tourism

The BMT Group and the Fraunhofer Institute have teamed up to work on an EU-funded project to offer Augmented Reality content on smartphones to tourists visiting historic sites throughout the continent. This would make it possible to see those buildings and paintings that have since been destroyed, or haven't aged so gracefully.

Imagine flying out to Hawaii, with its pristine landscape and postcard perfect beaches, and then taking off again on a suborbital space adventure. State officials are betting on that future vision, by considering spending $500,000 on a federally licensed spaceport, and thereby joining such states as Florida, Oklahoma, and New Mexico in jostling for a piece of space-tourism pie.

Where were we when this was taken? Do you remember, dear?

Tired of trying to identify landmarks in your endless folders of travel photos? Google's image recognition engine could help. Just upload the mystery image to an online album, point the engine at it, and zap -- turns out it was the Acropolis, in Athens, Greece.

A new map of the spread of HIV infection in Europe indicates that the virus traveled from major holiday destinations -- Greece, Portugal and Spain -- to northern European countries, New Scientist reports. A virologist determined how the virus evolved by sequencing parts of the virus genome from subjects throughout Europe -- 1,337 people from at least 11 countries. While a number of Mediterranean countries appeared to be sources for the virus, the UK, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and Israel appeared to be hubs, through which the virus both came and went.

I am not normal. Not even close, I am told. Apparently, my height, which at 6'4" has always seemed to me to be just this side of freakish, puts me in the 99th percentile of American adults. That is, statistically too tall to fly comfortably in coach.

For the truly curious traveler, we've collected eight one-of-a-kind research facilities guaranteed to impress and entertain like no ordinary tourist attraction can. On this list you'll find labs where you can ride a miner's cage half a mile underground to see a 6,000-ton neutrino detector, watch artificial earthquakes topple bridges, and converse with the world's smartest apes. It's a good idea to call ahead and ask permission for a tour at many of these facilities, but some are just plain open to the public. Even better, all eight destinations are in the U.S., making it convenient and affordable to visit the one nearest you for a day or pack up the Prius and road-trip to a few. Skip the tourist traps, and start exploring!

The Wirefly X Prize Cup kicked off Thursday with the exclusive X Prize Executive Summit, a high-powered brainstorming and networking event that brought together a distinguished group of the world's most influential entrepreneurs, astronauts, heads of NASA and the FAA, tech-industry experts and visionaries to talk about the future of the emerging personal-spaceflight industry.

Click 'View Photos' to look inside the cabin of SpaceShipTwo. And for an eye-popping video ride, scroll to the bottom of the page Virgin Galactic today unveiled a mock-up of the slick, Philippe Starckâ€designed interior of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital tourist vehicle.

Can't decide where to spend your fortune on a trip out of Earth's atmosphere? Check out our Tourist's Guide to Space.