Technology News
“A new airplane uses charged molecules, not propellers or turbines, to fly”
Date : 04-Feb-2019
ION POWER A new aircraft (illustrated) is propelled forward by streams of charged molecules moving among wires.
Image: LAUREL HAMERS
A newly designed airplane prototype does away with noisy propellers and turbines.
Instead, it’s powered by ionic wind: charged molecules, or ions, flowing in one direction and pushing the plane in the other. That setup makes the aircraft nearly silent. Such stealth planes could be useful for monitoring environmental conditions or capturing aerial imagery without disturbing natural habitats below.
The aircraft is the first of its kind to be propelled in this way, researchers report in the Nov. 22 Nature. In 10 indoor test flights the small plane, which weighs about as much as a Chihuahua, traveled 40 to 45 meters for almost 10 seconds at a steady height, even gaining about half a meter of altitude over the course of a flight.
For details: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/airplane-charged-molecules-ionic-wind
Credits/News Sources: ScienceDaily
Reference/Link: H. Xu et al. Flight of an aeroplane with solid-state propulsion. Nature. Vol. 563, November 22, 2018, p. 532. DOI:10.1038/s41586-018-0707-9.