That's a nice thought woy woy. They seem to be running a little...

That's a nice thought woy woy. They seem to be running a little behind with the programme. Maybe the coal is getting so thick it's taking much longer than expected to retrieve the many metres of core. :)

On a related matter, where they showed that photo of a piece of core on the 'discovery' announcement, if you focus on the racked core sections in the background and study it really closely (you'll need good eyes) you can just see angled striations running at about 15 - 20 deg from horizontal from top-left to bottom-right. If the hole was vertical (it probably was) then this is likely the approximate dip angle of the seam. I did a bit of basic geometry using the distance of hole #1 from hole #2 (280m) and depth to hole #2 coal intercept (89m) and, assuming it was the same seam, you get an angle of dip of close to 15 deg. Note there are a couple of assumptions here.