Hambach Lignite Mine Part 2

Cybrbeast posted the photos of his excursion to the Hambach open pit mine a few days ago, which reminded me that I still haven't posted any photos of my excursion to the same mine, one year ago. So, maybe a bit late, here are some photos from my excursion. The tour-van: Make sure to view this one fullscreen and look for the white car for reference: And this is the precious lignite: A video:

Best album cover ever?

You can hear them singing here.

If only we could get suits like that in our colors, it would be amazing.

Galaxy Collision Simulation

This computer animation visualises the full time evolution of a galaxy collision simulation of two spiral galaxies that host supermassive black holes at their centres. Only the gas distribution in the galaxies is shown. As in the figure, brightness represents gas density while the colour hue indicates gas temperature.

How to vote in Russian parliament

Rollable OLED screen

Before long we will be able to fit an entire smart phone in a pen.

Hambach Lignite Mine

On excursion I visited the Hambach opencast mine is the largest mine operated by RWE Power AG (formerly Rheinbraun AG) for the extraction of "brown coal" or lignite. This is the lowest grade and dirtiest type of coal.

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It's about 5km by 4.5km, and around 350m depth. It is the lowest point in Europe at 293 meter below sea level. Next to the mine is the Sophienhöhe, the largest artificial hill in the world composed of excavated material.

It was a hazy day, but still one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen. I've tried to reduce the haze in the pictures. Before haze removal:

After haze removal. You can see a man for scale (next to the car) if you look at the full size:

The machines on this side of the mine are only dumping the material from the other side of the mine, that is the ~250m of useless soil that is on top of the coal. It gets transported by conveyor belts from the place where it is eaten by the Baggers:

Basically the whole mine pit slowly moves through the landscape as one side is dug and the other dumped.

Words and pictures cannot describe the vastness of this place.

The Hambach mine is part of the Rhenish (Rhineland) lignite-mining region that covers an area of some 2,500km². Three other mines operate in the area, the Garzweiler, Inden and Bergheim. Together producing about 100Mt/y of coal. Almost all coal is used for power generation, generating 10289MW. So all this could be replaced by about 10 nuclear power plants.

More information on the mining at RWE Rhineland.

Small avalanche on the Eiger

On my excursion we saw a few avalanches coming down the Eiger. It was cloudy and snowy on the Eiger the days before, but in the afternoon the sun broke through, which I think caused the avalanches. This is the best one I filmed. Too bad my camera doesn't have HD resolution, but the 12x zoom is nice.