The National Review thinks that Railguns will be a waste of money and believe it would be better to develop light gas guns for better long range navy and artillery guns. We will look in some detail at the light combustion gun and railgun technology. Nextbigfuture believes that railgun technology is the better technological choice. …
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are building a low-cost long-lifespan battery designed for grid-scale stationary energy storage. The battery, which promises to provide a viable solution for stationary grid storage of energy supplied by renewables, uses three inexpensive liquid layers as electroactive components, including a liquid metal positive electrode, a fused salt electrolyte, …
I hope everyone had a great Christmas. We have another open thread. We are also in the season on Festivus so you can air grievances but please still be polite and try to be amusing and interesting Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per …
Nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds could be used to construct vital components for quantum computers. But hitherto it has been impossible to read optically written information from such systems electronically. Using a graphene layer, a team of scientists headed by Professor Alexander Holleitner of the Technische Universität München (TUM) has now implemented just such a read …
“The Interview,” the Sony Pictures film about a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, opened in more than 300 [335] movie theaters across the United States on Christmas Day, drawing many sell-out audiences and statements by patrons that they were championing freedom of expression. The film also was available to U.S. …
US Internet announced Tuesday that it will use that network to offer 10-gigabit-per-pecond Internet speed, which is among the fastest Internet service available today. That’s 400 times faster than the average download speed in Minnesota, 25 megabits per second, according to Ookla, an Internet diagnostic firm. The Minnetonka firm, US Internet, offers fiber-optic service to …
The Phalanx, or CIWS, is an area weapon engineered to use a high rate of fire and ammunition to blanket a given area, thus destroying or knocking threats out of the sky before they reach a ship. The Phalanx CIWS, which can fire up to 4,500 rounds per minute, has been protecting ship platforms for …
NASA funded a parametric design study to establish the viability of a Turbine Based Combined Cycle (TBCC) Propulsion system consisting of integrating several combinations of near-term turbine engine solutions and a very low Mach ignition Dual Mode RamJet (DMRJ) in the SR-72 vehicle concept. The SR72 drone would fly at speeds of Mach 6.0, or …
S and P warned this week there was at least a 50 percent chance it would cut Russia’s sovereign rating below investment grade within 90 days. Moody’s ratings agency warned this week that Russia’s GDP could contract by 5.5 percent in 2015 and 3 percent in 2016 due to weaker oil prices and the ruble’s …
Only three of 9 expected nuclear reactors completions 2014 were actually completed. There was a slippage of a few months on several which are now mostly expected in the first half of 2015. The third wave of construction should be completed by mid-2017 and have about 20 more nuclear reactors. Hongyanhe-3 [1080 MWe CPR) did …
Japan has four approved nuclear reactors for restarts, just after a general election win showed steady support for the pro-nuclear ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The first are not expected to restart until early in 2015. Sendai reactors aren’t expected to open until early 2015. Those friendly painted colors at the Sendai reactors are real Cantor …