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...
Then I watched as Helena, an 18-year-old with a fear of lifts, got into a series of them as a psychologist attempted to treat her phobia. And finally, I saw a group of children take a tour of the Dulwich Picture Gallery without leaving King's College Hospital where they are long-term patients.In case you had not guessed, these were all examples of the use of virtual reality, which looks likely to be the big technology trend of 2016. Given the amount of investment by players from Facebook to Sony to HTC, it will be a big disappointment if VR does not finally become, well, a reality in many homes this year. My ascent of Everest, for example, came courtesy of the HTC Vive VR headset and a game developed by the Icelandic firm Solfar Studios.The HTC Vive, seen by many as providing the best VR experience, was due to launch late last year but its debut was delayed for some further tweaking. Now, it should join Sony's PlayStation VR and Facebook's Oculus Rift headset ...