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...
Scientists unravelled a child who was sacrificed in a ritual ceremony by the Inca civilisation 500 years ago
The boy's mummified remains were discovered on an Argentinean mountain. Analysis of his mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to child, showed that the boy's closest living relatives are in Peru and Bolivia. He belonged to a population of native South Americans that almost disappeared after the Spanish conquest. Researchers in Spain were given permission to extract mitochondrial DNA from the seven-year-old boy to study part of his genome. By comparing his genetic code with hundreds of thousands of samples held in genetic databases, they found his genetic profile was very rare. One match was to DNA from an individual belonging to the ancient Wari Empire, which ruled the Andes long before the Incas. And three were to modern-day people living in Peru and Bolivia. Lead researcher Antonio Salas, a geneticist at the University of Santiago de Compostela, said the data suggested that the boy's genetic line is nearly extinct in modern-day peopl...