Old Kingdom, our chronology also supports the previous early chronologies and seems to rule out other possibilities.

Q: Were there any specimens that showed evidence of being fakes or modern-era reproductions?

A: Some material did indeed turn out to be contemporary with the excavations themselves (19th or early 20th century) - and so were either inadvertently or intentionally added at that stage. There were no very modern samples.

Bronk Ramsey's reference to Santorini is of interest because that eruption (which may have given rise to the legends about Atlantis) is used as a guidepost to chronologies all over the ancient world. The researchers behind the latest study hope that their radiocarbon techniques can be used as a similar guidepost. Theoretically, you could take samples from the foodstuffs or woven goods that were found alongside an unidentified mummy and figure out where it fit in the Egyptian chronology.

In a commentary that was also published in Science, Hendrik Bruins of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev says the latest findings highlight a "vexing time difference" in estimates for the date of the Santorini eruption. The radiocarbon readings suggest that the eruption occurred around 1627 to 1600 B.C., while the accepted archaeological and historical record places the eruption around 1500 B.C., during the New Kingdom era.

"Major problems exist here in relation to the Santorini eruption between archaeological dating, radiocarbon dating and association between archaeological strata in the field and Egyptian historical chronology," Bruins said in a news release. Those problems will have to be resolved through further testing of ancient samples, not only from Egypt but from other archaeological sites in the region, Bruins said.

Isn't it typical that when one mystery about the ancient world is seemingly solved, another mystery immediately pops up?

More mysteries from Egypt:

• Tut gets an extreme makeover
• How the pharaohs were fed
• Another Egyptian mystery pops up
• Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites

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You'd expect SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk, to be happy about winning a $492 million contract from Iridium to launch 72 of its next-generation telecommunication satellites, in what he called "the biggest commercial launch deal in history."

"We won a competition against the rest of the world," the rocket company's 38-year-old CEO said today during a teleconference with journalists.

But Matt Desch, Iridium's CEO, sounds just as happy with the deal. "This is a totally new price point that hasn't been available in our industry," he told me. "I think in a couple of years this is going to look like the deal of the century."

It's beginning to look as if the successful maiden flight of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, just 12 days ago, marked the debut of more than just a launch vehicle: It may represent a dramatic turning point for the whole rocket business. Here are three indicators from the past few days:

• Congress has been skeptical about NASA's plan to give SpaceX and other commercial launch providers the lead role in resupplying the International Space Station after the shuttle fleet is retired - but in a letter sent to a colleague, influential Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., outlined a budget plan that acknowledges "we will soon turn to commercial space companies to deliver astronauts to the ISS." Nowhere in the letter does Nelson talk about having NASA resume its own Ares 1 rocket development program.

• The Commercial Spaceflight Federation said Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, which has already put up two inflatable space modules and is planning to launch the world's first commercial space station within the next five years, was joining the group as an executive member. The company's billionaire founder, Robert Bigelow, said in today's statement that his company was working with the Boeing Co. to develop a crew capsule for NASA astronauts called the CST-100. Bigelow also gave a big shout-out to SpaceX: "The unprecedented success of the Falcon 9's inaugural launch clearly demonstrates that it's possible to dramatically reduce the cost of human spaceflight operations."

• SpaceX announced that its Falcon 1e rocket - a less powerful, lower-cost variant of the Falcon 9 - would launch an Earth-observing satellite for Taiwan as early as 2013 from a Pacific launch site on Omelek Island in Kwajalein Atoll.

SpaceX isn't the only company launching rockets these days, though one might think so based on the pace of announcements being made over the past 12 days. The California-based company is actually due to receive less money from NASA than another up-and-coming launch provider, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences, for delivering goods to the space station. And through their United Launch Alliance venture, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are still the heavyweights in the U.S. launch industry.

But the introduction of a new player appears to be shaking up business as usual in the rocket biz. "SpaceX's Falcon 9 is the vehicle of choice, not just for NASA but for the commercial sector," Musk said. The Iridium deal means that more than half of the launches on SpaceX's schedule will be for commercial rather than government clients, he said.

Exactly how many launches will Iridium need? Neither Musk nor Desch would say, citing concerns about professional courtesy (for Musk) or competitive factors (for Desch). Each launch would put multiple Iridium NEXT satellites into 485-mile-high (780-kilometer-high) near-polar orbits, replacing Iridium's current phone-and-data constellation. The Falcon 9 rockets would lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California between 2015 and 2017.

SpaceX has said it offers fixed pricing of $49.5 to $56 million per Falcon 9 launch to low Earth orbit, which would work out to eight to 10 launches for Iridium. But Musk told me that financial formula might not necessarily hold true because of the multiple-satellite factor. How about nine launches with eight satellites each? "You're close," Desch told me, but not quite right. Hmm, maybe that's eight launches with nine satellites each?

Iridium

An artist's conception shows an Iridium NEXT satellite.

The Iridium NEXT deal feels a bit like deja vu all over again. In the 1990s, space entrepreneurs assumed they would benefit from a satellite telecom boom. Iridium, plus Teledesic and Globalstar, were expected to require so many launches that new entrants would find an easy toehold in the launch market. But the market for satellite phone services wasn't as lucrative as the companies thought, in part because of the rapid deployment of cell phone networks. Iridium was forced into bankruptcy in 1999.

Today, the restructured company is on solid financial footing, Desch said. "We focused on the 93 percent of the world that didn't have cell phone service," he told me. Iridium NEXT is the company's strategy for moving seamlessly from the current 72-satellite constellation to an upgraded voice-data network with lower rates and higher speeds.

Desch said the three big pieces required for the $2.9 billion Iridium NEXT project are now in place: financing with credit guarantees from Coface, satellites from Thales Alenia Space, and launch reservations from SpaceX. Desch said the contracts with SpaceX were signed even before the Falcon 9 launch, and SpaceX already has received its first down payment on the deal. But every successful SpaceX launch will give Desch more confidence that he made the right decision. He's happy to be in the position of seeing SpaceX send 24 Falcon 9 rockets into space before it's Iridium's turn, and he was particularly happy to see the first Falcon hit a "bull's-eye" in orbit 12 days ago.

"We were cheering louder than anyone else," Desch told me.

More tidbits about SpaceX and the deal:

• Iridium expects to enter into a contract with at least one more launch provider, but Musk said that was "more in the mode of a backup or a secondary." Desch said SpaceX could well end up launching all 72 of the Iridium NEXT satellites.

• Musk said SpaceX has "already started work on Vandenberg from the standpoint of environmental assessment," and he expected the California launch site would be ready for use "probably two years from now," at a cost of $40 million to $50 million.

• The Dragon test article that was put into orbit during the maiden Falcon 9 launch should stay up there for a year or two, and would then burn up during atmospheric re-entry, Musk said. A report in Space News hinted that SpaceX had a client for the first launch, but when I asked whether there was a classified project on board the spacecraft, Musk laughed and said, "I can neither confirm nor deny." Later, space journalist Irene Klotz asked again if there was any sort of client for the first launch. After a long pause, Musk said, "Uh, no."

• Musk said his engineering team was looking into why the Falcon 9's upper stage went into a roll and has narrowed the problem down to "probably the actuator." He also said that the team wasn't certain why the first stage didn't survive re-entry, but he vowed to continue his drive toward full rocket reusability. "We will never give up. Never. Ever," he said.

• The next Falcon 9 mission is supposed to test a functional Dragon capsule in orbit, during the first official demonstration flight for NASA. Musk said that launch would occur "toward the end of summer." Space News has quoted NASA's Valin Thorn as saying the flight would be in late August.

• Musk declined to boil down the secret behind SpaceX's recent successes into a short sound bite - but he did say the company was striving to exemplify the "Silicon Valley operating system and DNA, as applied to space transport." Musk, who made his fortune in the dot-com industry, said he saw SpaceX as a departure from the rocket business as usual and "closer to an Intel, or Google, or Apple."

Is SpaceX's approach silicon-smart, or just plain lucky? For more perspectives on the SpaceX-Iridium deal, check out Clark Lindsey's RLV and Space Transport News. And as always, feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Correction for 6 p.m. ET June 17: Orbital Sciences is based in Virginia, not Maryland. Sorry about getting that wrong...

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• Archaeology: Lasers in the jungle
• The Daily Grail: Return of the Djedi
• Discovery: Zap of UV light may have triggered life
• Cracked: Six reasons space travel will always suck

Just in time for World Cup action, researchers have developed a rating system for soccer players that relies on network analysis of the passing game — but doesn't count goals at all.

"You could think maybe you're missing the most important piece of information," Luis Amaral, a chemical and biological engineering professor at Northwestern University, admitted during an interview. But it turns out that the ranking system that he and his colleagues came up with closely matched the general consensus from sports writers, coaches, managers and other experts.

The best part is that you should be able to judge for yourself by matching ratings on Amaral's website with actual World Cup results.

The rating system, detailed today in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, was put through a test run using performance data from the 2008 European Cup tournament. During high-profile events like the EuroCup, or the World Cup, the official scorers provide gobs of data about how the players are doing. "They will tell you how many shots a player took, how many were on goal, how many passes they made, who took the passes," Amaral told me.

To judge how different players stack up, soccer-watchers (including fantasy soccer leagues) use a variety of weighted formulas that include starts, goals, saves (for goalkeepers only), assists, penalty cards, shots and misses. But chance and other hard-to-quantify factors play a big role in whether the goal is actually scored, Amaral said. You don't need to look any further than the way the U.S. team got its game-tying goal during last week's World Cup match against England to see how true that is.

"You can count how many goals someone scores, but if a player scores two goals in a match, that's amazing," the professor said in a Northwestern news release. "You can really only divide two or three goals or two or three assists among, potentially, 11 players. Most of the players will have nothing to quantify their performance at the end of the match."

Amaral and his colleagues took a different approach. "What the teams are trying to do is gain possession of the ball, and once they gain possession, they try to keep possession of the ball until they get an opportunity to make a shot and score a goal," he said. So they looked at a soccer team as if it were a computer network.

The researchers set up a computer model using statistics about the flow of passes between different members of each team, as well as information about their ability to take a shot at the goal.

Amaral et al. / PLoS

This diagram looks at soccer players as nodes on a network during the three knockout-phase matches for Spain's team in the 2008 EuroCup tournament.

"We looked at the way in which the ball can travel and finish on a shot," Amaral said. "The more ways a team has for a ball to travel and finish on a shot, the better that team is. And the more times the ball goes through a given player to finish in a shot, the better that player performed."

The computer model was designed to give one point to everyone who was involved in a sequence of passes. Then the model was run a million times to see how the average point totals for a given "network" of players stacked up. Finally, the results were normalized so that the average player was given a rating of zero. The good players ended up with positive ratings, and the not-so-good players got negative ratings.

The team results matched the outcome of the EuroCup tournament, with Spain coming out on top. Eight of the top 20 players in the rating system also ended up on the 20-player "best of tournament" team. That's not perfect, but it's much better than what would be predicted by chance. For what it's worth, Spain's Xavi Hernandez scored the highest for an individual match performance (3.0), while his teammate Sergio Ramos turned in the best overall tournament score (2.1).

Amaral, a native of Portugal who spent long hours during his childhood debating which soccer players were the best, said the rating system could be applied to performances in different places or at different times - for example, to back up your point of view in the Pele-vs.-Maradona argument. "I don't know the answer to that one," Amaral told me, but the computer model could tell the tale if anyone was willing to go back and document the passing statistics.

"If you ask people to compare a performance today with a performance from 10 years ago, you start to romanticize performances," Amaral said. "There are always biases, but our algorithm has no biases."

The rating technique could be used in other walks of life as well: For example, businesses could use the method to evaluate the performances of individual employees working on a team project.

So how does the method stack up for the World Cup? When we spoke, Amaral and his colleagues had run the numbers only for the Argentina-Nigeria match. Argentina's Lionel Messi emerging as the top performer.

"The preliminary result that my colleague told me is a 2.5 [for Messi]. That would be in the top five when compared to the EuroCup," Amaral said. "This was a very, very good performance. What we found in the EuroCup is that many of the teams kept a steady level of performance. If the same is true for the World Cup, the first few matches could be a very strong indicator of how these teams are going to be doing."

Check in with the Amaral Lab webpage for World Cup rankings as the tournament continues. Amaral's colleagues in the study published by PLoS ONE, "Quantifying the Performance of Individual Players in a Team Activity," include Jordi Duch and Joshua Waltzman. We'll revisit the topic in a post-Cup posting.

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Researchers have confirmed the existence of six new planets beyond our solar system, with hundreds of other new worlds potentially waiting in the wings.

The latest planetary prospects come from two different planet-hunting probes: the European CoRoT satellite and NASA's Kepler spacecraft. CoRoT's science team has confirmed the detection of 15 planets so far, including CoRoT-7b, a "lava planet" that's only five times as massive as Earth but traces a hellishly close orbit around its parent star.

The six new planets are all bigger than CoRoT-7b, but reflect the wide diversity that planetary scientists are finding as they sift through an avalanche of data. There's even a brown dwarf in the bunch - a celestial object that's considered too big to be a planet, but too small to be a fully functioning star.

"Each of these planets is interesting in its own right, but what is really fascinating is how diverse they are," Oxford University's Suzanne Aigrain, a co-investigator on the research team, said in a university news release about the discoveries. "Planets are intrinsically complex objects, and we have much to learn about them yet."

The head of the CoRoT exoplanet program, Magali Deleuil of France's Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, said "every discovery of an extrasolar planetary system is a new piece in the puzzle of how these systems do form and evolve."

Here's the full rundown from the Oxford website:

CoRoT-8b: the smallest in this batch: At about 70 percent of the size and mass of Saturn, CoRoT-8b is moderately small among the previously known transiting exoplanets. Its internal structure should be similar to that of ice giants, like Uranus and Neptune, in the solar system. It is the smallest planet discovered by the CoRoT team so far after CoRoT-7b, the first transiting Super-Earth.

CoRoT-10b: the eccentric giant: The orbit of CoRoT-10b is so elongated that the planet passes both very close to and very far away from its star. The amount of radiation it receives from the star varies tenfold in intensity, and scientists estimate that its surface temperature may increase from 250 to 600 degrees Celsius, all in the space of 13 Earth-days (the length of the year on CoRoT-10b).

CoRoT-11b: the planet whose star does the twist: CoRoT-11, the host star of CoRoT-11b, rotates around its axis in 40 hours. For comparison, the sun’s rotation period is 26 days. It is particularly difficult to confirm planets around rapidly rotating stars, so this detection is a significant achievement for the CoRoT team.

CoRoT-12b, 13b and 14b: a trio of giants: These three planets all orbit close to their host star but have very different properties. Although CoRoT-13b is smaller than Jupiter, it is twice as dense. This suggests the presence of a massive rocky core inside the planet. With a radius 50 percent larger than Jupiter’s (or 16 times larger than Earth’s), CoRoT-12b belongs to the family of "bloated hot Jupiters," whose anomalously large sizes are due to the intense stellar radiation they receive. On the other hand, CoRoT-14b, which is even closer to its parent star, has a size similar to Jupiter’s. It is also massive, 7.5 times the mass of Jupiter, which may explain why it is less puffed up. Such very massive and very hot planets are rare, CoRoT-14b is only the second one discovered so far.

CoRoT-15b: the brown dwarf: CoRoT-15b’s mass is about 60 times that of Jupiter. This makes it incredibly dense, about 40 times more so than Jupiter. For that reason, it is classified as a brown dwarf, intermediate in nature between planets and stars. Brown dwarfs are much rarer than planets, which makes this discovery all the more exciting.

CoRoT and Kepler use essentially the same technique to detect planets: They look for patterns in the subtle periodic dips of light when a relatively dark planet passes in front of the disk of its parent star. This method requires a spacecraft to stare for months or years at the same patch of sky, in order to build up a record of the light variations. To confirm that the variations are really caused by the transit of a planet, astronomers need to see the pattern repeat itself at least three times.

Thus, in order to confirm the detection of an Earthlike planet in an Earthlike orbit around a sunlike star, you'd need to conduct at three years' worth of observations. It's easier to find bigger planets than smaller ones, and it's easier to find planets that whirl in tight orbits around their stars.

Hundreds of new worlds
Before CoRoT and Kepler were launched, astronomers said they expected to find hundreds of new worlds, including the first exoplanets as small as Earth. And based on this week's first big data dump from the Kepler mission, those astronomers won't be disappointed. Today the team said it has found 706 promising prospects for exoplanet discoveries so far. That's a far longer list than the current lineup of 460 extrasolar planets reported to date.

"We have the potential of readily doubling the number of known planets, once we have gone through the process of winnowing these signals down," Charlie Sobeck, deputy project manager for the Kepler mission at NASA's Ames Research Center, told me. "The key word in that is 'potential.'"

The Kepler team said the prospects include "viable exoplanet candidates with sizes as small as that of Earth to larger than that of Jupiter." Most of them are the size of Neptune or smaller, and five of the target star systems appear to have multiple planets orbiting around them, the team said.

Sobeck stressed that these prospects still had to go through an arduous confirmation process to rule out the possibility that they were false positives. The signals from Kepler have to be double-checked by other telescopes that use different methods of planet detection. (This interactive explains how the different methods work.)

The rising and falling signals may have been caused by other phenomena that Kepler picked up by mistake while it was staring at a particular star. For example, astronomers already know that Kepler is spotting some mutually eclipsing binary stars in the background. An entire study has been written up about 1,832 eclipsing binaries observed by the probe during the first 44 days of operation. "They're more common than anticipated," Sobeck said.

The data debate
To date, the Kepler team has officially announced the detection of only five exoplanets. Many more will likely come next February, when the team's next big reveal is scheduled. In preparation for that event, the astronomers on the Kepler team have held back the data about 400 of the best prospects from public release. Information about the other 306 potential planetary systems was posted to the publicly available Kepler data archive today.

The fact that some of the signals are being held back, even though it's generally NASA policy to release data in a year, has sparked a debate in astronomical circles. That debate bubbled up into public view on Nature.com and in The New York Times. "Kepler was constructed and launched with a comparatively large sum of money for a project that is run by a single team," Ben Oppenheimer, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, told the Times. "At this point, I have to say I do think they are being far too restrictive."

Kepler's team members said they were facing a special case, due to delays in launching the $600 million mission and the relatively short April-to-September observing season. They struck a deal with NASA to get some additional time to do the double-checking they felt was needed for their own research. "We'd like to finish that process," Sobeck said.

The data debate raises interesting questions about how widely and how quickly scientists in charge of high-profile experiments should distribute their raw scientific readings. Once they're confirmed, the revelations from Kepler (and CoRoT as well) could revolutionize the search for alien Earths.

"The Kepler observations will tell us whether there are many stars with planets that could harbor life, or whether we might be alone in our galaxy," the mission's principal investigator, William Borucki of NASA Ames, said today in a news release from the space agency.

How would you feel if you spent a decade preparing for a space mission and gathering the data - only to see the crowning discovery made by a number-cruncher piggybacking on your database?

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Zecharia Sitchin says he's willing to stake everything he's written about alien astronauts on DNA tests that could be performed on the 4,500-year-old remains of a high-ranking Sumerian woman. It's the latest - and possibly the last - cause celebre for a fringe celebrity.

The way Sitchin sees it, the long-dead woman's genome could contain the signature of the gods and demigods he's been talking about since 1976.

The 90-year-old Sitchin was born in the Soviet Union, grew up in Palestine and now lives in a New York apartment. He has written 14 books about way-out subjects, starting out with claims that a "12th planet" named Nibiru swung past Earth thousands of years ago and dropped off alien visitors who were looked upon as gods by Middle Eastern cultures. Sitchin says these aliens were the Annunaki mentioned in Sumerian scriptures, and the Nephilim mentioned in the Bible.

Needless to say, Sitchin's ideas - like those of another ancient-astronaut author, Erich von Däniken - have been roundly scorned by the scientific community. But now Sitchin is asking that very community to help him with the mystery of Queen Puabi.

Puabi's remains were unearthed from a tomb in present-day Iraq during the 1920s and 1930s, roughly the same time frame as the discovery and study of Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt. Forensic experts at London's Natural History Museum determined that Puabi was about 40 years old when she died, and probably reigned as queen in her own right during the First Dynasty of Ur. Sitchin contends she was something more than a queen - specifically, that she was a "nin," a Sumerian term which he takes to mean "goddess."

He suggests that Puabi was an ancient demigod, genetically related to the visitors from Nibiru. What if these aliens tinkered with our DNA to enhance our intelligence - the biblical tree of knowledge of good and evil - but held back the genetic fruit from the tree of eternal life? Does the story of Adam and Eve actually refer to the aliens' tinkering? The way Sitchin sees it, the ancient myths suggest that "whoever created us deliberately held back from us a certain thing - fruit, genes, DNA, whatever - not to give us health, longevity, and the immortality that they had. So what was it?"

Sitchin wants scientists to test the DNA from Puabi's remains, just in case it holds the answer. "Maybe by comparing her genome with ours, we would find out what are those missing genes that they deliberately did not give us," he told me. "Maybe. I cannot guarantee that, but maybe."

Inner Traditions / Bear & Co.

Zecharia Sitchin says "There Were Giants Upon the Earth" will be his last book.

That kind of talk has led Sitchin's critics to label him a pseudo-historian, a fraud or just plain wrong. But that kind of talk has also sold millions of books since the '70s. Sitchin's latest, "There Were Giants Upon the Earth," recaps all the theories he's built up over the years - the unorthodox interpretations of ancient scriptures, the planet Nibiru's eccentric travels and the existence of a superhuman space society that hopped over to our planet and sparked the ancient myths.

Sitchin claims that the ultimate fate of all those theories would be decided by the DNA tests he wants done on Queen Puabi's remains. "I'm really risking my life's work on this outcome," he said.

Michael Heiser, for one, isn't buying it. He's a scholar in biblical languages who maintains the "Sitchin Is Wrong" website, and he thinks Sitchin's DNA challenge to genetic researchers is just a lot of bluster.

"He wants them to search for something when they don't know what it looks like," Heiser told me. "It's not as if we have a known sample of alien DNA. How do you know when you sequence something, because junk DNA doesn't qualify. What's a hit? If they find anything where they say, 'Hey, we don't know what this does,' he would latch onto that. ... He would zero in on the gaps and the ambiguities."

On his website, Heiser provides in-depth discussions of the objections that have long been raised about Sitchin's writings: that the one-time journalist misreads the ancient texts, that he takes ancient myths as honest-to-goodness history and builds an outlandish cosmology around them, that he indulges in pop-culture paleo-babble.

Inner Traditions / Bear & Co.

Zecharia Sitchin.

Sitchin has a different perspective, of course. The way he sees it, modern science is proving him right. "In field after field, all my conclusions - including some that seemed out of place - are being corroborated," he told me. "If you go to my website you'll see entry after entry about how a new discovery has corroborated my claims."

For example, astronomers have found that distant worlds can trace orbits far more eccentric and skewed than they expected. There's even talk that an unseen giant planet may be lurking on the edge of our own solar system. All this has made Sitchin feel more confident in claiming that the planet Nibiru, home of the Annunaki, really does exist.

You won't find any top-drawer scientists willing to pick up on Sitchin's suggestions, but that's exactly the kind of person he's looking for right now. The Natural History Museum says that any request to conduct DNA tests on Puabi's remains would have to come from "a researcher with recognized experience and skills in this field, or with access to the necessary facilities required to undertake ancient DNA analysis."

Sitchin told me he's checking with various research groups, including some of the researchers behind last month's Neanderthal DNA findings and the DNA analysis conducted on 4,000-year-old human hair from Greenland. "I'm offering from my minuscule family foundation to fund this, by the way, so I'm not asking them for money," Sitchin told me. "And I'm not asking them to say Sitchin is right or wrong. I'm asking them to tell the museum in London this is too important not to do it. And that's where it stands."

It probably wouldn't be right for researchers to take Sitchin's money - but a TV documentary about the glittering riches of ancient Ur, climaxing with experts doing forensic tests on the remains of ancient royalty? Hey, if it worked for the Discovery Channel with "Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen," ... for the History Channel with "Coroners Report: King Tut" ... and for the National Geographic Channel with "The Real Cleopatra" ... well, it should work with Queen Puabi as well.

Here are edited excerpts from my interview with Sitchin, followed by the statement I received via e-mail from the Natural History Museum:

Cosmic Log: Studying Puabi's remains would be important whether or not something extremely peculiar is found. But if something extremely peculiar is not found? If they find that the DNA sequence for these remains is pretty ordinary?

Zecharia Sitchin: Then I will look foolish. I’m really risking my life’s work on this outcome.

Q: So you feel as if this is something that would definitely disprove your view of who these Sumerians were?

A: Well you can't really "disprove." If somebody says "I did not see so-and-so," it doesn't disprove. But probably many will say it disproves my whole life's thesis. I'm so convinced that when you find the skeletal remains of this female with three cylinder seals, one of which specifically names her as "Nin" … there’s no doubt in my mind. I’m willing to risk everything from 40 years of writing and publishing on this. Now whether I could be proven right, I don’t know.

Inner Traditions / Bear & Co.

Gold jewelry that was found next to the head of Queen Puabi was apparently assembled into an ornate headdress, as shown on this mannequin.

The results may say, we don’t find anything interesting. Maybe a difference here and there, but it looks like our DNA. I’m sure people will then say, 'OK, Sitchin’s stature has collapsed.' Whether this means so or not, I don’t know. But listen, I’m 90 years old, so what the heck. This is my final book.

This is really my challenge to the scientific community. ... I’m really challenging science to corroborate the bibles. If you want it stated in one sentence, that’s what I’m doing. Science, with its ability to do whole-genome comparisons, now has the unique opportunity to test those ancient bones. Maybe Sitchin is right. I’m not asking them to undertake it to prove me right. But I think maybe if I am right, it opens such vistas of understanding in religion, in history, in genetics, in every field, that it ought to be done.

Q: A lot of people have talked about how you’re a pseudo-historian, or you have an incorrect understanding of how the Sumerian language, how the cuneiform inscriptions should be interpreted. Does this sort of criticism make you rethink some of the things you’ve said?

A: Absolutely not. First of all, I think anybody has the right to disagree with me. If I say that this sentence means this and that, you may say, ‘No, it does not say this and that.'

There is one classic instance where I was going to the meeting of the American Oriental Society. ... I was shocked, because there was an assertion about this and that, I don't know, Sumeria and Mesopotamia. The speaker had 10 minutes, and then there are five or 10 minutes with questions and answers. Well, the speaker gets up and asserts that a certain Sumerian word may have another meaning in addition to the accepted usual meaning. The guy is afraid to overstep boundaries, so he qualifies what he says. "Well, maybe I'm suggesting..." He qualifies in 10 different ways.

He has his 10 minutes, and then there are questions and answers. Somebody gets up and calls the speaker by his first name, so they must know each other. "Jim, I'm amazed at your stupidity. How could you even come up with this notion that this word has this second meaning that you're talking about?" And he runs down the poor fellow, insulting him, and that's it. The guy doesn't have a chance to answer because there's one more question and his time is up.

So what's the point? One guy thinks the word may have a second meaning, and the other guy calls him names for it. So what's one to do?

Q: Are there areas where you see that new evidence has come out and the view that you’ve had has changed through the years?

A: No, on the contrary, because of the evidence that is coming mostly from other fields. Let me give you an example. ... The planet Nibiru is listed in countless astronomical texts from Mesopotamia. The question was debated by scholars already in the 19th century, what planet is it? One school said, it’s another name for Mars. And another school said, it’s another name for Jupiter. Each group had their reasons to say it wasn’t Jupiter, or it wasn’t Mars. And I basically agreed with both of them: those who said it could not be Mars and those who said it could not be Jupiter.

So finally I came up with my solution, that it’s one more planet with a great elliptical orbit, etc., etc. So one of the criticisms that came out when “The 12th Planet,” my first book, was published in 1976 was that such an elliptical orbit is not possible, because in time, either the orbit would become more rounded and the planet would orbit closer to the sun, or it would be thrown out of the solar system. But to continue in an elliptical orbit, orbit after orbit after orbit, is not possible.

Now, I subscribe to all the magazines – Nature, Science, Archaeology – I’m keeping myself up to date on scientific discoveries. So now that we know about so-called extrasolar planets, the verdict is that an elliptical orbit is the norm. So a few months ago, there was a program [on TV] titled "Curse of the Yo-Yo Planet." I’m watching it, and the guy is talking about my planet! No doubt about it. He describes it, and calls it the "yo-yo planet" because it goes farther out and comes back. And when the program is over, there’s not one word mentioned about Sitchin!

Q: Yes, people have renewed the search for planets that may be out in the Oort cloud. For example, Sedna is a world that is between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud. People wonder how it got there. There is a sense that the sun may have been born in a cluster with other stars, and that gravitational attraction may have disrupted a lot of orbits. There was a study just a couple of days ago suggesting that as many as 90 percent of the comets in our solar system were actually stolen from neighboring star systems during the early stage of solar system development.

A: This is the whole reason for orbiting in the opposite direction … it comes from those very findings you’re talking about. How does one explain why not only Nibiru but some of the comets have retrograde orbits? If the solar system was just by itself created because of this swirling cloud, then how come not everything orbits in the same direction? All these findings keep corroborating what I have said.

Q: But I think some people have interpreted those remarks to suggest that a companion star or a dark planet may once again disrupt the solar system as early as 2012.

A: Don’t link me to 2012. Nothing will happen in 2012. The last time that Nibiru was in our vicinity was in the 6th century B.C. I provide information about this and sky maps and anything you want in my book “The End of Days.” But don’t link me to 2012.

Another aspect, by the way, is that if you do a search on “Annunaki” you get a million and a half websites. People use my writings and make up their own stories … I’m responsible for what I say, but not for what others say and their interpretations.

In general I think there’s a whole industry that has grown up in the media, mostly in the movies, for creating panic and fear. Who knows? “Something will happen, it’s coming.” I don’t think so.

Nothing will return. But I think ["gods" visited Earth] because of all the biblical prophecies. They created us, they gave us knowledge, but what they kept from us … I’m trying to find out through the DNA tests. Maybe it has to do with health, immortality, maybe cancer and such. We are their children, many of us are the result of their intermarriage. If Noah was like the Sumerian hero, a demigod, then we are all demigods. So they are not coming back to destroy us. They are not coming back to use us as food. I’m really shocked, shocked by this fearmongering, which is unjustified.

I do what I do and say what I say, and now I’m throwing down the gauntlet to the scientific community. You don’t have to do my genome, you have to do the genome of Nin Puabi.

Q: Another thing that people say is that you’re trying to read too much literal, actual history into something that was intended more as a myth, a story about the spiritual world. It would be as if someone was looking back from the future at our different cultures, and saying, “Well, God had to be like this because all these different cultures are telling the same story.” Whereas actually it’s the case that a common theme – for example, the Gilgamesh story or the story of a great flood – made its way into different cultures and doesn’t necessarily reflect historical reality.

A: Well, if that is the criticism, then it’s true. My answer to that is, so what? I take it literally, and others say I shouldn’t, so … I plead guilty.

Now, let me tell you, I think it was November or December of last year, a documentary filmmaker came by with a camera crew, and for three days he really pestered me to the extent that he camped outside my home. I told him, listen, leave me alone. What did he want? He was making a film about the 10 most important people alive today in the world. And I’m one of them, according to him. So I said to him, "Why do you think I’m one of them? Why give me the honor?" He said, "Because you have demythologized mythology. You have done a tremendous thing, You took the mythologies of all the peoples, you showed where they stem from. And you show step by step that this is based on a series of actual events."

So I plead guilty. That’s why mythology is so similar all over the world. Not necessarily detail by detail, name by name, event by event, but basically it reflects human recollection of past events.

Now, here's the e-mail I received from Sam Roberts, media relations manager at London's Natural History Museum:

"First, as background to the collections, The Natural History Museum holds a collection of approximately 20,000 human remains dating back to prehistoric times. Over half is from the UK and has been collected by the museum from when we were founded in 1881. They range from a single tooth, hair sample, single bones to complete skeletons and come from a variety of sources - for example, by transfer from other institutions such as Royal College of Surgeons or archaeological digs.

"The human remains in the collection are used by both NHM researchers and visiting researchers in studies to form comparative samples in a wide variety of studies including human evolution, human variation, forensic and medical studies among many more.

"I have been in touch with the relevant team and they confirmed that Zecharia Sitchin has contacted the Museum to request that it collect comparative samples from the remains of Nin Puabi (Queen Shubad). The Museum has a responsibility to safeguard and maintain its collections for scientific research. It does not routinely conduct ad hoc analysis of its collections, and requests for DNA analysis would need to be part of recognised research project. To date the Museum has not received a request from a researcher with recognised experience and skills in this field or with access to the necessary facilities required to undertake ancient DNA analysis. All research and loan requests involving human remains in the collection are subject to the relevant Museum policy and procedures, which are based on guidance set out by the UK Government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport."

In the days leading up to my interview, I heard from some Cosmic Log correspondents who thought Sitchin was totally bogus, and others who thought he just might be on to something. (The latter category probably overlaps with the estimated 32 percent of Americans who believe in UFOs.) Myself, I don't believe any of Sitchin's tales about alien astronauts or ancient demigods from the planet Nibiru. But I am intrigued by tales of Ur and its riches. In the right hands, I think the story of Queen Puabi could be as gripping as the stories of Queen Hatshepsut or even King Tut. What do you think? Feel free to hold forth with your comments below.

More about aliens, on Earth and beyond:

• Scientist: Alien life could already be on Earth
• The best places on Earth for spotting UFOs
• Search for alien life may take giant leap forward
• Eight of the usual suspects for extraterrestrial life

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

Three studies map out the shores of ancient seas that scientists say once existed on Mars.

One study, appearing in Sunday's issue of Nature Geoscience, contends that a vast ocean probably covered a third of the Red Planet's surface 3.5 billion years ago. The University of Colorado's Gaetano Di Achille and Brian Hynek came to that conclusion after looking at 52 delta deposits and thousands of dry river valleys on the Martian surface.

Elevation readings from a variety of NASA probes as well as Europe's Mars Express orbiter were fed into a geographic information system, or GIS, for an analysis of the valley and delta patterns. What emerged was a map indicating that much of Mars' northern hemisphere was underwater early in the planet's history. The ancient sea would have contained about 30 million cubic miles (124 million cubic kilometers) of water. That's about a tenth of the total volume of Earth's oceans today, on a planet that's slightly more than half of Earth's size.

This study was funded by NASA's Mars Data Analysis Program.

Another research report, in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, detected roughly 40,000 river valleys on Mars. That number is about four times as high as previously thought, said Hynek, who conducted this study with University of Colorado colleagues Michael Beach and Monica Hoke.

It would take a sustained level of precipitation to create so many valleys, Hynek said in a university news release. "This effectively puts a nail in the coffin regarding the presence of past rainfall on Mars," he said.

Some researchers have suggested that the water-carved features seen on Mars today were created by massive flash floods early in its history, while others say ancient Mars had a longer-lasting hydrologic cycle like Earth's, complete with rainfall, running rivers, seas and evaporation. Clearly the latter scenario is more favorable for the development of life. "If life ever arose on Mars, deltas may be the key to unlocking Mars' biological past," Hynek said.

Yet another survey, by a different group of researchers, came up with a similar map: This survey was based on an analysis of topographic and geological data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Viking orbiters, and concentrated on the lakes that appear to have existed in Mars' southern hemisphere. Leslie Bleamaster, a research scientist at the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute, said the mapping project supports the idea that lakes once existed within the Hellas impact basin and elsewhere in the Martian south.

"This mapping makes geologic interpretations consistent with previous studies, and constrains the timing of these putative lakes to the early-middle Noachian period on Mars, between 4.5 and 3.5 billion years ago," he said in a news release.

USGS

A map of Mars' Hellas Planitia shows how river valleys and shorelines might have looked billions of years ago.

You can get a closer look at the map and an accompanying pamphlet on the U.S. Geological Survey's website. (USGS serves as a repository for geographical data about other worlds as well as our own.) The project was supported through NASA's Planetary Geology and Geophysics program.

So where did all the water go?

Because Mars is so much smaller than Earth, scientists suspect that its molten core cooled down relatively quickly, which caused the planet to lose its global magnetic field. Without a magnetosphere like Earth's, Mars was less able to fend off electrically charged particles from the solar wind. In time, those particles might have blasted away much of the Martian atmosphere, disrupting the hydrologic cycle.

An alternate explanation would be that Mars was less able to hang onto its atmosphere simply because of its weaker gravitational pull. In either case, the Martian atmosphere was reduced to a stripped-down layer of carbon dioxide. And without an airy blanket to keep it warm, the planet went into a deep freeze. Today, Martian H2O exists mostly as ice, at the poles or mixed in with the chilly soil. Some of the water appears to have reacted with minerals to form carbonate rocks, and scientists recently reported signs that water trickled out to the surface 1.25 million years ago.

Hynek said figuring out where all the water on Mars went is "one of the main questions we would like to answer." Future Mars missions could provide better answers to the question. The University of Colorado at Boulder happens to be managing one of those missions for NASA: the $485 million Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, or MAVEN, which is due for launch in 2013.

More about Mars:

• Special report: Return to the Red Planet
• Gallery: Greatest hits from Mars
• Water found (and lost) on Mars
• Mystery solved: Mars had large oceans

Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

BP has fast-tracked a plan to collect all the oil leaking out of its deep-sea well in the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the month - but this new plan isn't risk-free.

Last week, the oil company said it needed until mid-July to have all the ships and plumbing set up to deal with the daily flow of as much as 50,000 barrels of oil, gushing up from a broken well 5,000 feet beneath the surface of the Gulf. In response to orders from the Obama administration, BP came up with a way to shave two weeks off that schedule - basically by hooking up the plumbing to the spigots that are available now instead of taking the time to switch the pipes around.

Eventually, BP and its industrial partners will still have to do that extra pipe-switching. But in the short run, the revised plan should take care of all the oil and gas, assuming it works anywhere close to advertised.

BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, laid out the details in a letter to the Coast Guard dated Sunday, but here's the breakdown in simple terms:

• 1. Discoverer Enterprise, steady as she goes: The current system brings up about 15,000 barrels of oil to the Discoverer Enterprise drillship for processing, through a cap assembly that was installed over the sawed-off top of the well's blowout preventer earlier this month. That capture capability can be boosted to 18,000 barrels, but under the current system, the rest of the oil has to spew through the cap's ports into the Gulf.
• 2. Q4000, for the burn: Another rig, known as the Q4000, was used last month in BP's unsuccessful "top-kill" attempt to close off the well. Now one of the two lines that was used in the top-kill try has been converted to reverse the flow. The collection system leading to the Q4000 could bring up another 5,000 to 10,000 barrels a day, starting as early as Tuesday. But there's no equipment onboard that rig to process and store that oil. Instead, the oil will have to be burned off, using an "environmentally friendly" piece of equipment known as the EverGreen Burner. Some question whether this arrangement is all that environmentally friendly. Clean or not, the burner might have to be used for the next month.
• 3. Pulling a switch with two heavy-hitters: Last week's plan called for setting up another Q4000-type system by the end of the month, which would have accommodated another 10,000 barrels a day. The revised plan goes with a more ambitious operation to handle an additional 20,000 to 25,000 barrels a day. BP has just arranged to have two oil-processing ships sail to the oil-leak site. Either the Helix Producer I or the Toisa Pisces will be hooked up to the other line that was used during the top-kill operation. BP will go with whichever ship is ready first. These three simultaneous operations - the Deepwater Horizon, the Q4000 and one of the two heavy-hitter ships - should be able to handle up to 53,000 barrels of oil a day.
• 4. Make the system more solid: Between the end of June and the middle of July, BP will fine-tune the system to make it more hurricane-proof. The company will also send down a new type of cap that will be sealed more securely on the top of the blowout preventer, with two attachments for riser lines. By mid-July, both of the heavy-hitting processing ships should be ready for service.
• 5. Shift the plumbing: In the latter part of July, the line leading to the Q4000 will be switched over to the other big ship, which brings two big benefits. First, BP will no longer have to burn off hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil every day. Also, the daily processing capability using those two ships alone will balloon to between 40,000 and 50,000 barrels. The Discoverer Enterprise can still take care of 10,000 to 15,000 barrels a day, sucking up oil from the new, improved cap on the blowout preventer. Yet another ship, the Discoverer Clear Leader, can handle another 10,000 to 15,000 barrels flowing through a second line leading from the cap on the blowout preventer. The four simultaneous operations will have a daily capture capacity of 60,000 to 80,000 barrels - far more than the current worst-case estimates for flow from the oil leak.
• 6. Relief wells, still the long-term fix: If the system works as planned, BP should be able to take care of all the leaking oil. But this system can only collect the oil. It can't do anything about controlling the flow or stopping the leak. BP still has to rely on a relief-well system for that part of the job. Right now the first two wells have reached depths of about 14,000 feet and 9,000 feet (including 5,000 feet of water), and they're expected to hit the required 18,000-foot mark by August. There's no guarantee that these first wells will do the trick, but if BP's system is sucking up all the oil by that time, it's not so crucial that the first relief wells are exactly on target.

This is the current best-case scenario, but Suttles' letter points out the potential risks as well. The top-kill lines that are currently connected to the blowout preventer (and figure so prominently in steps 2 through 5) were never designed to be used for continuous oil flow. There's a risk that those lines may erode - or they may get plugged up with the junk left behind by the top-kill attempt.

If a hurricane blows through the area, all the ships will have to disconnect from their lines, and oil will once again flow freely into the Gulf through those lines until the storm has passed and the ships can be reconnected.

Even if all the lines are working, the operations team will have to juggle four oil-processing operations simultaneously and safely. "Work is ongoing to confirm that this combination of four production vessels is indeed possible within appropriate safety parameters," he said.

"The risks of operating multiple facilities in close proximity must be carefully managed," Suttles said. "Several hundred people are working in a confined space with live hydrocarbons on up to four vessels. This is significantly beyond both BP and industry practice. We will continue to aggressively drive schedule to minimize the pollution, but we must not allow this drive to compromise our No. 1 priority, that being the health and safety of our people."

Any offshore oil operation requires workers to deal with lots of toxic materials and burn off the natural gas that comes up from the well along with the oil. A methane flare-up is thought to be the immediate cause of the April 20 oil-rig explosion that touched off this disaster. Suttles said the stepped-up oil-recovery operation could run the risk of a "major surface accident" - a scenario that one assumes might involve a flare-up from one ship sparking another explosion on a nearby ship.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. James Watson's written response to Suttle's letter, released today, noted BP's stepped-up efforts but held off from voicing explicit approval. "We have continuously demanded strategies and responses from BP that fit the realities of this catastrophic event, for which BP is responsible," he said. "We will continue to hold them accountable and bring every possible resource and innovation to bear."

BP spokesman David Nicholas told me that the team managing the comings and going of the ships converging on the epicenter of the Gulf oil spill will have to serve as "air traffic controllers" for what's shaping up as an unprecedented oil-processing operation. The most crucial two weeks of the response to the disaster in the Gulf may be just ahead. Is this the best BP can do? Are there ways to reduce the risks? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

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