|by A. Christine Maxfield||Train Travel, China, Milan,
Switzerland, Zürich||49| Imagine that you were able to travel
from New York to London in just 54 minutes…by train. As amazing
as that sounds, talented engineers are saying that it's not
impossible to design a magnetically levitated train that would
zip at supersonic speeds through a floating tunnel 150 to 300
feet below the Atlantic. Yes, it would require an exorbitant
amount of money (up to $50 million dollars per mile), and of
course there are the safety concerns (traveling at supersonic
speeds of 4,000-plus mph can create a sonic boom that would
wreak havoc on the structure). But according to Frank Davidson,
a former MIT researcher, "A transatlantic tunnel will be done.
We just have to be as interested in it as we are in getting to
the Moon." (Popular Science) Now let's get back to our current
technology. Trains are getting faster and covering more
distance, which we saw on Friday, Oct. 15, when Switzerland
bumped out Japan for the world's longest rail