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Americans get closer to building weapon of the future
The US Navy may have the world’s most powerful unit – the so-called railgun – during the forthcoming 15 years. The “Weapon of the 21st Century,” as Russian specialists described it, was undergoing tests during the recent several years. US defense officials were satisfied with the results. They have already signed the first contract to create the power source for the gun. The railgun needs a lot of energy to accelerate projectiles to supersonic speeds.
Raytheon Company, one of the USA’s largest defense suppliers, signed an agreement with the Naval Sea Systems Command for the creation of the power system for the railgun. The agreement was evaluated at $10 billion, a message on the website of the company said.
In accordance with the agreement, Raytheon undertakes to design and build the power module, which will become a part of the Pulse Forming Network (PFN). In the future, the system can be used for the production of railguns and combat lasers.
“This new system will dramatically change how our Navy defends itself and engages enemies while at sea,” said Joe Biondi, vice president of Advanced Technology for Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems business. “We have the expertise to design and build a solution that provides our warfighters with a decisive advantage over a multitude of current and emerging threats.”
A railgun is an entirely electrical gun that Read more…
Self-Guided Bullet Could Strike Laser-Designated Targets From A Mile Away
You might remember the scene in The Hurt Locker where some soldiers are ambushed by a sniper and must do a little return sniping. That process of spotting, adjusting the sights, and altering the bullet’s ballistic trajectory bit by bit and degree by degree may soon no longer be necessary: Sandia Labs has developed a bullet with a built-in processor that guides its own flight via tiny adjustable fins.
The idea is that the bullet would go exactly where it was meant to go, and not deviate from the target because of wind, gravity, or other factors. They say that at the range of a kilometer, a normal bullet might be off by almost 10 yards, while this guided bullet would get within Read more…
Weather Satellite Surveillance?
Since its inception in 1988, the Fengyun (FY) program has become an international symbol of China’s burgeoning ambitions in space. China’s weather satellite program began with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s 1970 approval of a Central Military Commission proposal to initiate research and development on weather satellites. With the launch of the first FY-1A in 1988, China became only the third nation to launch its own meteorological satellites. Since then, China has launched four FY-1 weather satellites into polar orbit, five FY-2 geosynchronous weather satellites, and two FY-3 satellites that were boosted into polar orbits on Long March-4 launch vehicles.The FY series appear to be roughly analogous to those associated with the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. The FY-3, equipped with almost a dozen all weather sensors, is China’s most advanced space asset providing meteorological support to the People’s Liberation Army. The system also could provide measurement and signature intelligence data to China’s emerging anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) targeting architecture. In addition to five additional Read more…
‘Digital DNA’ May Soon Be Required To Take SAT & ACT Exams
Since the SAT and ACT cheating scandals broke wide open on Long Island, lawmakers have pledged to come up with unique cutting edge ways to combat identity theft.
On Monday, CBS 2’s Jennifer McLogan got the exclusive first look at what politicians will see first hand in Albany on Tuesday afternoon, and what could soon be implemented at a high school near you.
Inside the applied DNA Read more…
Is your smartphone telling every website you visit your telephone number?
O2 mobile users in the UK are venting on Twitter today, fuming at their discovery that their phone number is being shared with every website that they visit over the network.
I found a colleague who owns an iPhone on the O2 network, and we tried it out for ourselves. Making sure we turned off his WiFi connection, we used the O2 mobile network to access the web. Read more…
Study says humans now use the internet as our main ‘memory’ – instead of our heads
Helping hand? Harvard researchers found that we now use the internet to remember 'for us' - and decide not to store facts if we think we can Google them later
The Internet is becoming our main source of memory instead of our own brains, a study has concluded.
In the age of Google, our minds are adapting so that we are experts at knowing where to find information even though we don’t recall what it is.
The researchers found that when we want to know something we use the Internet as an ‘external memory’ just as computers use an external hard drive.
Nowadays we are so reliant on our smart phones and laptops that we go into ‘withdrawal when we can’t find out something immediately’.
And such is our dependence that having our Internet connection severed is growing ‘more and more like losing a friend’.
Researchers from Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia University in the U.S. carried out four tests to check their theory.
They involved giving test participants a trivia quiz and then seeing whether they recognised Read more…
Homeland Security Wants to Spy on 4 Square Miles at Once
It’s not just for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars anymore. The Department of Homeland Security is interested in a camera package that can peek in on almost four square miles of (constitutionally protected) American territory for long, long stretches of time.
Homeland Security doesn’t have a particular system in mind. Right now, it’s just soliciting “industry feedback” on what a formal call for such a “Wide Area Surveillance System” might look like. But it’s the latest indication of how powerful military surveillance technology, developed to find foreign insurgents and terrorists, is migrating to the home front.
The Department of Homeland Security says it’s interested in a system that can see between five to 10 square kilometers — that’s between two and four square miles, roughly the size of Brooklyn, New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood — in its “persistent mode.” By “persistent,” it means the cameras should stare at the area in question for an unspecified number of hours to collect what the military likes to call “pattern of life” data — that is, what “normal” activity looks like for a given area. Persistence typically depends on Read more…
IBM Thinks Minds Will Control Machines Within 5 Years
Japan's Honda Research Institute and precision-equipment manufacturer Shimadzu demonstrated a mind-boggling technology that lets humans control a robot through thought alone -- thus taking pesky button-pressing, voice commands and remote controls out of the equation. 2009
This is the VOA Special English Technology Report.
Controlling a device with your mind. Powering your home with the energy of your own activities. These are two of the developments that experts at IBM think will become reality within the next five years.
The technology company has released its latest “5 in 5” report. The experts think people will soon be able to control many electronic devices simply by using their minds. Scientists at IBM and other companies are researching ways to do this in a field of science known as bioinformatics.
They say people will soon have a way to just think about calling or e-mailing someone in order to make it happen. Bernie Meyerson is IBM’s vice president of innovation.
BERNIE MEYERSON: “[It’s a] simple ability to command a system to do something for you without actually doing or saying anything, literally thinking and having something happen as a result that’s accurate. Something with really deep capability so that a person, for instance, a quadriplegic, a paraplegic can actually utilize brainwaves to make things happen and basically run their own lives independently.”
Another prediction is a way for people to Read more…
Red Spotlights to Mark ‘Precrime’ Suspects
East Orange, New Jersey to beam suspects of future criminal activity with flashy, hi-tech police surveillance equipment
Aaron Dykes
In a glowing review of the rising prevalence of high-tech big brother surveillance gadgets in police force use, the Associated Press reports that East Orange, New Jersey plans to cut crime by highlighting suspects with a red-beamed spotlight– before any crime is committed– a “pre-crime” deterrent to be mounted on nearby street lights or other fixtures.
According to the report, police officers monitor hundreds of video feeds from across the city and opt to Read more…
Edible Microchips, Biometric Identity Systems And Mind Reading Computers
As technology continues to advance at an exponential rate, will we someday find ourselves living in a “scientific dictatorship” where virtually everything that we do, say and think is monitored and controlled by technology? To many of you that may sound like a wild assertion, but just keep reading. Our world is changing faster than ever before, and scientists have some absolutely wild things planned for our future. As you read this, they are feverishly developing edible microchips, cutting edge biometric identity systems, and mind reading computers. Many futurists envision a world where someday nearly all humans are embedded with microchips and have thousands of tiny nanobots living inside of them. The idea is that we can “take control of our own evolution” and use technology to “improve” humanity. But very few of those futurists address the potential downsides. The truth is that all of this technology could one day be used by a totalitarian government to establish a dystopian nightmare where nobody has any liberties and freedoms whatsoever.
The world of tomorrow is not going to be anything like the world of today, and most people have no idea how dramatically the world is changing.
For instance, many people have never even heard of “edible microchips”.
Unfortunately, they are Read more…
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