Bacteria To Protect Against Quakes 81
Roland Piquepaille writes "If you live near the sea, chances are high that your home is built over sandy soil. And if an earthquake strikes, deep and sandy soils can turn to liquid with disastrous consequences for the buildings built above them. Now, US researchers have found a way to use bacteria to steady buildings against earthquakes by turning these sandy soils into rocks. 'Starting from a sand pile, you turn it back into sandstone,' the chief researcher explained. It is already possible to inject chemicals into the ground to reinforce it, but this technique can have toxic effects on soil and water. In contrast, the use of common bacteria to 'cement' sands has no harmful effects on the environment. So far this method is limited to labs and the researchers are working on scaling their technique. Here are more references and a picture showing how unstable ground can aggravate the consequences of an earthquake."
Research needed! (Score:4, Interesting)
Also I wonder how one would contain these bacteria, and stop them from spreading? I don't think we would want our beaches turned to stone...
I am generally very reserved when it comes to releasing living organism where they don't belong and/or trying to alter the environment. There are just too many factors involved, and there is no way we can cover them all!
Jeez (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry.
potential fix for ground water problems in Boston? (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Research needed! (Score:2, Interesting)
The fact that humans happen to manipulate nature to our needs is as much a consequence of what we do as beavers building dams, mice digging holes, spiders lashing webbing between trees.
Of course there have been a lot of problems with solutions that end up causing problems. But they seem to stand out apart from the millions of successes over millenia of mankind. I mean, "build somewhere else" is easy to say when there's lots of land to be spared, but tell that to Japan (for just one example) with some of the highest population to land area ratios in the world. Attempts to make vulnerable areas less so are simply a matter of intelligent mitigation rather than just throwing your arms up when a whole city could be potentially levelled.
Welcome to Malibu Rockpile. (Score:3, Interesting)
Alt. Construction..? (Score:3, Interesting)