Switzerland has voted to keep their nuclear reactors. Five nuclear reactors provide over one-third of Switzerland’s electricity. Nuclear power is Switzerland’s second largest source of electricity, providing about 35% of electricity in 2015 and complementing 52% hydro to give the country one of the cleanest and most secure electricity systems in the world. Now Swiss …
The Marines completed a proof-of-concept test in which a Marine Corps F-35B detected a cruise-missile decoy (a drone), passed targeting information to a remote sensor, and set up a shot by an Aegis combat system of the sort you’ll find on modern destroyers. A battery controlled by the Aegis fired a live SM-6 missile, which …
Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio-Frequency Cavity in Vacuum (Journal of Propulsion and Power NASA Emdrive tests consistently measured performance at 1.2 ± 0.1 mN∕kW, which was very close to the average impulsive performance measured in air. A number of error sources were considered and discussed. Emdrive is 300 times better than light …
The outer regions of galaxies, like our own Milky Way, rotate much faster around the centre than can be accounted for by the quantity of ordinary matter like stars, planets and interstellar gasses. Something else has to produce the required amount of gravitational force, so physicists proposed the existence of dark matter. Dark matter seems …
Scientists say they may have found a way to protect babies in the womb from the harmful effects of Zika. So far the US team has only had success in mice with its antibody treatment, but it says it might eventually lead to a therapy for women who catch Zika in pregnancy. The Zika virus …
An ultrastrong material can be produced by “fusing” multiwall carbon nanotubes together under high pressure in a diamond anvil. This material should be useful for applications in the aerospace industry, among others. The authors of the paper performed a series of experiments to study the effect of high pressure on multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). In …
Times have changed since the supersonic Concorde was made. Eli Dourado is the director of the Mercatus Center’s Technology Policy Program discusses the changes in technology that will make a new commercial supersonic passenger jet. Modern materials such as carbon fiber are lighter and stronger than aluminum, and modern engines are much more efficient than …
In a series of laboratory tests the Russian prototype has fired its projectile at a whopping 6.25 kilometers per second. A weapon capable of firing at a speed like this renders useless all existing means of ship, plane or tank protection. Moreover, a projectile made from several kilos of tungsten is comparable to a small-yield …
At the International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany this week, officials at Fujitsu and RIKEN confirmed that they will use ARM cores for its next generation of supercomputers. The exact plans that Fujitsu has for its future ARM processor were not divulged at ISC16, but Yutaka Ishikawa, project leader for the Advanced Institute of Computational …
No other aircraft can match the F-22’s range of capabilities—many of which remain classified—for speed, agility, stealth, and battlefield sensor power. With 183 in service, a reboot could mean, theoretically, the delivery of 194 additional planes that were planned before the program was canceled. The F-22s built for the current fleet were restricted from foreign …
Imagine a house that could fit in a backpack or a wall that could become a window with the flick of a switch. Harvard researchers have designed a new type of foldable material that is versatile, tunable and self actuated. It can change size, volume and shape; it can fold flat to withstand the weight …