Telltale 'fingerprints' can lead chemists to sources of oil spills

[davidinalameda]

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/12199767p-13063952c.html

Dark as coffee grounds, opaque as ink, oil gives up its secrets like a startled child - where it's come from, what it's been through and who it's been mixed up with.
It is a substance that can be coaxed into revealing almost everything about its past.

Sometimes, it will answer the most telling question of all for investigators hunting for the source of a baffling oil spill: Where is your twin?



this is so neat

[NNadir]

1. What's nice about this article is that it's decent science reporting.

That's so rare these days, science reporting that actually explains in simple terms how science is actually done.

[Igel]

2. They've done the same thing with emeralds:

Get together a database of the chemical quirks of emerald deposits, and you can (usually) trace where stolen or smuggled emeralds originated. One problem is similar to that with oil: some near twins. Another's different--emeralds show more variation in a deposit than oil can.

[NationalEnquirer]

3. This is really a no-brainer.

I'm surprised it hasn't been done sooner.