Did you ever once doubt that extreme radio-controlled airplane flying would exist, somewhere? Proof of just that is above, in a video showing practitioners of dynamic soaring, a technique that utilizes specialized wind phenomenon to get RC gliders looping through the air at world-record speeds nearing 400MPH. So how does it all work?

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While watching news footage of a wildfire raging, maybe you've been struck by frustration at the lack of a high-tech, super-sized firefighting solution. Why, in 2009, don't firefighters have access to a super water-cannon? Where is the quick-hardening smothering shell? How much longer will we wait for a mountain-climbing hydro-Roomba?

The answer may be closer than you think. I was treated to a demonstration of the largest firefighting vehicle in the world, the Evergreen Supertanker.

Check out the photos.

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This fall, Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard and his team will begin test flights of a prototype of Solar Impulse, a sun-powered plane designed to circumnavigate the globe without burning a drop of oil. Piccard wants the project to demonstrate the potential of green technology, and he’s feeling the pressure. "We still have to prove that this plane will fly," he says.

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Terrafugia's prototype roadable aircraft - or flying car - recently completed its first successful flight after six months of road and runway testing. The company announced the flight of the Transition, an aircraft with foldable wings that can drive at highway speeds and fit into the average garage, at Boston's Museum of Science yesterday, calling the feat a historic milestone in aviation. "This breakthrough changes the world of personal mobility," says Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich. "It's what aviation enthusiasts have been striving for since 1918."

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In the not-so-distant future, cars could run on electricity, power plants on wind and solar energy, and city buses on zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells. But airplanes? Those just might run on coal.

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Today US Airways flight 1549 made an unexpected stop: the Hudson River. After a troubled take off around 3:30PM, the Airbus A320 descended into the river on the west side of Manhattan. Local ferry operators immediately began to throw life vests into the water and pick up passengers, with the Coast Guard Cutter Ridley and NYPD arriving shortly there after. All 148 passengers, as well as the 5 crew members, are all alive and accounted for. An FAA report said that a flock of geese likely caused the crash.

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For decades, we've fantasized about watching paper-thin TVs, soaring hundreds of feet with personal jetpacks, riding in cars that drive themselves, and re-growing organs.

The 21st annual Best of What's New celebrates all of those dreams coming true. Now we've collected them all into one single slideshow. Launch it here to learn about these achievements and 96 other breakthroughs that, whether long awaited or completely unexpected, are equally amazing.

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The Transition is not a flying car. The vehicle, set to go on sale next year, will cruise smoothly on the road and through the sky. It will have four wheels, Formula One–style suspension, and a pair of 10-foot-wide wings that fold up when it switches from air to asphalt. And when the engineers at Terrafugia in Woburn, Massachusetts, let me sit inside their just-finished proof-of-concept vehicle and grab the steering wheel, it’s easy to imagine piloting this thing up and out of traffic, into the open skies.

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