Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label atlantic

Solar plane lands in New York City

A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said.  The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website.  Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
Post a Comment
Read more

The biggest fireball explosion has plunged through the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean

The event, which has only just come to light, occurred off the coast of Brazil at 13:55 GMT on 6 February.  As it burned up, the space rock released the equivalent of 13,000 tonnes of TNT.  This makes it the most powerful event of its kind since an object exploded overChelyabinsk in Russia in 2013.  That blast was much bigger, releasing the equivalent of 500,000 tonnes of TNT.  More than 1,000 people were injured in that incident on 15 February three years ago, most from flying glass from shattered windows. But the fireball over the Atlantic probably went unnoticed; it burnt up about 30km above the ocean surface, 1,000km off the Brazilian coast.  Nasa listed the event on its Fireball and Bolide Reports web page.  Measurements suggest that about 30 small asteroids (between 1m and 20m in size) burn up in the Earth's atmosphere every year.  Because most of the Earth's surface is covered by water, most of these fall over the ocean and do not aff...
Post a Comment
Read more

The government creating a marine reserve almost as big as the UK in the Atlantic waters of Ascension Island

Just over half of the protected area will be closed to fishing.  The fishery in the other half will be policed under a grant of £300,000 from the Louis Bacon Foundation, a charitable body.  It is the latest marine reserve to be declared around remote islands, which will increase marine conservation zones to about 2% of the ocean.  That remains a far cry from the 30% recommended by scientists to preserve species and expand fish stocks, but is much more than just a few years ago.  Governments have designated marine parks at Palau in the North Pacific, Easter Island and Pitcairn in the South Pacific, and New Zealand's Kermadec islands, in what has become a landmark year for ocean conservation. The latest reserve at Ascension Island is said to hold some of the largest marlin in the world, one of the largest populations of green turtles, big colonies of tropical seabirds and the island's own unique frigate bird.Dr Judith Brown, director of fisheries and marine ...
Post a Comment
Read more