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News Front Page Page last updated at 13:52 GMT, Thursday, 3 June 2010 14:52 UK

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Can ordinary people think of a way to stop the oil?

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Everything so far tried has failed
Video and Audio The experts have tried and failed to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but US OIL SPILL
could the thousands of ordinary people ringing BP have the answer?
Programmes
Have Your Say So far the blowout preventer has broken down, the containment dome has iced KEY STORIES
In Pictures up, the insertion tube didn't get enough oil and top kill hasn't come off. BP cap catches '10,000 barrels'
Country Profiles Everything so far has failed, but the problem isn't just being considered among BP to fund Louisiana oil barriers
Special Reports the elite group of engineers and experts gathered by BP. Spill 'is worst US eco-disaster'
The public are also doing their part. GOT A SOLUTION?
Related BBC sites FEATURES AND BACKGROUND
By 2 June, BP had received 31,600 Anger mounts
Sport Would-be solvers can call +1 281 366
suggestions from members of the Americans enraged by BP's speed of
Weather 5511.
public on how to plug the well, or deal response
Democracy Live Also, send us your ideas using the text
with the oil slicks already in the sea.
Radio 1 Newsbeat form at the bottom Storms menace clean-up
CBBC Newsround The company's helpline, which has 80 If you have an images of your idea e-mail: Crowdsourcing oil
On This Day telephone operators, deals with yourpics@bbc.co.uk, subject SPILL IDEAS Fishermen's blues
Editors' Blog interested citizens. Of the 31,600 Int MMS: +44 7725 100100 Concern for wildlife
ideas, 8,000 have been submitted on MMS from UK: 61124
paper. Maps, graphics: Fighting the slick

BP then puts the plans through a four-stage process. The first is a primary VIDEO
evaluation to weed out ideas that have already been considered or are just not Underwater footage of oil spill
possible. The second stage is classification into categories such as
"dispersants" or "mechanical".
The third stage is a more detailed technical review and the fourth stage is field Funnel lowered over US oil leak
testing.
Interested amateurs
Bayou restaurateur braces for oil
There are 235 ideas currently in stage three and four, says BP. Of those, just
10% are about how to plug the well.
Some might ridicule the idea that interested amateurs might be able to solve a Gulf Coast mayor on town's
problem that is foxing a giant company with immense resources at its fingertips. challenges

But the notion has a long pedigree.

One of the most famous examples of
attempting to tap the public brain came
in the Longitude Prize, established in
the UK by Parliament in 1714. For a
seafaring nation, the ability to
accurately measure longitude was a
massive challenge.
The act of Parliament offered £20,000
to the person who could do it, and the
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Shared Read Watched/Listened
John Harrison should have won the Longitude
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clockmaker John Harrison established Prize US porn actor in cliff-fall death
the principles for the marine BP cap catches '10,000 barrels'
chronometers that revolutionised navigation. Bird target 'did not answer door'
Another prize was offered in late 18th Century France for the creation of soda Egyptian-Israeli marriage ruling
crystals from sea salt. Indian film gets Bollywood awards
Execution of a teenage girl
Harrison was met with scepticism and never received the full prize, while the
French winner Nicholas Leblanc was denied his cash because of the revolution. One-shot radiation 'hits cancer'
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Insoluble problems
Israel to deport Gaza activists
The term "crowdsourcing", coined by journalist Jeff Howe, author of Birthday boy dies in river fall
Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business,
is now often used to describe this phenomenon. Most popular now, in detail
Howe says that it is sometimes the case that problems that have proved
insoluble to hand-picked experts can be solved when placed before a wider, but
less expert, audience.
"[Crowdsourcing] is an
I'm looking at it from the point of
acknowledgment that 99 times out of a view of doing home maintenance -if
100 the best person to solve a problem this happened in someone's house
is an expert. If it's a chemistry problem, how would I fix it?
you want a chemist.
Barry Redd
"But one time out of a hundred the Would-be solver
problem seems intractable.
Crowdsourcing has revealed - in those
intractable cases - you need someone who is not trained. All the steps the
experts have thought to do haven't worked. You need the unexpected."
That might be why BP is using some of its resources to test these suggestions
from the public. They won't reveal any of the detail of the submissions they have
had, but look at some public forums on the web - not run by BP - and you can
get a flavour of the sort of ideas that might be arriving.
Giant screws
Barry Redd, from Louisburg, North Carolina, submitted an idea to BP, also
posting it on BP Oil News, an independent blog critical of the company.
His idea - heavily paraphrased - involves the use of a pipe smaller in diameter
than the casing of the oil well. This would have valve at one end and inflatable
tubes in the other.
With the valve open, the smaller pipe PAST ATTEMPTS
would be inserted, the tubes quickly
inflated to form a seal, cemented in Oil booms - partly successful
place and then the valve closed. Controlled burning - causes serious air
pollution
Looking on the web you can see
solutions involving pre-cast concrete Dispersant used - scientists warn it may
plugs, giant screws, explosives, sealant kill marine life
pumps, giant magnets, liquid nitrogen, Huge dome placed over leak - became
inflatable bladders and all manner of blocked by ice crystals
other devices. Top hat - smaller dome not yet used
Mile-long tube - fails to suck up large
Mr Redd, who runs a pressure washing amount of oil
and home maintenance business, says
"Top-kill" method to pump heavy mud -
he was motivated to try and solve the
abandoned
leak after watching news coverage.
"I was expecting all those engineers to have an idea, that they would have had
contingency plans. Eventually it was clear they didn't.
"I'm looking at it from the point of view of doing home maintenance. If this
happened in someone's house how would I fix it?"
Prof Steven Sears, chairman of the petroleum engineering department at
Louisiana State University, has himself received suggestions in two categories.
"The first are things like using hay to put down on the seashore to absorb the oil.
"The second category is more directed towards stopping the oil flow. Those have
been similar to what is being attempted.
"There hasn't been in what I've seen a really novel approach."
But despite the public enthusiasm, there's a feeling among some experts - not
brought in by BP - that they aren't able to contribute their own ideas because of
a lack of detail from the oil firm.
Science background
"The problem is there is not a whole lot of detailed information released," says
Prof Sears. "Exactly what are the pressures, temperatures, flow rates and pipe
sizes?
"The more information is released the more analysis can be done by people that
are not directly involved."
It will probably be somebody with some sort of engineering or science
background who could come up with an answer, says Howe.
It is unlikely that "a random guy with an English degree" will crack it, he notes.
"[It might be] someone who has some tangential experience - it isn't some
experience that BP think to tap."
Harrison was a self-educated genius, who already made clocks, and Leblanc
had a scientific background. The prize approach made sense in a time when the
pool of formal academics was tiny compared with today.
And if an ordinary citizen comes up with the solution, they have to hope that the
powers-that-be treat them a bit better than they did Harrison and Leblanc.
Do you have an idea for solving the spill? As well as contacting BP, use
the form below.
Send your pictures and videos to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to 61124
(UK) or 0044 7725 100 100 (International). If you have a large file you can
upload here.
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 FEATURES, VIEWS, ANALYSIS

No day off Paper review Unit of measure

The public holiday that Search continues for How might you
people once refused to insight on Cumbria calculate niceness -
take shootings your ideas please
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