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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...
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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...
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Scientists drill a hole into the Indian Ocean floor to try to get below the Earth's crust for the first time

They want to sample rock from the planet's mantle - its deep interior.  In the process, the researchers hope to check their assumptions about the materials from which the crust itself is made.  It will probably take several years to drop the full 5 to 5.5km, says co-team leader, Prof Chris MacLeod. But Prof MacLeod suspects the discontinuity could also describe in places the depth to which water has managed to penetrate into the peridotites to produce a different type of rock known as serpentinite.  This is in addition to the 700m of water between the drilling ship, the Joides Resolution (JR), and the seabed. "In total, we think it will take three expeditions," the Cardiff University geologist told.  "The science is approved and we have funding for this initial two-month investigation. But we will need to come back and we may not complete the task until the 2020s."  There have been several attempts to drill into the mantle, but none has yet succeede...
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New scary-looking fish species comes from the ocean's dark depths

New scary-looking fish species Now and again, marine scientists plumbing the dark depths of the sea pull out a new fish species that is just out-and-out ugly.  The latest discovery looks like a hunchbacked, rotting old shoe with spikes, a scraggly mustache and a big mouth with bad teeth. And it has a long, angular fishing pole-looking thing growing out of its head. The feature is typical for all species of ceratioid anglerfish, which they indeed use to lure other fish to their spiky jaws. "This fish dangles the appendage until an unsuspecting fish swims up thinking they found a meal, only to quickly learn that they are, in fact, a meal themselves," the marine researchers from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said in a statement.The spooky tackle is believed to have evolved from a dorsal fin.
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