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From: dvdw©	4/13/2008 3:54:59 PM
	of 993

research needle. Floating Flame Balls science.msfc.nasa.gov Flames do something odd in space: they form tiny almost-invisible balls that might reveal the secrets of combustion here on Earth. Listen to this story via streaming audio, a downloadable file, or get help. August 21, 2002: Paul Ronney wasn't looking for flame balls. They came as a complete surprise. It happened in 1984 when Ronney, a combustion researcher, was at the NASA Glenn Research Center's Microgravity Drop Tower in Ohio. He pressed a button and sent a can of burning hydrogen falling down a 90 ft. shaft. For 2.2 seconds it plummeted, freely falling and weightless, with a 16mm movie camera recording the action. Ronney knew that flames did strange things in low gravity--that's why he was doing the experiment--but he wasn't prepared for what he saw in the film room later. Right: Looking down the shaft of the Glenn Research Center's 2.2 second Microgravity Drop Tower. [more] The flames had broken apart into tiny balls that moved around like UFOs. "I thought I had done something wrong," he recalled. Some of his colleagues didn't believe him when he described the experiment. Indeed, "it was ridiculous. No one had ever seen anything like it." Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS delivery But the flame balls were real--later experiments proved it. "Flame balls are the weakest flames we have," says Ronney. "Compared to a birthday candle's 50 to 100 watts, a flame ball produces only 1 to 2 watts of thermal power. They burn using very little fuel. It's almost as if a hydrogen-burning flame's last line of defense as it approaches extinction is to draw itself into a simple ball." Ronney, who is now an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, believes that flame balls will help him and others crack the unsolved mysteries of burning. Considering that combustion powers our automobiles, generates our electricity, and heats our homes, there's much about it we don't understand. "For example," he says, "a moderate amount of turbulence makes a flame burn faster, but too much turbulence extinguishes it." No one knows why. Below: Tiny flame balls that form in low gravity are hard to see. These were filmed in the dark by a low-light video camera onboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1997. Flames are hard to understand because they are complicated. In an ordinary candle flame, for example, thousands of chemical reactions take place. Hydrocarbon molecules from the wick are vaporized and cracked apart by heat. They combine with oxygen to produce light, heat, carbon dioxide and water. Some of the hydrocarbon fragments form ring-shaped molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and, eventually, soot. Soot particles can themselves burn or simply drift away as smoke. The familiar teardrop shape of the flame is an effect caused by gravity. Hot air rises and draws fresh cool air behind it. This is called buoyancy and is what makes the flame shoot up and flicker. Flame balls, on the other hand, are simple. The balls form in low gravity where turbulence and buoyancy have little effect. Oxygen and fuel combine in a narrow zone at the surface of the ball, not hither and yon throughout the flame. Once ignited and stabilized, their size remains constant. Unlike ordinary flames, which expand greedily when they need more fuel, flame balls let the oxygen and fuel come to them. Finally, the fact that flame balls are spherical reduces their dimension to one: the radius of the flame itself. "Flame balls are to combustion scientists what fruit flies are to geneticists," says Ronney. "It's not that we want more fruit flies, or flame balls, but they provide a simple model for testing hypotheses and checking computer models." Right: A schematic diagram of a flame ball. Credit: Paul Ronney. One of many mysteries about fire is the way weak flames go out before their fuel is totally exhausted. It puzzles physicists and vexes automakers who want to build clean, efficient "lean-burning" engines that run on fuel-air mixtures with low fuel concentrations--much like a flame ball. Ronney believes that studying one (flame balls) will help us with the other (cars). Here on Earth, researchers can't study flame balls for long. A typical plunge down the drop tower lasts only 2 seconds. So, working with NASA scientist Karen Weiland and others at the Glenn Research Center, Ronney designed the Structure of Flame Balls at Low Lewis-number (SOFBALL) experiment. It's a sealed chamber where flame balls flying onboard the space shuttle can burn for a long time. SOFBALL orbited Earth for the first time in 1997 on shuttle Columbia--and it produced some surprises. Computer models had predicted the flame balls would be small and either extinguish or drift into the chamber walls in a few minutes. Instead they were two to three times larger than predicted and burned for over 8 minutes until the experimental system automatically extinguished them. Furthermore, although the flames were large, they were the weakest ever seen--emitting little more than 1 watt of thermal power. "We knew then that we still had lots to learn about weak combustion," recalls Ronney. Left: A candle flame on Earth (left) and onboard the space shuttle (right). [more] The experiment, upgraded and re-named SOFBALL-2, will soon fly again. It's slated for launch onboard space shuttle Columbia (STS-107) in late 2002 or 2003. During the mission, flame balls will be allowed to burn for 25 to 167 minutes. Instruments will monitor their temperature, brightness, heat loss, and the composition of their gaseous byproducts. Because flame balls are so sensitive to motion, the shuttle will drift during the experiments instead of using its reaction control thrusters to maintain position. Because this research is so fundamental, it touches on many aspects of combustion: lean-burning engines for cars and airplanes; explosion hazards in mine shafts and chemical plants; emissions from cars and coal-burning plants; arson investigations. The list is long ... and it doesn't stop on Earth. Below: Astronaut Janice Voss (the sister of co-author Linda Voss) monitors a combustion experiment onboard shuttle Columbia in 1997. Flames act differently in space, so fire safety is also different. If you see a fire on Earth, you might run over and stomp it out or use a fire extinguisher. In orbit, rushing over and stomping on a flame might accelerate combustion, at least temporarily, because you are creating an airflow that did not exist before. Flames in low-gravity tend to spread slowly, so stomping might cause a flame to jump to something else when it wouldn't have otherwise. Furthermore, flame balls are stealthy: they give off no smoke and little or no visible light. It's hard to extinguish something you can't find. What happens if a loose flame ball runs into something? Will it ignite? SOFBALL-2 could answer many such questions. SOFBALL will also set the stage for longer-term experiments aboard the International Space Station inside the Fluids and Combustion Facility--yet to be installed in the US lab module. That's a long way from Ohio, where Ronney discovered flame balls in 1984. But he says it's worth the trip to find out how else "those ridiculous little flame balls" might surprise us. SEND THIS STORY TO A FRIEND

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From: mistermj	4/15/2008 2:21:55 AM
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Brazil Oil Field Could Be Huge Find By ALAN CLENDENNING – 7 hours ago SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) — A deep-water exploration area could contain as much as 33 billion barrels of oil, an amount that would nearly triple Brazil's reserves and make the offshore bloc the world's third-largest known oil reserve, a top energy official said Monday. National Petroleum Agency President Haroldo Lima cautioned that his information on the field off the coast of Rio de Janeiro is unofficial and needs to be confirmed — but his comments sent shares of state-run oil company Petrobras soaring in New York and Sao Paulo. Petrobras said in a statement that more studies are needed to determine the potential of what could be the planet's largest oil find in decades. Analysts said the magnitude of the find, if confirmed, could have far-reaching global energy ramifications. "This would lay to rest some of the peak oil pronouncements that we were out of oil, that we weren't going to find anymore and that we have to change our way of life," said Roger Read, an energy analyst and managing director at New York-based investment bank Natixis Bleichroeder Inc., which buys and sells stock in offshore drilling contractor Seadrill for clients. Seadrill on Monday announced six-year contracts with Petrobras worth US$4.1 billion (euro2.6 billion) for services by three offshore drilling rigs. Lima told reporters that Petrobras "may have discovered a huge petroleum field that could contain reserves large as 33 billion barrels," amounting to the world's third-largest reserve, according to his spokesman, Luiz Fernando Manso. Manso did not provide any details about where Lima got his information, except to say it came from "nonofficial, non-confirmed sources." Brazil Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao declined comment. Lima's agency regulates Brazil's oil industry, and his comments appeared to represent confirmation of what experts have long suspected: That extremely deep exploration areas hundreds of miles (kilometers) off the nation's coast may hold potentially huge reserves. Brazil's current proven oil reserves are 11.8 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Department. The U.S. has 21.8 billion barrels in proven reserves. "You're talking about a reserve the size of total U.S. reserves," said Tim Evans, an analyst with Citigroup Inc. in New York. "It's a big, big number." If proven, the oil in the exploration area called both Carioca and Sugarloaf Mountain by analysts would also be five times larger than the Tupi oil field, whose estimated reserves of 8 billion barrels were announced by Petroleo Brasileiro SA in November. Petrobras also announced a blockbuster find of natural gas in February in an Atlantic Ocean field nicknamed Jupiter. The company said the location cited by Lima is made up of two exploration areas in one bloc where test wells are being drilled and geological studies are under way with Petrobras' partners for the bloc, Britain's BG Group and Spain's Repsol YPF. "More conclusive data about the potential of the discovery will only be know after the conclusion of the other phases of the evaluation process, and the market will be informed at the opportune moment," Petrobras said in its statement to Brazilian securities regulators after Lima made the comments. Industry experts say the Tupi and Jupiter fields alone could turn Brazil into a major oil and gas exporter and lead to it joining OPEC. Petrobras is renowned for its deep-water drilling ability, and is widely regarded as one of the best state-run oil companies in the world. Brazil became self-sufficient in oil production in 2006 but must import light crude oil for the refined products it needs. The country produces — and exports — mostly heavy crude oil, which has to be mixed with the light oil in refineries. While the potential Brazil find could add significant supplies to a global oil market many see as tight, it would likely take the better part of a decade before any of the oil finds its way to market. The site will need to be studied further, and drilling platforms must be designed, built and transported before it can start producing oil. However, it does cast new doubt on peak oil theory, which postulates that world oil demand will soon outpace supply. It is impossible to say whether or not more 33-billion-barrel oil fields exist under the sea, Evans said. "Nobody really has data on what's out there in the middle of the ocean," Evans said. Petrobras' American depository shares were up 8.3 percent late Monday afternoon in New York, or US$9.33 (euro5.88) to US$122.18 (euro76.99). The company's shares in Brazil settled up 5.6 percent in late afternoon trading while the benchmark Ibovespa index was down nearly 1 percent. Oil prices were unaffected by the news. Light, sweet crude for May delivery rose US$1.62 (euro1.02) to settle at a record US$111.76 (euro70.43) a barrel. Associated Press writers Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo and John Wilen in New York contributed to this report.

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From: dvdw©	4/19/2008 12:31:09 PM
	of 993

Philosopher's stone From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Philosophers Stone) Jump to: navigation, search For other uses, see Philosopher's stone (disambiguation). The philosopher's stone (Latin: lapis philosophorum; Greek: chrysopoeia) is a legendary substance, supposedly capable of turning inexpensive metals into gold; it was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality. For a long time it was the most sought after goal in Western alchemy. In the view of spiritual alchemy, making the philosopher's stone would bring enlightenment upon the maker and conclude the Great Work.[1] Contents [hide] 1 In alchemy 2 Contemporary interpretations 3 In art and entertainment 3.1 Literature 3.2 Comics, movies, TV, and animations 3.3 Music 4 See also 5 References [edit] In alchemy Alchemists once thought a key component of the stone was a mythical element named carmot. The element is no longer believed to exist according to modern scientific knowledge.[2][3] This legendary stone was thought to help amplify transmutations while doing alchemy. It was also thought to have had a dark red tone. Alchemy itself is mostly an original concept and science practiced in the ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, and India. However, the concept of ensuring youthful health originated in China, while the concept of transmutating one metal into a more precious one (silver or gold) originated from the theories of the 8th century Arab alchemist, Jabir ibn Hayyan (Latinized as 'Geber'). He analysed each Aristotelian element in terms of the four basic qualities of hotness, coldness, dryness, and moistness. Fire was both hot and dry, earth cold and dry, water cold and moist, and air hot and moist. He further theorized that every metal was a combination of these four principles, two of them interior and two exterior. From this premise, it was reasoned that the transmutation of one metal into another could be effected by the rearrangement of its basic qualities. This change would presumably be mediated by a substance, which came to be called al-iksir in Arabic (from which the Western term "elixir" is derived). It is often considered to exist as a dry red powder made from a legendary stone — the "philosopher's stone".[citation needed] In the 11th century, there was a debate among Muslim chemists on whether the transmutation of substances was possible. A leading opponent was Avicenna, who discredited the theory of transmutation of substances: "Those of the chemical craft know well that no change can be effected in the different species of substances, though they can produce the appearance of such change."[4] According to legend, the 13th-century scientist and philosopher Albertus Magnus is said to have discovered the philosopher's stone and passed it to his pupil Thomas Aquinas, shortly before his death circa 1280. Magnus does not confirm he discovered the stone in his writings, but he did record that he witnessed the creation of gold by "transmutation."[5] The 16th-century Swiss alchemist Philippus Paracelsus believed in the existence of alkahest which he thought to be an undiscovered element from which all other elements (earth, fire, water, air) were simply derivative forms. Paracelsus believed that this element alkahest was, in fact, the philosopher's stone. Jabir's theory was based on the concept that metals like gold and silver could be hidden in alloys and ores, from which they could be recovered by the appropriate chemical treatment. Jabir himself is believed to be the inventor of aqua regia, a mixture of muriatic (hydrochloric) and nitric acids, one of the few substances that can dissolve gold (and which is still often used for gold recovery and purification). Gold was particularly valued as a metal that would not rust, tarnish, corrode or otherwise grow corrupt. Since the philosopher's stone would turn a corruptible base metal to incorruptible gold, naturally it would similarly transform human beings from mortal (corruptible) to immortal (incorruptible). One of many theories was that gold was a superior form of metal, and that the philosopher's stone was even purer and superior to gold, and if combined with lesser metals would turn them into superior gold as well.[citation needed] A mystical text published in the 17th century called the Mutus Liber appears to be a symbolic instruction manual for concocting a philosopher's stone. Called the "wordless book", it was a collection of 15 illustrations. [edit] Contemporary interpretations The Latin American spiritual teacher Samael Aun Weor stated that the philosopher's stone is synonymous with the symbol of the stone found in many other spiritual and religious traditions, such as the stone Jacob rests his head upon, the cubic stone of Freemasonry, and the rock upon which Christ lays the foundation of the temple.[6] “ For in Scripture it says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame." Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone," and, "A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for. - 1 Peter 2: 6-8 ” He states that this "stone of stumbling" and "rock of offence" is the creative-sexual energy, which in Kabbalah is Yesod ("foundation") that must be transmuted through sexual alchemy. It is said to be rejected by the "builders," meaning those who seek spiritual edification, because they reject the transmutation of sexual energy, and instead use it to achieve sensual pleasure.[7] [edit] In art and entertainment The philosopher's stone has been subject, inspiration, or plot feature of innumerable artistic works: novels, comics stories, movies, animations, and even musical compositions. It is also a popular item in many video games. The following is a very incomplete list. [edit] Literature Natural Magic (1558), by Giambattista della Porta The Philosopher's Stone (1789), by Christoph Martin Wieland.[8] German fairy tale. Hinzelmeier (1857), by Theodor Storm.[8] Romantic style German fairy tale. Philosopher's Stone (1859), by Hans Christian Andersen. The Trumpeter of Krakow (1928), by Eric P. Kelly. The Red Lion 1946, by Maria Szepes Hungary. Story of a man's journey through four centuries of life after acquiring the Philosopher's stone. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), by Gabriel García Márquez. The Philosopher's Stone (Colin Wilson book) (1971), by C. H. Wilson. The Ogre Downstairs (1974), by Diana Wynne Jones. The Alchemist (1988), by Paulo Coelho. Foucault's Pendulum (1988), by Umberto Eco, where a character claims that the Stone is actually the Holy Grail. Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix (1994 graphic novel), by Lee Marrs. Indiana Jones and the Philosopher's Stone (1995), by Max McCoy. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997), by J. K. Rowling (renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the US; note also that when the stone is referred to in Latin in a Potter context, it is called philosophi lapis rather than philosophorum, i.e. "of the philosopher" instead of the original "of philosophers"). The Philosopher's Stone: A Quest for the Secrets of Alchemy (2001), by Peter Marshall The Baroque Cycle trilogy (2003–2004), by Neal Stephenson, where it is used to explain an unusually heavy gold sample. The Queen's Fool (novel, 2004), by Philippa Gregory. The Alchemyst:the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel (novel, 2007), by Michael Scott. The Six Sacred Stones (novel, 2007 AUS or 2008 US and UK), By Matthew Reily. en.wikipedia.org

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From: dvdw©	4/20/2008 5:55:56 PM
	of 993

Scientists say Midwest quakes poorly understood apnews.myway.com Apr 19, 9:56 AM (ET) By DAVID MERCER (AP) Map locates approximate epicenter, extent and seismic zone of origination of a magnitude-5.2... Full Image Google sponsored links Coffee Exposed - A shocking secret coffee co's don't want you to know www.coffeefool.com Alert Button for Seniors - "As Seen on TV" 24/7 Senior Alert Help Button www.LifeStation.com/Alert-Bu CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) - Scientists say they know far too little about Midwestern seismic zones like the one that rumbled to life under southern Illinois Friday morning, but some of what they do know is unnerving. The fault zones beneath the Mississippi River Valley have produced some of the largest modern U.S. quakes east of the Rockies, a region covered with old buildings not built to withstand seismic activity. And, when quakes happen, they're felt far and wide, their vibrations propagated over hundreds of miles of bedrock. Friday's quake shook things up from Nebraska to Atlanta, rattling nerves but doing little damage and seriously hurting no one. It was a magnitude 5.2 temblor centered just outside West Salem in southeastern Illinois, a largely rural region of small towns that sit over the Wabash fault zone. The area has produced moderately strong quakes as recently as 2002. (AP) Map locates approximate epicenter of an earthquake in the Midwest; 1c x 3 inches; 46 mm x 76 mm;... Full Image But it hasn't been studied to nearly the degree of quake-prone areas west of the Rockies, particularly along the heavily scrutinized Pacific coast. "We don't have as many opportunities as in California," said Genda Chen, associate professor of engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, which sits near the well-known and very active New Madrid fault zone. "We cannot even borrow on the knowledge they learn on the West Coast" because quakes that happen in California - where tectonic plates beneath the Earth's surface collide - are so different from Midwestern quakes that happen far away from the edges of the nearest plates. It isn't entirely clear, for instance, whether the Wabash faults are related to the New Madrid faults or not. Some scientists say they are related, noting that the Wabash faults, which roughly parallel the river of the same name in southern Illinois and Indiana, are a northern extension of the New Madrid zone. Others say they're not. (AP) Construction cranes are seen atop the Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago on Friday, April... Full Image The New Madrid fault zone produced a series of quakes in 1811 and 1812 that reached an estimated magnitude 7.0, putting them among the strongest known quakes to have occurred east of the Rockies. The quakes changed the course of the Mississippi River and were felt in New England. That distance of well over a thousand miles sounds impressive, but experts say quakes that happen in the Midwest commonly radiate out for hundreds of miles because of the bedrock beneath much of the eastern United States. "Our bedrock here is old, really rigid and sends those waves a long way," said Bob Bauer, a geologist with the Illinois State Geological Survey who works in Champaign. He compared the underground rock, which in much of the Midwest lies anywhere from a few thousand feet to just a few feet below the earth's surface, to a bell that very efficiently transmits seismic waves like sound. "California is young bedrock," he explained. "It's broken up ... like a cracked bell. You ring that, the waves don't go as far." The question of whether Friday's quake was centered along a branch of the New Madrid zone or not is of more than academic interest. The area even now produces smaller, very regular quakes, and experts say it still has the potential to produce a quake that could devastate the region. The Wabash faults have the potential to do the same, at least based on distant history, said Columbia University seismologist Won-Young Kim. The strongest quake produced in recent history by the Wabash was a magnitude 5.3 in southern Illinois in 1968, but researchers have found evidence that 4,000 to 6,000 years ago, much stronger quakes shook the region, Kim said, as strong as magnitude 7.0 or more. A similar quake is still possible, if the region is given time to build up enough energy, Kim said. But knowledge about the area is too thin to say whether that's likely, he added.

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From: dvdw©	4/21/2008 10:26:52 AM
	of 993

ScienceDaily (Apr. 10, 2002) — The kinetic energy created by asteroid and comet impacts with the Earth may be key to linking some impacts with mass extinction events. Michael Lucas, a geology student at Florida Gulf Coast University, believes that the severity of four extinction events during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic can be correlated with the total kinetic energy released by impacts that occur during the geologic age of the mass extinction. Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event Lucas will present his findings April 4 at the Geological Society of America’s North-Central Section and Southeastern Section Joint Meeting in Lexington, Kentucky. Lucas analyzed the kinetic energy released by 31 of the largest impact structures from the last 248 million years and correlated them with the Norian, Tithonian, Late Eocene, and K-T extinction events. The impact energy released during the geologic ages of each extinction event is at least 10 million megatons of TNT equivalent yield per geologic age. Lucas believes that this could represent a minimum impact energy required to cause a global-scale mass extinction. His research results also reveal that synchronous multiple impact events could also have caused extinctions. “Approximately ten percent of the impact structures on Earth are doublets or twin structures, suggesting a nearly simultaneous impact of binary asteroids or fragmented comets,” he said. An example of a twin impact structure would be the Kara / Ust-Kara twin impact structure in Russia which is about 73 million years old. Adapted from materials provided by Geological Society Of America. sciencedaily.com

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From: dvdw©	4/22/2008 2:57:40 PM
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As an equal opportunity meteor story purveyor, we serve this news report. A Bosnian man is apparently convinced aliens are out to get him — because they keep bombarding his house with meteorites. In fact, he claims, it's been hit five times in the past five months. The British press was abuzz Thursday morning with the strange case of Radivoje Lajic, a resident of Gornja Lamovite, a town Google appears to have never heard of except in connection to this story. "I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don't know what I have done to annoy them, but there is no other explanation that makes sense," Lajic told someone — the British papers give no attribution for the source. • Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Space Center. foxnews.com He said he's had to put a steel-reinforced roof on his house because of the flaming falling rocks. "The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit five times has to be deliberate," insists Lajic. He said scientists from Belgrade University in Serbia told him all five objects were meteorites, though there was no independent confirmation of that. RelatedStories Life-From-Space Theory Gets Unexpected Boost Researchers: Asteroid Destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah Natural-Disaster Exhibit Opens at Kansas Museum The old Weekly World News supermarket tabloid also featured a notable Balkan aspect; many of its more outlandish stories were reported to have taken place in Bulgaria. • Click here for the Daily Mail story on alien-beleaguered Radivoje Lajic, and here for a virtually identical story from the Daily Telegraph.

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To: mistermj who wrote (48)	4/24/2008 1:08:44 PM
From: dvdw©	of 993

Further, Bloomberg is reporting: Brazil Oil Finds May End Reliance on Middle East, Zeihan Says By Joe Carroll April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude, Strategic Forecasting Inc. said. Saudi Arabia's influence as the biggest oil exporter would wane if the fields are as big as advertised, and China and India would become dominant buyers of Persian Gulf oil, said Peter Zeihan, vice president of analysis at Strategic Forecasting in Austin, Texas. Zeihan's firm, which consults for companies and governments around the world, was described in a 2001 Barron's article as ``the shadow CIA.'' Brazil may be pumping ``several million'' barrels of crude daily by 2020, vaulting the nation into the ranks of the world's seven biggest producers, Zeihan said in a telephone interview. The U.S. Navy's presence in the Persian Gulf and adjacent waters would be reduced, leaving the region exposed to more conflict, he said. ``We could see that world becoming a very violent one,'' said Zeihan, former chief of Middle East and East Asia analysis for Strategic Forecasting. ``If the United States isn't getting any crude from the Gulf, what benefit does it have in policing the Gulf anymore? All of the geopolitical flux that wracks that region regularly suddenly isn't our problem.'' Tupi and Carioca Brazil's state-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA in November said the offshore Tupi field may hold 8 billion barrels of recoverable crude. Among discoveries in the past 30 years, only the 15-billion-barrel Kashagan field in Kazakhstan is larger. Haroldo Lima, director of the country's oil agency, last week said another subsea field, Carioca, may have 33 billion barrels of oil. That would be the third biggest field in history, behind only the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia and Burgan in Kuwait. Analysts Mark Flannery of Credit Suisse Group and Gustavo Gattass of UBS AG challenge the estimate for Carioca. Lima, the Brazilian oil agency director, later attributed the figure to a magazine. Flannery told clients during an April 16 conference call that 600 million barrels is a ``reasonable'' estimate and suggested Lima may have been referring to the entire geologic formation to which Carioca belongs. Supply Boost Carioca is one of seven fields identified so far in the BM- S-9 exploration area, part of a formation called Sugar Loaf. If additional drilling by Petrobras, as Petroleo Brasileiro is known, confirms the Tupi and Carioca estimates, the fields together would contain enough oil to supply every refinery on the U.S. Gulf Coast for 15 years. Petrobras said it needs at least three months to determine how much crude Carioca may hold. Zeihan said that beyond supply gains from Brazil, it will take a tripling of Canadian oil-sands output and greater fuel efficiency to end Western reliance on Middle East oil. The U.S. imports about 10 million barrels of oil a day, or 66 percent of its needs, according to the Energy Department in Washington. Saudi Arabia was the second-largest supplier in January, behind Canada. Persian Gulf nations accounted for 23 percent of U.S. imports, compared with Brazil's 1.7 percent share. Brazilian crude output rose 1.9 percent last year to 2.14 million barrels, according to the International Energy Agency. ``Hemispheric energy independence sounds a little pie-in- the-sky given that this hemisphere already is generating one- third of overall global demand,'' said Jason Gammel, an oil analyst at Macquarie Bank Ltd. in New York. ``It's pretty tough to talk about self-sufficiency unless we were to see food-based biofuels taking an even bigger role in the next five to 10 years than is already mandated.'' Offshore Fields Zeihan predicts a 2012 start to production at Tupi. Technology needed to tap fields like Tupi, which sit hundreds of miles offshore beneath thousands of feet of rock, sand and salt, hasn't been developed, he said. Petrobras, Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Norsk Hydro ASA plan to start pumping oil from eight Brazilian fields in the next 2 1/2 years that will produce a combined 1.02 million barrels a day, enough to supply two-thirds of the crude used by U.S. East Coast refineries. More discoveries will follow in Brazil's offshore basins, most of which have yet to be opened to exploration, Zeihan said. Repsol YPF SA, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Devon Energy Corp. are among the producers scouring Brazil's waters for reserves. ``The finds they've got so far are just the tip of the iceberg,'' Zeihan said. ``Brazil is going to change the balance of the global oil markets, and Petrobras will become a geopolitical supermajor.'' To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Carroll in Chicago at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: April 23, 2008 23:01 EDT

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