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...
Volcanoes are primed to erupt on a time scale of days to months rather than years, research suggests
The study raises hopes of finding a more accurate way to tell when a volcano is about to explode, scientists at Oxford University say. Gases emitted from the mouth of a volcano could provide clues to when an eruption is imminent, geologists report in Nature Geoscience. They studied the dormant Campi Felgrei volcano in southern Italy. The area west of Naples has been dubbed Europe's super volcano. Hidden beneath the landscape lies a sleeping volcano of immense power, which last erupted in 1538.Geological "time capsules" from the event contradict current thinking on how volcanoes are triggered to erupt. Crystals of a mineral from the ancient explosion show the molten rock was "primed" - or filled with bubbles of gas - only very shortly before erupting.Scientists say this process should change the make-up of gases emitted at the surface of the volcano, potentially providing an early warning sign that a volcano is about to erupt. Prof David Pyle o...