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A28 SCIENCE
Friday 23 November 2018
Experimental plane flies silently, may lead to quiet drones

By MALCOLM RITTER tage in making them less into positively charged
AP Science Writer bothersome to people on particles called ions. Those
NEW YORK (AP) — A nearly the ground, he said. ions flow toward negatively
silent, drone-sized aircraft The Nature paper reports charged parts of plane,
has shown it can fly, thanks the results of 10 test flights colliding with ordinary air
to a scientist who was in- inside an MIT athletic build- molecules and transferring
spired by watching "Star ing. With a wingspan of energy to them. That pro-
Trek" as a child. about 16 feet (5 meters), duces a wind that provides
With neither propellers nor the five-pound (2.45-kilo- thrust for the plane, Barrett
jets, the airplane gets its gram) plane sailed along explained.
thrust by applying a strong at about 11 mph (17 kph). A similar process has long
electric field to the air. That Each flight covered about been used in outer space
general idea has been 60 yards (55 meters). to propel some spacecraft,
demonstrated at science Barrett, 35, said he was in- he said.
fairs, but the new work spired as a child by watch- Barrett said he hopes to
shows it can power a free- ing "Star Trek" television epi- find a way to eliminate the
flying airplane. sodes and movies, where "very slight buzz" one can
So can people look for- he was struck by the shut- hear.
ward to traveling in planes tles that flew with no mov- "I think they're onto some-
that are almost silent and ing parts in their propulsion thing here," said Pat An-
emit no air pollution? systems. He recalled think- derson, a professor of aero-
"Not anytime soon," says ing, "There should be a way space engineering at the
Steven Barrett of the Mas- things should fly without Daytona Beach, Florida,
sachusetts Institute of Tech- having propellers and (jet) campus of Embry-Riddle
nology, who reported the turbines." Aeronautical University. He
results in a study released As an adult, he focused had no role in the research.
Wednesday by the journal on that and came across He called the results impres-
Nature. In this Nov. 9, 2018, photo, Ian Fairweather, of Montana a concept called "ionic sive. But the experimental
It's not clear whether the Resources, operates a drone that is specially designed to haze wind." aircraft lacks the range
technology could work at waterfowl that land on the Berkeley Pit, a former open pit copper For the MIT airplane, that in- and endurance to serve as
such a large scale, he said mine in Butte, Mont. Associated Press volves a series of thin wires a useful drone, and it's not
in a telephone interview. at the front of the plane clear whether the technol-
And even if it can, it would might be used in airplane- lance, he said. As drones that generate a powerful ogy could be scaled up to
take a few decades to de- like drones that perform become more common electric field. The field strips fix that or become useful
velop such planes, he said. tasks like environmental in urban skies, the lack of electrons from air mole- for propelling a passenger
Before that, the approach monitoring and surveil- noise would be an advan- cules, turning the molecules plane, he said.q

Scientists wind up deep-water probes in Caribbean waters

By DANICA COTO he said.It will take several (5,800 square miles), he
Associated Press years for scientists to estab- said.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) lish whether any new spe- The 19 dives performed
— A rarely seen shark em- cies were discovered, but by remotely operated ve-
bryo. Corals up to 7 feet (2 in the meantime, they will hicles over 145 hours were
meters) high. Sponges with ship all the coral branches, streamed live and drew a
sharp edges. pieces of sponge, brittle lot of online attention. One
These were among the starfish and rocks they col- especially popular video
hundreds of findings report- lected to the Smithsonian was that of a catshark em-
ed by U.S. scientists who National Museum of Natu- bryo attached to a coral
have wrapped up a 22-day ral History, Wagner said. branch some 800 feet deep
mission exploring waters Scientists aboard the 224- near an uninhabited island
around Puerto Rico and foot (68-meter) Okeanos off Puerto Rico's west coast.
the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Explorer also identified Overall, the ecosystems ap-
This Nov. 1, 2018 handout photo provided by the U.S. National deepest dives ever record- some 30 species of fish, peared healthy, although
Oceanic Atmospheric Administration Office of Ocean ed in the region. Guided by including some in areas scientists also saw pieces
Exploration and Research, shows a toadfish during dive 2 of the
2018 Oceano Profundo expedition, in the deep waters of the other land-based scientists where previously they of trash on a few dives and
U.S. Caribbean. watching live feeds, they hadn't been spotted. These the occasional fishing line,
Associated Press collected 89 samples and include commercially pop- he added.
will now start to analyze ular fish such as snappers "It's a sad thing, but a
them, Daniel Wagner, ex- and groupers, which were healthy reminder that our
pedition coordinator with seen about 100 meters (330 things go down to the deep
the U.S. National Oceanic feet) deeper than reported sea," he said.
and Atmospheric Adminis- to exist. The sites explored were
tration, told The Associated "That's a great thing," Wag- chosen from a list of 80 sub-
Press on Wednesday. ner said. mitted by scientists world-
"When they tell you, 'I've In addition, they mapped wide, including the loca-
never seen that before,' it's geological features up to 3 tion of a 1918 earthquake
a good indication that it's a miles (5,000 meters) deep, that generated a tsunami,
new species or something covering an area close to killing more than 100 peo-
that's new to this region," 15,000 square kilometers ple in Puerto Rico.q