The first manned, hydrogen-powered plane has been successfully tested in the skies above Spain, its makers say.
The small, propeller-driven craft, developed by aviation giant Boeing, made three short flights at an airfield south of Madrid, the company said.
It was powered by hydrogen fuel cells, which produce only heat and water as exhaust products.
The tests could pave the way for a new generation of greener aircraft, the company said.
Boeing's chief technology officer John Tracy said the flights were "a historical technological success" and "full of promises for a greener future".
Small future
Three test flights of the two-seater aircraft took place in February and March at an airfield at Ocana, south of Madrid. The plane was modified to include a hybrid battery and fuel cell system developed by UK firm Intelligent Energy.
The fuel cells, which create electricity by combining oxygen and ... More »
A "zero-emission" sports car with a top speed of nearly 100mph is set to be unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show.
The hydrogen-powered Lifecar, based on the design of the Morgan Aero-8 roadster, produces little noise and only water vapour from its exhaust.
The lightweight model packs advanced fuel cells and an energy storage system that gives the car a range of 250 miles (400km) per tank of hydrogen.
It has been developed by a consortium of UK companies and universities.
"Figures suggest the car should be capable of doing 0-60 [miles per hour] in about seven seconds," Matthew Parkin of classic sports car manufacturer Morgan told BBC News.
However, the exact acceleration will not be known until the complete car is taken for its first test drive.
"It's nearly there and the plan is to drive it when the show is over," said Mr Parkin.
The University of Surrey is to lead a five year £5m Government funded study into silicon photonics.
“There is renewed interest in silicon photonics because of the microprocessor interconnect bottleneck,” programme leader Professor Graham Reed told EW. “If you do it optically, you get a huge bandwidth.”
Although far from an ideal optical material, silicon can transmits light at the telecoms wavelengths of 1550 and 1300nm, and its oxide can be used as a cladding to constrain light. On-chip and chip-to-chip communications are targets.
Surrey with its partners will work on silicon optical modulators, detectors, filters and couplers. “What we are not doing is any light sources, partly because there is already enough heat on a microprocessor,” said Reed. “We will bring it in through an optical fibre.”
Couplers are particularly important, said Reed, because silicon optical modulators use carriers to alter refractive index, a... More »
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