Solar-Powered Plane Crosses The Pacific

A solar-powered aircraft has completed a crossing of the Pacific Ocean after a 62-hour non-stop flight.

Pilot Betrand Piccard landed Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View outside San Francisco after travelling from Hawaii on the latest stage of his journey around the world.

The plane set off from Abu Dhabi in March last year and has made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China and Japan.

But the Pacific leg was the most dangerous part of the journey because of the lack of places to make a landing in an emergency.

Before landing, the aircraft performed a fly-by over the Golden Gate Bridge.

"I crossed the bridge. I am officially in America," Mr Piccard declared as he flew over the iconic span.

The plane normally flies at around 28mph (45kph) but can reach double that speed when the sun's rays are strongest.

The wings of the carbon-fibre aircraft stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747 and are covered with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries.

It runs on stored energy at night.

The Solar Impulse 2 arrived in Hawaii in July but was forced to stay in the islands after the plane's battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan.

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NASA's Kepler Spacecraft In State Of Emergency

NASA scientists are scrambling to save the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft after it slipped into a state of emergency.

The ageing spacecraft - which has detected almost 5,000 planets - is around 75 million miles away from Earth.

Scientists discovered that it had entered emergency mode at some point last week.

The last time they made normal contact with it was 4 April, when there were no signs of any problems.

The emergency mode means that it is now at its "lowest operational level" and is burning through a huge amount of fuel.

The future of the spacecraft - currently our best chance of finding habitable planets outside our solar system - now hangs in the balance.

The NASA team overseeing Kepler says it entered emergency mode just before it began pointing it towards the centre of the Milky Way.

Its original mission was completed back in 2012, during which it spotted close to 5,000 suspected exoplanets - planets which orbit a star other than the Sun.

Following its success, NASA set it on a new mission called K2, which is an expanded search for other interesting astronomical objects.

This includes hunting for young stars and supernovae.

Over the past few months it has found the most Earth-like exoplanet to date and recorded the first shockwave coming off a supernova.

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Palm Skin Could Be Turned Into Touchscreen

It may sound like something from a far-fetched sci-fi novel - but soon you could be able to use your skin like a touchscreen.

Scientists in the UK have managed to create tactile sensations on the palm of a human hand using ultralight beams.

The hand is seen as a potentially ideal display extension for future smartwatches, but current ideas rely on pins which need contact with the palm to work.

The new proposal - called SkinHaptics, sends sensations to the palm from the back of the hand, so that the palm is free to display the screen.

The team from the University of Sussex is the first to find a way for users to feel what they are doing when interacting with displays projected onto their hand.

A technique called time-reversal processing is used to send ultrasound waves through the hand.

The waves of ultrasound become more targeted as they travel through the hand, ending at a specific point on the palm.

Professor Sriram Subramanian, who leads the research team at the University of Sussex, said: "Wearables are already big business and will only get bigger.

"But as we wear technology more, it gets smaller and we look at it less, and therefore multisensory capabilities become much more important.

"If you imagine you are on your bike and want to change the volume control on your smartwatch, the interaction space on the watch is very small. So companies are looking at how to extend this space to the hand of the user.

"What we offer people is the ability to feel their actions when they are interacting with the hand."

The findings were presented at the IEEE Haptics Symposium in Philadelphia, by the study’s co-author Dr Daniel Spelmezan.

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WhatsApp Extends Encryption To All Services

WhatsApp has applied "end-to-end" encryption to all its services to boost user security.

The Facebook-owned messaging service announced the move amid fierce debate surrounding privacy versus security.

It follows Apple's battle with the US government over FBI demands for data on an iPhone - used by a gunman in California - to be unlocked.

End-to-end encryption automatically encodes each message with an algorithm that can only be unlocked by the sender and recipient.

WhatsApp said: "The idea is simple: when you send a message, the only person who can read it is the person or group chat that you send that message to.

"No one can see inside that message. Not cybercriminals. Not hackers. Not oppressive regimes. Not even us. End-to-end encryption helps make communication via WhatsApp private - sort of like a face-to-face conversation."

WhatsApp, which has more than one billion users globally, added they must download the latest version of the app for full encryption, and that it works across all major devices.

It is the biggest major network to offer it - with less popular services such as Wickr, Telegram and Signal also deploying full encryption.

Google, Facebook and Yahoo use less extensive encryption to protect emails and messages while they're in transit but retain the ability to scan messages.

Apple uses end-to-end encryption for its iMessage service but some experts told the AP news agency that WhatsApp's method may be more secure because it provides a security code that senders and recipients can use to verify a message came from someone they know - and not from a hacker posing as a friend.

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Are Galaxy S7 Sales Driving Samsung Profits?

Samsung has flagged a 10% rise in first quarter profits, following the decision to release its new Galaxy S7 smartphone range early last month.

The South Korean electronics firm's phone division has struggled in recent times amid pressure from competitors and phones seen as lacking innovation - losing market share to the likes of Apple at the top end and cheaper rivals, Huawei and Xiaomi.

But while the release of Samsung's estimates for January to March contained no breakdown of sales for any division including its semi-conductor or TV units, analysts suggested that its decision to bring forward the roll-out of the S7 and S7 Edge was the likely driving force behind the firm's improved forecast.

Ahead of the release of its audited results later this month, the world's largest smartphone producer said operating profit was expected to reach around $5.6bon (£3.9bn) - a rise of 10% on the same period last year and beating most analysts' estimates.

The result, on the face of it, would be encouraging for shareholders after a year that saw $8bn wiped from Samsung's market value amid worries over its smartphone business and the slowdown in the world economy.

However, early gains in its share price on Wednesday were soon erased, with traders citing fears that Samsung's move to release the S7 early had merely brought sales forward.

Greg Noh, an analyst at HMC Investment Securities, voiced doubts that the first quarter profit rise would be extended to the rest of the year.

"It will be difficult to carry on the momentum. From the next quarter, there will be a rise in marketing costs for consumer sales.

"Samsung will probably not see a higher rise in profit than it did this quarter for the rest of the year," he added.

The company's chip business, which has propped up Samsung's overall performance amid the pressure on the smartphone unit, provides parts for the company's own handsets as well as those of rivals.

They include Apple - which recently launched the new iPhone SE and a smaller model of the iPad Pro.

Huawei launches its first foray into the high-end smartphone market next week with the P9.

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Missing Wright Brothers Patent Found In Cave

The patent file for the Wright brothers' 'flying machine' - missing since 1980 - has been discovered in a limestone cave.

A cold case team from the US National Archives recently ramped up its efforts to find the missing paperwork.

Record keepers realised the file was missing from the main Washington DC vault in 2000, and discovered that it had been potentially mislaid as far back as 1980.

But volunteer archivist Bob Beebe has now found it hidden among a 15ft-high stack of documents in a special records storage cave in Kansas.

The patent papers bear the names of Orville and Wilbur Wright and the words 'flying machine', the world's first successful plane.

The pair made history on 17 December 1903 when they carried out the first controlled powered human flight.

They filed the patent - which covers the machine's design and controls - nine months before their device even got off the ground, and it was granted in 1906.

It reads: "Be it known that we Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, both citizens of the United States, residing in the city of Dayton and state of Ohio, have jointly invented a new and useful machine for navigating the air."

The flight lasted just 12 seconds and covered 37 metres - but it was a huge step forward for mankind.

National Archives boss William J Bosanko said: "If somebody puts something back in the wrong place, it's essentially lost.

"In this case, we didn't know. We had to ask ourselves: 'Is it something that could have been stolen?'"

The patent will go on display at the National Archives Museum in Washington DC later this month.

A number of key documents are missing from the National Archives - including the patent for Eli Whitney's cotton gin, photos from the Moon, and letters penned by Abraham Lincoln.

Some are presumed stolen, while others were likely mislaid.

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