Mars Features Formed By Electric Discharge?

More info at www.thunderbolts.info

Recent articles have suggested hemp made/fueled cars are new, really??

Seriously, what the hell happened?
1930s, 1940s
Hemp body - lighter and 10x stronger than steel.
Hemp fuel - completely renewable and cleaner running

RACER DEMO 0.1 - video game mashup

RACER DEMO 0.1 - video game mashup from sputnic on Vimeo.

This thing is too cool!!!
Telepresence video racing game! Gotta play this!

Millimeter-wave Camera sees through smoke, fog & walls

"The Science & Technology Research Laboratory (STRL) of Japan’s national public broadcaster, NHK, has developed a “millimeter-wave TV camera” that operates under the same principle as radar, taking images using radio waves instead of visible light. The technology allows objects hidden behind obstacles such as smoke, fog or even plywood to be captured as live, moving images.

The system emits millimeter waves in the 60-GHz band which bounce off the subjects and are captured by a receiver beam that scans up/down and left/right at a speed of 2.3 Hz to produce a 2D image. Because the system is sending out the waves it can selectively ignore information of an obscuring foreground object (such as a wall) based on the time it takes the waves to reflect back to the antenna, instead producing a picture based on the waves bouncing off a hidden object that take longer to reflect back."
- more at Gizmag

Chinese Create 'Black Hole'

"Researchers at Southeast University in Nanjing, China have created a device that traps and absorbs electromagnetic waves coming from all directions, spiraling them inwards without any reflections, essentially creating an electromagnetic black hole. Qiang Cheng and Tie Jun Cui’s “omnidirectional electromagnetic absorber” draws in microwaves coming from any direction by spiraling radiation inwards, and converting its energy into heat. They plan on developing a device that can absorb visible light next." -via GIZMAG

First Deployed Solar Sail - IKAROS!!

"The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s IKAROS space yacht which launched last month has successfully unfurled its solar sail. The accomplishment marks the first time a solar sail has been successfully deployed in space.

The IKAROS (short for Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) small solar sail demonstrator began to deploy its sail using centrifugal force on June 3 and on June 10, about 7.7 million km (4.8 million miles) from Earth, JAXA confirmed the proper extension of the sail, which measures 14 meters (46 ft) along each side. JAXA also confirmed power generation by the thin film solar cells attached to the sail." -via GIZMAG

Smart Dust

"In the 1990s, a researcher named Kris Pister dreamed up a wild future in which people would sprinkle the Earth with countless tiny sensors, no larger than grains of rice.

These "smart dust" particles, as he called them, would monitor everything, acting like electronic nerve endings for the planet. Fitted with computing power, sensing equipment, wireless radios and long battery life, the smart dust would make observations and relay mountains of real-time data about people, cities and the natural environment.

Now, a version of Pister's smart dust fantasy is starting to become reality...

The latest news comes from the computer and printing company Hewlett-Packard, which recently announced it's working on a project it calls the "Central Nervous System for the Earth." In coming years, the company plans to deploy a trillion sensors all over the planet. " - CNN Tech

Yea, that is what we need, right? Tiny sensors we can't see monitoring everything around us including us. Cataloging all matter movement on the planet. Sounds like TOTAL surveillance to me. Cool Tech. WAY too much power and temptation to use for ill. What do you think? Please comment.

Superheavy element 117 discovered!!!

Scientists at the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia announced internally that they had succeeded in detecting the decay of a new element in January 2010, and the results have now been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The two-year experimental campaign began at the High Flux Isotope Reactor in Oak Ridge with a 250-day irradiation to produce 22 mg of berkelium. This was followed by 90 days of processing at Oak Ridge to separate and purify the berkelium, target preparation at the Research Institute for Advanced Reactors in Dimitrovgrad, 150 days of bombardment at one of the world’s most powerful heavy ion accelerators at Dubna, data analysis at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Dubna, and assessment and review of the results by the team. The entire process was driven by the 320-day half-life of the berkelium target material.

The experiment produced six atoms of element 117. For each atom, the team observed the alpha decay from element 117 to 115 to 113 and so on until the nucleus fissioned, splitting into two lighter elements. In total, 11 new “neutron-rich” isotopes were produced, bringing researchers closer to the presumed “island of stability” of superheavy elements.

More of this article is available at www.gizmag.com

Richard Branson's New Underwater Plane

$663,000 prototype submersible is called the Necker Nymph and can dive to depths of up to 130ft.
Do I see Virgin Oceanic on the horizon?