Disaster at Gleision Colliery, Godre'r Graig, West Glamorgan. 15 September 2011.

The Gleision Colliery is roughly 18 km to the northeast of Swansea. It is Wales's smallest coal-mine, with less than 20 employees. Gleision is a drift mine, a mine that is cut in from the side of a hill, so that it is possible to walk from the entrance to the coal face, as opposed to descending via a pit. In Gleision's case a small railway runs from the entrance to the coalface.

Coal trucks at the Gleison Colliery.

At 9.15 am on Thursday 15 Saturday an explosion at the mine lead to the collapse part of the roof of the mine and the flooding of a large section of the mine. At the time there were seven miners working at the pit, three of whom made it back to the surface and called the emergency services. One of these men was immediately taken to hospital, having ingested a large amount of dirty water; the remaining two remained at the mine to assist with rescue attempts for the four miners remaining in the colliery, who had been working 90 m bellow the surface at the time of the flood.

The four missing men were named as Charles Breslin (62), David Powell (50), Garry Jenkins (39) and Philip Hill (45). All are described as extremely experienced and competent miners.

Initial attempts at recovering the lost men involved the Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service and Mines Rescue Service, working with volunteer divers from the South and Mid Wales Cave Rescue Team. Unfortunately the waters proved to be too murky and debris filled for diving, so the rescuers concentrated on pumping oxygen into the mine and water out. There have been problems with methane at the mine in the past, but this does not appear to have been a problem on this occasion. A specialized micro-seismometer was brought in from Sure Wave Technologies of Cheshire to help search for any sounds produced by trapped miners.

A diagrammatic representation of the flooding at the Gleision Colliery.

At 8.30 on Friday morning South Wales Police reported the discovery of the body of one of the miners, although the rescuers were not able to reach or identify the body. Rescue attempts continued in the hope that the remaining miners had found their way to a pocket of air somewhere on the far side of the flood. At 1.30 pm the police announced the discovery of a second body, this time at the face where the miners had been working. At 2.50 pm the water levels had fallen low enough that the rescue team were able to begin clearing away debris; twelve minutes later a third body was found. The final body was found slightly after 6 pm.

The Gleision Colliery has been in existence since the 1960s, and was privatized in 1993, but there have been mines in the area since at least the middle of the nineteenth century. It is close to the River Tawe and is prone to flooding, as well as having methane problems. It is likely that the flood was caused by waters entering the Gleision mine from an old excavation. In theory miners should not work within 45 m of an abandoned tunnel, but with many old workings in the area there is a danger of encountering mine which are not recorded.

An enquiry will now be initiated by the South Wales Police, which will be taken over by the Health and Safety Executive once any criminality on behalf of the mine's owners has been ruled out. Coal Direct Ltd. took control of the colliery in 2009, after the previous owners went bankrupt, and had gained permission to expand excavation on condition that they also improved health and safety and flood provision at the mine.

Mining is an inherently dangerous industry, and even with excellent safety standards accidents will happen. That the UK has not had a major mining disaster in some years is due largely to the closure of many of its pits - transferring production largely to countries with poorer safety records. The Tawe Valley mines have a particularly bad history for mining accidents. The most recent was in 1949 when a gas explosion killed two men at the nearby Tarenni Colliery (abandoned in 1949). The worst flood recorded in the valley also affected the Tarenni Valley, killing five miners in 1909; this was caused by entry of water from the abandoned Ynesgeinon mine.

Kepler-19: new planetary system discovered.

On 7 September 2011 a paper appeared on the arXiv astrophysics database at Cornell University Library by a team lead by Sarah Ballard of the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics describing the discovery of a new planetary system, Kepler-19. Kepler-19 is 650 light years fro Earth in the constellation of Lyra and was formerly identified as KOI-84 (Kepler Object of Interest 84). If is a fairly sun-like star, with a slightly lower mass and radius as our sun, it is also slightly cooler and dimmer, and only about half as old.

The Kepler Space Telescope was able to detect a regular dimming of this star, which seemed to imply the transit of a planet with a radius 2.2 times that of the Earth, every 9.29 days. However this dimming was not completely regular; it sped up and slowed down by 5 minutes on a 316 day cycle. This implied the presence of another body, either an unseen additional planet or an undetected star, possibly directly behind Kepler-19.

Ballard et al. constructed a computer model of the Kepler-19 system, using the initial Kepler observations and follow-up observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope, which they used to model a number of different scenarios.

They came to the conclusion that the dimming was caused by a planet, dubbed Kepler-19b, passing in front of the star. This planet, as initially suspected has a radius of 2.2 times that of the earth, though its composition and mass are impossible to determine. This planet orbits its star every 9.29 days, at a distance of slightly less than 0.1 AU (1 AU = the distance between the Earth and the sun so Kepler-19b obits its star at slightly less than 10% of the distance between the Earth and the sun).

This Orbit is perturbed by the presence of a second planet, named Kepler-19c and dubbed the 'Invisible Planet' or the 'Phantom Planet' in the media. This planet would have a maximum size of six times that of Jupiter and a maximum orbital time of 160 days, though this is considered unlikely, the most probably scenario being a planet Earth-sized or smaller, orbiting the star at most once every 30 days. It is thought not to orbit in the same plane as Kepler-19b, as it does not appear to transverse the surface of Kepler-19 as seen from the Earth; this is different to our solar system, where all planets orbit in essentially the same plane of axis.

Model of the Kepler-19 system, showing the orbit of Kepler-19b (black), and possible orbits for Kepler-19c (coloured).

See also PSR J1719-1438b. The Diamond Planet, New Exoplanet: TrES-5 and Exoplanets on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

Earthquake off the coast of Vancouver Island. 9 September 2011.

On Friday 9 September 2011, just after 12.40 pm local time, an earthquake occurred roughly 20 km off the Pacific Coast of Vancouver Island, roughly 250 km east of Vancouver City. The quake was measured as having a depth of 23 km and a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter Scale by the United States Geological Survey. This caused shaking that was felt across much of coastal British Columbia and Oregon. There are no reports of any damage or casualties, probably due in part to the remote location of the quake, and no tsunami warning has been issued.

Vancouver Island is located to the northeast of a subductive plate boundary, where the Juan de Fuca and Explorer Plates are being subducted beneath the North American Plate. The Explorer and Juan de Fuca Plates are remnants of an ancient oceanic plate, the Fallaron Plate which has almost completely disappeared beneath North America. The Fallaron Plate formerly diverged from the Pacific Plate along the Fallaron Ridge, but as the plate has been subducted both it and the ridge have broken up. The remnants of the plate are now the Explorer Plate in the north, then the Juan de Fuca Plate, then the Gorda Plate in the south. This borders onto the Pacific Plate along the Mendocino Fracture Zone, which extends on land as the San Andreas Fault.

The tectonic margins along the eastern coast of North America.

The Juan de Fuca Plate does not flow smoothly beneath Vancouver Island, but moves in a series of stops and starts as the rocks stick to one another then move suddenly once the pressure builds up sufficiently. This has lead to some spectacular quakes, most notably the 1949 Queen Charlotte Islands Earthquake, which measured 8.1 on the Richter Scale and caused several landslides and widespread damage to property, the 1946 Vancouver Earthquake, which measured 7.3 on the Richter Scale, killed two people and damaged a number of buildings and the 1700 Cascadia Earthquake which had an estimated magnitude of between 8.7 and 9.1 on the Richter Scale, and triggered a tsunami which reached Japan and caused widespread devastation.

The epicentre of the 1946 Vancouver Earthquake, in relation to the Juan de Fuca subduction Zone.

If you felt this quake you can report it to the United States Geological Survey here.

See also Scientists predict eruption of Axial Seamount, Earthquakes in the Gulf of California and Earthquakes on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

A Woolly Rhino from the Pliocene of Tibet.

The Wooly Rhinoceros is an iconic member of the Pleistocene Ice Age megafauna, found across the Eurasian steppes from Scotland in the West to Korea in the East. They were thought to have first appeared in China at the start of the Pleistocene roughly 2.5 million years ago, and survived to as recently as 8000 years ago in parts of Siberia. Wooly Rhinos all belonged to a single genus, Coelodonta, distinguished by a thick wooly coat and a large flattened horn far forward on the snout, hypothesized to have been used for clearing snow in order to access grass and herbage.

Reconstruction of a Wooly Rhino, by Palaeontological Artist Mauricio Antón.

The 2 September edition of the journal Science contains a paper by a team lead by Tao Deng of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in which they announce the discovery of a new species of Wooly Rhino from the Pliocene of Tibet, roughly 3.7 million years ago - or at least 900 000 years before the onset of the first Pleistocene Glaciation. This suggests that rather than evolving as a response to the onset of glaciation, the Wooly Rhino, and possibly other Pleistocene megafauna, already existed on the frozen Tibetan Plateau and spread opportunistically across the rest of Eurasia with the onset of Glaciation.

The new species has been named Coelodonta thibetana, and is described from a single specimen, comprising the skull and first three vertebrae, found in the Zanda Basin in Western Tibet by Xiaoming Wang of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County during a 2007 expedition. It has the typical flattened, forward located horn of the genus, as well as high crowned, deeply hollowed teeth, which are also considered typical of the genus, but a nasal structure that is considered primitive compared to that of the rest of the genus.

Coelodonta thibetana, before it was separated from its rock matrix.

During the Middle to Late Pliocene the Zanda Basin is thought to have been a cold, upland environment, but much wetter than it is now. The site where the skull was discovered appears to have been a marshy environment associated with a river entering a lake in a broad delta. In addition to the Coelodonta skull the expedition also discovered the partial palate of a primitive giraffe, the skull of a horse, the tooth of a deer, and a toe bone from a rhino of the genus Dicerorhininae, the genus which includes the Sumatran Rhino, thought by the closest living relative of the Wooly Rhino, as well as numerous smaller mammals, and invertebrates.

Reconstruction of Coelodonta thibetana by illustrator Julie Naylor.

See also a Eutherian Mammal form the Jurassic of China, Ancient Ape Skull found in Uganda and Mammals on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

Saturn's moon Dione found to have an atmosphere.

Dione is was discovered in 1684 by the Genovan (coming from the Republic of Genova, part of modern Italy) astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, the forth moon of Saturn to be discovered.

Dione orbits Saturn every 66 hours, at a distance of 377 000 km. It has a diameter of 1122 km, making it the fifteenth largest moon in the solar system. Its surface is made up of water ice, but planetary scientists calculate it is to massive to be icy throughout so it probably has an icy interior.

An image of Dione taken by the Cassini Space Probe.

In the 12 August edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters contains a paper by a team lead by Sven Simon of the Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology at the University of Cologne, in which they announce the discovery of an atmosphere on Dione. This atmosphere was (unusually) not discovered by direct imaging but rather by its effect on the magnetic field of Saturn. As Dione moves through this field it creates a bow-wave ahead of itself, indicative of the presence of charged particles, particles which indicate the presence of an atmosphere, through in all probability a very thin one. This study gives no indication as to what the make-up of the atmosphere might be.

Dione is the third moon of Saturn where an atmosphere has been discovered.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon has long been known to have a thick, dense, atmosphere. This was first theorized by Josep Comas Solà, a Spanish astronomer at the Fabra Observatory in Barcelona in 1907, and confirmed in 1944 by Gerald Kuiper at the Yerkes Observatory. The atmosphere was studied directly by the Voyager Space Probes in the early 1980s and penetrated by the Huygens Probe, launched from the Cassini Spacecraft, in 2005. The atmosphere is 1.45 times as dense as that of Earth, and 1.19 times as massive. It is comprised mainly of nitrogen, with a small amount of methane; this methane content is about 1.6% of the total above a height of 32 km, increasing to 4.9% at 8 km, a concentration which remains constant to ground level.

Video taken during the Huygens Probe's decent into the atmosphere of Titan.

In 2010 NASA announced the discovery of a thin atmosphere on Rhea, the second largest moon of Saturn. This atmosphere is comprised of oxygen (60%) and carbon dioxide (40%). The oxygen content of the atmosphere is thought to be the result of the electrolysis of water ice on the surface of the moon, but the origin of the carbon dioxide is less clear; possibly the result of outgassing from somewhere inside the moon.

Video of the surface of Rhea from the Cassini Space Probe.

See also Running water on present day Mars? Pluto gains a fourth moon and Saturn on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

Hokkaido Earthquake, 7 September 2011.

Just before 10.30 pm on Wednesday 7 September 2011 an earthquake occurred off the southern coast of Hokkaido Island, Japan. This was measured as having a magnitude of 5.3 on the Richter Scale by the United States Geological Survey, and 5.1 on the Richter Scale by the Japan Meteorological Agency. The depth of the quake is uncertain, but certainly less than 10 km - i.e. very shallow. A quake of this scale at this depth would be devastating in most parts of the world, but Japan is well prepared for earthquakes and there were no reports of any damage or casualties.

Map showing the location of the quake (red cross) and the areas where the quake was felt (circles). The colour of the circles indicates the level of shaking felt, as indicated on the key below. Higher numbers indicate more severe shaking.

Japan lies on the border between four tectonic plates, and is extremely tectonically active. However Hokkaido is less earthquake prone than Honshu, as it has no boundaries passing beneath it. The island was struck by a magnitude 8 quake in 2003, and a magnitude 7.8 quake in 1993. The 1993 quake caused a small tsunami, which killed 203 people.

If you felt this quake you can report it to the United States Geological Survey here.

See also Fukushima shaken by large earthquake, The Nagano Earthquake of 30 June 2011, and Earthquakes on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

Earthquake in the Netherlands. 8 September 2011.

Just after 9.00 pm on Thursday 8 September 2011 the city of Nijmegen in the east of The Netherlands was shaken by a small earthquake. The epicenter of the quake was about 11 km so the southeast of the city, on the German border. The quake was recorded as having a magnitude of 4.2 on the Richter Scale and having occurred at a depth of 14.3 km by the United States Geological Survey and as having a magnitude of 4.3 on the Richter Scale and having occurred at a depth of 10 km by the Centre Sismologique Euro-Méditerranéen. This is a small quake, but very shallow, and it was felt across most of The Netherlands, and in neighbouring Germany as far east as Dortmund. No casualties or significant damage have been reported.

Map from the Centre Sismologique Euro-Méditeranéen, showing the epicenter of the quake (purple star) and the areas where it was felt. Larger circles indicate more people reported feeling the quake, and the colour indicates how severe the shaking they reported was.

Although The Netherlands is not noted for its seismic activity, the eastern part of the country, along with neighboring areas of Germany are part of the Lower Rhine Graben, an area of rifting associated with the uplift of the Alps and the collision of Africa with Europe. Essentially (and this is rather simplified) Europe to the east of the the Graben is being pushed northeastward by the northward movement of Africa. This stretches the crust and lithosphere on the Graben, causing it to thin and creating a long rift valley, which the River Rhine follows.

Simplified diagram showing a cross section through the Rhine Graben. The thinning of the lithosphere on the Graben causes a rift valley at the surface and an uplift in the asthenosphere bellow. In theory this could eventually develop into a full oceanic rift, with new crust being formed, but in this case it is unlikely.

This rifting leads to the occasional small earthquake in the region, though these are more common at the German end of the Graben, the most recent being the Koblenz Earthquake of February this year (2011), which like this quake caused no significant damage. Earthquakes in the Netherlands and western Germany have also occasionally been attributed to the activities of coal miners and drilling for natural gas.

If you felt the quake you can report it to the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute here, the Centre Sismologique Euro-Méditerranéen here and the United States Geological Survey here.

See also Earthquake in the Gulf of Corinth, Torino (Turin) rocked by mild earthquake and Earthquakes on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.