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Prospecting for oil 石油勘探 Grains of truth 千虑一得之法 Putting rocks in medical scanners may help thesearch for oil and gas 采用医学扫描仪对岩石样本扫描，可帮助寻找石油和天然气 STRIKING oil is one thing. 开采石油是一回事。 Getting it out of the ground in economic quantities is quite another. 然而从经济角度考虑，能从地下开采出多少石油又完全是另一回事。 Doing so depends on understanding the granular structure of the rock it is trapped in, 要做到这点,人们需要对某些岩石的颗粒结构有所了解，而这些岩石是有石油困于其中的。分 and analysing that is a tedious business of placing countless samples in pressure vessels toassess their capacity to hold hydrocarbons and to estimate the flow rate of thosehydrocarbons through them. 析岩石颗粒结构是极其枯燥乏味的事情，研究人员需要将无数个样本放置在压力容器内以评估它们含纳碳氢化合物的能力并估計其中蕴藏的碳氢化合物的产量。 This can take years. 这可能需要花费数年的时间。 | 
