Gas pipeline explosion in West Virginia.

A gas pipeline exploded in Sissonville, West Virginia at about 12.40 pm local time (5.40 pm GMT), on Tuesday 11 December 2012, destroying four houses, causing extensive damage to five more and closing part of Interstate 77. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin has said it was fortunate that nobody was killed. Several people have been treated for smoke inhalation and residents of nearby homes spent the night in a Methodist Church converted to a temporary shelter. A local factory, NGK Spark Plugs, was forced to close temporarily and children were kept inside at the local Elementary School till arrangements to take them home by bus could be made. Vehicles using Interstate 77 faced an 80 km diversion around the affected area. Much of the town lost its power temporarily during the incident, and phone services across several states were disrupted due to damage to a fiber-optic cable. Residents of Sissonville described the noise as being like that of a jet engine.

Arial photograph of the burning pipeline. AP.

The northbound lane of Interstate 77 re-opened early on Wednesday 12 December, but the southbound lane remains closed. The surface of the road after the incident has been described as 'like a tar pit', with melted guardrails, burned signs and a hole in the carriage-way. 

The surface of Interstate 77 after the fires were extinguished. WSAZ-TV.

The incident is being investigated by pipeline owners Colombia Gas, as well as the National Transportation Safety Board and local authorities.

See also Two feared dead after explosion on oil rig in Gulf of Mexico, Massive sinkhole opens up in Assumption Parish, Louisiana, Massacre at Lonmin Marikana Platinum Mine, Rustenburg, South Africa, Amnesty International reports on the 2012 Bodo Oil Spill and Explosion aboard oil vessel in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

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A new species of Scorpionfly from Baltic Amber.

The Scorpionflies (Mecoptera) are a group of insects related to the True Flies. They get their name from the reproductive organs of the males of some species, which resemble the tails of Scorpions. Despite this fierce appearance most species are harmless herbivores, though it is thought that fleas are highly specialized members of the group, and the True Flies, Butterflies and Moths may have evolved from the group in the Mesozoic. The group has a fossil record dating back to the Permian, and it has been suggested that the Scorpionflies were the first Insects to pollenate plants, possibly pollenating gymnospermous plants in the Jurassic before the origin of true flowering plants.

In a paper published in the journal Systematic Entomology in January 2012, Wiesław Krzemiński of the Institute of Systematic and Evolution of Animals at the Polish Academy of Sciences, and Agnieszka Soszyńska-Maj of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology and Hydrobiology at the University of Łódź, describe a new species of Scorpionfly from Middle Eocene Baltic Amber, roughly 45 million years old.

The new species is named Baltipanorpa damzeni, meaning Damzen's Baltic Scorpionfly, after Jonas Damzen, who first discovered the specimens. The Species is described from two male specimens, both about 16 mm in length. These differ significantly from other known members of the group in the structure of their reproductive apparatus and wing venation, suggesting they are not closely related to other known species.

Specimen of Baltipanorpa damzeni preserved in amber. Krzemiński & Soszyńska-Maj (2012).

See also Two new species of Mosquito from the Eocene of Montana, Miocene Quasimodo Flies in Dominican Amber, Males of two species of Horse-fly described for the first time, Two new species of Fungus Gnat from Southeast Asia and Australasia and New Tiger Moths discovered in east Asia.

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Cassini Probe finds 400 km river on Titan.

NASA scientists have released an image of a 400 km long river on Saturn's moon Titan, imaged by the Cassini Space Probe during a flyby on 26 September 2012. The river meanders for some distance across a flat plane before entering the Kraken Mare, a sea of hydrocarbons (probably methane and ethane) near to the moon's north pole described as being intermediate in size between the Caspian and the Mediterranean on Earth.

Titan is the only place in the Solar System, other than the Earth, where a cycle of liquid evaporation and precipitation is known to form a system of rivers and sea, though ancient sedementological structures suggest that Mars once had rivers of running water, and rivers of what appear to be sulphurous lava have been sighted on Jupiter's moon Io, though these last are thought to be fed by volcanic eruptions rather than rain.

Left: Cassini image of the new river on Titan. NASA/JPL.

See also New Cassini Images of Titan, Tethys and Methone, NASA releases new Cassini images of Saturn's moons Enceladus Janus and Dione, NASA releases new Cassini images of Saturn's moon Rhea, Saturn's moon Dione found to have an atmosphere and Saturn on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

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Earthquake beneath the Banda Sea.

On Tuesday 11 December 2012, slightly before 2.00 am local time (slightly before 5.00 pm on Monday 10 December, GMT), a magnitude 7.1 Earthquake occurred beneath the Banda Sea, about 600 km north of Darwin, measured by the United States Geological Survey as being at a depth of 159.3 km and by Geoscience Australia as at a depth of 151 km. This is a large Earthquake, but quite a long way offshore and very deep, so only a few remote islands are likely to have been effected.

Map showing the area effected by the 11 December quake. Areas within the black circle are likely to have felt shaking and areas within the red circle may have suffered damage. Geoscience Australia.

The Banda Sea is underlain by two tectonic plates, the Banda Sea Plate and the Timor Plate; two small plates caught between the colliding Eurasian, Pacific and Australian Plates. The Timor Plate is being subducted beneath the Banda Sea Plate. As it sinks into the Earth the subducting plate is being melted by the heat of the planets interior; some of the melted material then rises through the overlying Banda Sea Plate, fueling volcanism on a number of islands in the region. This is not a smooth process, and the plates frequently stick together then break apart as the pressure builds up, fueling Earthquakes in the region.

See also Eruption on Mount Paluweh, Eruptions on Batu Tara and Earthquakes on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

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Asteroid 4179 Toutatis/1989 AC to fly past the Earth.

Asteroid 4179 Toutatis/1989 AC is due to fly by the Earth early on Wednesday 12 December 2012 at a distance of about 7 million kilometers, which is slightly less than twenty times the distance to the Moon. This is not an unpredicted event; the asteroid passes us every fourth December, which means that a wide array of Earth-based telescopes will be trained upon it. While several objects pass closer to the Earth each year, 4179 Toutatis/1989 AC is quite a large object, roughly 2 km by 5 km, so it may be easier to observe for smaller telescopes.

Radar image of 4179 Toutatis/1989 AC. NASA/JPL/Steve Ostro.

4179 Toutatis/1989 AC belongs to the Alinda group of asteroids, which have eccentric (highly elliptical) orbits and orbital resonances with both the Earth and Jupiter. An orbital resonance occurs when two bodies periodically encounter one-another in their orbit, and exchange some orbital energy; this effectively means the larger body shepherds the smaller body into a regular orbit. Alinda asteroids have a 3:1 orbital resonance with Jupiter and a 4:1 orbital resonance with the Earth.

4179 Toutatis/1989 AC is roughly peanut shaped, leading astronomers to suspect is a 'rubble-pile' type of object; two large rocks joined by smaller debris. It is classified as an S-type Asteroid, a stoney object made up mostly of magnesium-iron silicates. Such objects are typical of the inner Solar System, where icy or carbonaceous material is likely to have been evaporated away by the heat of the Sun.

The orbit of 4179 Toutatis/1989 AC. Image created using the JPL Small-Body Database.

In addition to observations made from Earth, 4179 Toutatis/1989 AC will be the subject of a flyby by the  China National Space Administration's Chang'e 2 probe, which has already taken a large number of high-resolution images of the Lunar surface.

See also The Geminid Meteors, The Leonid Meteors, Four more asteroids found to be co-orbitals of Neptune, Asteroid 2012 TC4 passes within 95 000 km of the Earth and Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) to pass within 60 000 000 km of the Earth.

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The Geminid Meteors.

The Geminid Meteors peak each year on or around the night 13-14 December radiating from a point in the constellation of Gemini. They are visible from around the globe, but are harder to observe in the southern hemisphere, since Gemini does not rise far above the horizon at this time of year. They were first observed in 1860, and have apparently been gradually getting brighter each year since then, leading some scientists to speculate that the path of the meteor shower might have recently been perturbed by the planet Jupiter, shifting it into the Earth's path.

The point of origin of the Geminid Meteors. Meteor Showers Online.

Oddly for a meteor shower, the Geminids do not appear to be related to a comet, but instead are associated with an object called 3200 Phaethon, which is classed as an Apollo Asteroid (an asteroid with an orbit that crosses that of the Earth). 3200 Phaeton has a highly elliptical orbit, which takes it in as close as 0.14 Au (14% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, more than twice as close as Mercury) and out as far as 2.4 AU (2.4 times as far from the Sun as the Earth or 1.6 times as far as Mars). 3200 Phaethon does not appear to produce any sort of halo (a cloud of material produced by the evaporation of gas ice from the surface of a comet, thought to be the source of most meteor showers); rather it appears dark in colour an is classed as a B-type Carbonaceous Asteroid, thought to have a surface covering of  anhydrous silicates, hydrated clay minerals, organic polymers, magnetite, and sulphides.

The orbit of 3200 Phaeton. Image created using the JPL Small-Body Database Browser.

See also The Leonid Meteors, Four more asteroids found to be co-orbitals of Neptune, Asteroid 2012 TC4 passes within 95 000 km of the Earth, Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) to pass within 60 000 000 km of the Earth and The Perseid Meteors. 

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A cryptic Sea Snake from Australia.

The Beaked Sea Snake Enhydrina schistosa is known from the Arabian Gulf to Southeast Asia and south to Australia and Papua New Guinea. It is distinctive, with an elongated central scale on its lower jaw, overlapping the upper jaw to form a sort of beak, used to tackle spiney Fish. The Snake has a bad reputation; its habits lead to it frequently being caught in fishing nets, where it is hard to detect. To make matters worse it is notoriously bad tempered, and has an extremely venomous bite. About 50% of all Sea Snake bites are the work of Enhydrina schistosa, and around 90% of fatalities.

The Beaked Sea Snake, Enhydrina schistosa. Avinash Shanbhag/Indian Snakes.

In a paper published in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution on 5 October 2012, a team of scientists led by Kanishka Ukuwela of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide publish a study of the population genetics of Enhydrina schistosa, which suggests that the Snake is in fact two sepperate, convergently evolved species, that arose within the morphologically disticnt genus Hydrophis, the two Snakes having apparently setttled on the same form due to similar ecologies (convergent evolution).

This is an important discovery, and not just from a taxonomic point of view; there is no reason to suppose that two Snakes that have evolved similar morphologies will have evolved similar venoms, and therefore an antivenom developed to counter the venom of one Snake is unlikely to have any effect on the venom of the other. Fortunately the Snakes do not seem to have overlapping ranges, with one species found in Australian waters and the other around the coast of South Asia.

The taxonomic position of the snakes is now complicated; Ukuwela et al. report the early description of a second species in the genus Enhydrina, Enhydrina zweifeli, described from a single specimen from Papua New Guinea in 1985, but not generally recognised as a valid species by herpetologists. The Australian population of Enhydrina schistosa is reported to have fewer bands on the body than the Asian population, and lower but broadly overlapping ventral scale count; a description matching that of Enhydrina zweifeli, and Ukuwela et al. suggest this name should be used to describe the Australian population. 

However this would make the genus Enhydrina polyphyletic (having more than one origin) and the genus Hydrophis paraphyletic (not including all the species descended from the last common ancestor of the group) whereas modern taxonomy usually requires that taxomic groups be monophyletic (all descended from a common ancestor, and including all the species descended from that ancestor), so it is likely that this taxonomy will change.

The multiple origins of Enhydrina schistosa within the genus Hydrophis. Ukuwela et al. (2012).

See also New species of Snail-eating Snake from western Panama, New species of Treesnakes from the Comoras, New species of Asian Coral Snake from western India, Velvet Geckos and Broad-headed Snakes; understanding the population structure of a favored prey item in order to help protect an endangered predator, and Reptiles on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

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