Leidos, a national security, health, and infrastructure solutions company, announced today that on June 22, it completed initial performance trials of the technology demonstration vessel it is developing for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program. The at-sea tests took place off the coast of San Diego, …
David Rotman, editor at the MIT Technology Review, laments that technologies are not radically transforming the economy. Economists who study productivity, a measure of output per worker, tell us that from around 1994 to 2004 the Internet and advances in computation helped fuel rapid growth. But during the past decade we slid back to far …
With eruptions of ice and water vapor, and an ocean covered by an ice shell, Saturn’s moon Enceladus is one of the most fascinating in the Solar System, especially as interpretations of data provided by the Cassini spacecraft have been contradictory until now. An international team including researchers from the Laboratoire de Planétologie Géodynamique de …
Russia is test-flying a new, hypersonic glide vehicle that follows the contrails of China’s WU-14, a delivery vehicle reportedly capable of carrying nuclear warheads at Mach 10 and less susceptible to U.S. anti-ballistic countermeasures. Moscow has spent several years developing the new Yu-71 hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), which was first test-flown in February, according to …
Australian company Silex Systems is considering taking an equity position in Global Laser Enrichment (GLE), the exclusive licensee for its laser uranium enrichment technology, after GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy announced its intention to exit the company. GLE is a joint venture between GE (51%), Hitachi (25%) and Cameco (24%) and has exclusive rights to commercially develop …
Hundreds of military, government and commercial satellites reside today in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth—a perch ideal for providing communications, meteorology and national security services, but one so remote as to preclude inspection and diagnosis of malfunctioning components, much less upgrades or repairs. Even fully functional satellites sometimes …
Poland has signed a PLN2.415 billion (USD605.7 million) contract to upgrade its 128 Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks (MBTs) to a new standard called Leopard 2PL. Poland bought 128 Leopard 2A4s from ex-Germany Army stocks in January 2002. They are currently operated by the 10th Armored Cavalry Brigade, based in Swietoszow. All 128 2A4s will …
Nextbigfuture talked three days ago about the B52 lasting 100 years (from 1952-2051). Here is a specific proposal to modernize and upgrade the B52. Lacking the stealth of the B-2 and the speed of the B-1, the B-52 remains a frontline combat aircraft because of its exceptional range, unmatched versatility, and flexible payload options. It …
Michael Anissimov (who used to blog Accelerating Future) has written an e-book. Michael’s brand new book Our Accelerating Future: How Superintelligence, Nanotechnology, and Transhumanism Will Transform the Planet is now released! Get the epub/mobi/pdf package for $3.99. In this collection of short articles, Singularity Summit co-founder and former Singularity Institute futurist Michael Anissimov describes the …
The LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has reported the discovery of a class of particles known as pentaquarks. The collaboration has submitted a paper reporting these findings to the journal Physical Review Letters. “The pentaquark is not just any new particle,” said LHCb spokesperson Guy Wilkinson. “It represents a way to aggregate quarks, …
A guest post by Joseph Friedlander The New Horizons Probe is rapidly approaching the Pluto/Charon system. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute Details at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=181 Details at: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150622 Notice that this is a double world system, orbiting an exposed barycenter. The fainter one is Charon, the brighter more massive one Pluto. The two are tidally …