The SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY News Thread

[SaintessHeart]

[AnimeFan188]

Quadriplegic woman flies F-35 with nothing but her thoughts:

"Instead of thinking about controlling a joystick, which is what our ace pilots do
when they're driving this thing, Jan's thinking about controlling the airplane directly.
For someone who's never flown—she's not a pilot in real life—she's flying that
simulator directly from her neural signaling."

See:

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/mind-contr...f-3-1689274525

[AnimeFan188]

CNES Partners with Google to deploy Global 100,000 Internet Loon
Ballon Networks:

"The French space agency, CNES, on Dec. 11 said it is partnering with Google on the
Google X Project Loon to deploy more than 100,000 balloons in the stratosphere to
provide high-speed Internet to regions without it."

See:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/03/cne...to-deploy.html

[SaintessHeart]

Lockheed Martin's laser can stop a truck from over a mile away

When will we mount this onto one of Boston Dynamics' machines hooked onto Google Cloud?

[Renegade334]

Don't expect BD to go beyond the equipment-carrying mule concept and turn its machines into Ravage-like, four-legged terminators; Google (who bought the firm in late 2013) is slowly but firmly steering its recent acquisition back towards the civilian sector (all the while shamelessly poaching engineers from DARPA), especially towards projects such as AI-driven cars and even robotic home appliances, etc. Atlas is practically the last military-oriented project BD got on the rails before Google bought them and laid down a new roadmap; post-2013, Google stopped pushing new BD projects to DARPA and only services existing ones (Big/LittleDog, Cheetah, Atlas, Petman)...that is, until they come to term and the Mountain View company can finally brush its hands off the military sector.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Renegade334

Don't expect BD to go beyond the equipment-carrying mule concept and turn its machines into Ravage-like, four-legged terminators; Google (who bought the firm in late 2013) is slowly but firmly steering its recent acquisition back towards the civilian sector (all the while shamelessly poaching engineers from DARPA), especially towards projects such as AI-driven cars and even robotic home appliances, etc. Atlas is practically the last military-oriented project BD got on the rails before Google bought them and laid down a new roadmap; post-2013, Google stopped pushing new BD projects to DARPA and only services existing ones (Big/LittleDog, Cheetah, Atlas, Petman)...that is, until they come to term and the Mountain View company can finally brush its hands off the military sector.

The thing right now that Google has an advantage over DARPA is its decentralised and open source culture, all of which is immune to the cost-inefficiencies of government bureaucracy.

Still I think DARPA has more uses for the stuff creative people build than Google. All in the name of "population control". [/sarcasm]

War advances technology like no other.

Britain's Oldest Surviving Human Brain Was Preserved In Mud For 2,600 Years

RIG THIS INTO A CYBORG AND GIVE IT A GIANT CLUB.

[AnimeFan188]

Update on General Fusion:

"General Fusion is nearing significant milestones. General Fusion’s Approach is
Magnetized target fusion (MTF). Magnetized target fusion is a hybrid between
magnetic fusion and inertial confinement fusion. In MTF, a compact toroid, or
donut-shaped magnetized plasma, is compressed mechanically by an imploding
conductive shell, heating the plasma to fusion conditions.

General Fusion has a full-scale prototype [of the injectors and other subsystems],
twin plasma injectors resembling five-metre-long cones, each attached to
opposite ends of a three-metre-diameter sphere, would pulse a few milligrams of
hydrogen gas, heat it until it becomes a plasma, and inject it into a vortex of
swirling liquid metal. Electricity circulating in the plasma would create magnetic
fields that bind the plasma together and confine the heat.

From there, an array of as many as 300 huge pistons attached to the sphere’s
shell would act like synchronized jackhammers, ramming it at 200 km/hr. This
would send shockwaves into the very centre of the chamber, compressing the
hydrogen isotopes to 100 million degrees celsius — hot enough for fusion to
occur, and good enough to generate clean electricity from steam turbines."

See:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/03/upd...al-fusion.html

[SaintessHeart]

Sony Won't Refund PS4 User Who Lost $600 From Hack

User claims hacked account.

Sony claims chargeback fraud.

This is gonna be good.

[AnimeFan188]

Automated Complex Molecular printer for making organic small molecules
could speed drug development:

"A new molecule-making machine could do for chemistry what 3-D printing did for
engineering: Make it fast, flexible and accessible to anyone.

Chemists at the University of Illinois, led by chemistry professor and medical doctor
Martin D. Burke, built the machine to assemble complex small molecules at the click
of a mouse, like a 3-D printer at the molecular level. The automated process has the
potential to greatly speed up and enable new drug development and other
technologies that rely on small molecules."

See:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/03/aut...inter-for.html

[AnimeFan188]

Researchers can magnetize graphene using hydrogen and could enable
1 milion fold improvement over todays hard drives:

"Graphene, an atomically thin sheet of carbon, has been intensively studied for
the last decade to reveal exceptional mechanical, electrical, and optical
properties. Recently, researchers have started to explore an even more surprising
property—magnetism. Theories and experiments have suggested that either
defects in graphene or chemical groups bound to graphene can cause it to exhibit
magnetism; however, to date there was no way to create large-area magnetic
graphene which could be easily patterned. Now, scientists from the U.S. Naval
Research Laboratory (NRL) have found a simple and robust means to magnetize
graphene using hydrogen.

The questions now facing the researchers are how fine the patterning of
hydrogen can be and for how long the ferromagnetism can be stable. If those
questions are answered, this technique could lead to a storage medium with a
single hydrogenated-carbon pair storing a single magnetic bit of data, a roughly
greater than million-fold improvement over current hard drives."

See:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/03/res...-graphene.html

[Ithekro]

Exabyte drives? Skipping the Petabyte drives completely?

[AnimeFan188]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Exabyte drives? Skipping the Petabyte drives completely?

If people could get a million times more storage on their hard drives, I wonder how
they'd use it?

[Ithekro]

In 2000 we asked that about the eventual push for Terabyte drives. What are we doing now?

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

In 2000 we asked that about the eventual push for Terabyte drives. What are we doing now?

Does it matter?

Think of how much porn it can store!

[HasuMasu]

We have TB drives, but they don't last too long...

[Ithekro]

I did a fake webpage back in 2000 to showcase a program we were working on at the time. I needed something random to show off our frames, so I made up something about a keyboard-less computer (air typing) and a four Terabyte hard drive (crystal based).

It is 2015. We have these?
(Still no flying cars, out tieing Nike. Self drying jackets....or hover boards. Nor a Cafe '80s, but that is probably a good thing)

[Renegade334]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

so I made up something about a keyboard-less computer (air typing) and a four Terabyte hard drive (crystal based).

It is 2015. We have these?

Kind of and close enough, I guess ("crystal-based" should be too much to ask for, but maybe they could further develop the new stacked V-NAND SSDs into something even closer to what you were thinking about, as 1TB SSDs already exist; however, the resulting device would cost upwards of 4,000 dollars apiece, though).

[videoman190]

Hoverboards are still is development by Hendo so it will happen.

http://hendohover.com/

And yes it is Tony Hawk riding one.

[SaintessHeart]

US Navy is testing an electromagnetic catapult to launch planes from aircraft carriers

For almost as long as aircraft carriers have existed, they’ve been equipped with steam-powered catapults to help fighters and bombers get airborne. That’s a remarkably old-fashioned technology when you’re launching stealth fighters that cost upwards of $20 million each.

The US Navy is now testing a replacement system called the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) aboard the new USS Gerald R. Ford. It uses a burst of electromagnetic energy to launch planes much more smoothly and efficiently than the old steam catapults. Aircraft carriers range from big to gigantic as far as ships go, but the runways simply aren’t long enough for most planes to generate sufficient lift before they tumble off into the water. So, you need something to coax planes into the air a little faster, but steam catapults come with drawbacks.

A steam catapult takes up a great deal of space and weigh in excess of 1,300 pounds. These systems take a long time to recharge after each launch, and the launch itself is rather abrupt. There’s no smooth acceleration with a steam piston, resulting in increase wear on the body of the aircraft. Steam catapults also, surprisingly, use more power than the EMALS system. The switch to an electromagnetic linear motor drive allows for smooth acceleration, improved reliability, and a much more efficient design.

The EMALS platform works by using an electric current to generate magnetic fields that propel a carriage down the track built into the runway. Attach a plane to the carriage, and you’ve got an electromagnetic catapult. EMALS has been tested with the F/A-18, E2D Advanced Hawkey, and upcoming F-35 among others. One important aspect of this system is that operators can adjust the launch speed based on the weight of the aircraft.

The ground-based EMALS tests have all been successful, but the upcoming tests aboard the USS Ford will be the main event. If all goes as planned. the US Navy could permanently move away from the archaic steam catapult.

Isn't that how Gundams are launched from their space carriers.......

FUND IT. FUND IT NOW.

[AnimeFan188]

Carbon 3D has True game changing 3D printing and not just 2D repeated. 100
times faster printing with stronger parts:

"3D printing has struggled to deliver on its promise to transform manufacturing. Prints take forever,
parts are mechanically weak, and material choices are far too limited. That’s because current 3D
printing technology is really just 2D printing, over and over again.

CLIP — Continuous Liquid Interface Production — is a breakthrough technology that grows parts
instead of printing them layer by layer. CLIP allows businesses to produce commercial quality parts
at game-changing speeds, creating a clear path to 3D manufacturing.

It is a bold new technique — inspired, yes, by Terminator 2 — that's 25 to 100 times faster, and
creates smooth, strong parts. They believe they can go to 1000 times faster and will eventually
need water cooling because the printing is so fast."

See:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/03/car...anging-3d.html