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 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...