Scientific American reported that the USAF was playing around with active camoflauge between two and three years ago. Apparently, there are several F-15s that have been fitted with the apparatus, and it makes them effectively invisible at about a mile away.
However, the problem is that the material used for the technique tends to reflect radar as well as aluminum coated mylar (aka chaff) and makes a real tasty target.
Re:Possible, but unlikely. Abilation is key.
on
Meteorite Hits Girl
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· Score: 1
If this rock that struck the girl in the foot is indeed a piece of material cast off from a parent body by ablation, then it begs the question: Where is the parent body?
Is it possible that this is the original body, and the surface was warm from atmosphereic friction, but not necessarily hot enough to cause its outer layers to ablate?
A long time ago, during the height of the Cold War, military planners had intended to put people on orbiting weapons platforms. As far as I know, this never happened. From research, however, some interesting developments were made.
Apparently, the use of recorded brain waves were used to keep the potential occupants of these platforms awake, though not with music. Rather, electrodes adhered to the surface of the scalp were used to induce sleep or wake states within the brain by low voltage currents. It appeared to work well, as one guy who used to work on this stuff claimed that most people could easily stay awake for over 70 hours without the usual hallucinations, bumbling about, &c.
I wonder if we'll begin seeing a return of electronarcosis?
I think that the NYT is making a small naive mistake in saying a lot of the things are going to be discovered by the year 2010, especially when it comes to nanotechnology implants for heart care, etc. Digital books and the ilk are almost a sure thing, though, as that paritcular field is advancing at a breakneck pace. About the nanotechnology, though. It seems like a lot of people are touting cybernetic limbs and nanobots these days. I don't see much merit other than hopeful thinking in a lot of this. There's a reason behind this, though: the complexity of the proteins that are encoded by the human genome are many orders of magnitude more complicated than the one dimensional genome itself. There's a lot more to figuring out how to make a protein (one of the more likely cadidates for nanodevices) work than just knowing it's sequence. There is, currently, not a whole lot of evidence linking sequence to structure and structure to function, except in rudimentary forms like leucine zippers, etc (biochem. babble there). Beyond that, there would have to be some leaps and bounds in immunology to make a nanomachine that would work in humans very well, lest the body view them as non-self objects and set about destroying them en masse. In any case, I don't see bio-nanotech to be a very fast advancer in the next decade, but who knows, breaktrhoughs happen. About cybernetic limbs, etc. Legs will be difficult. Ever balance a broomstick in your hand? It's easy. Try two, it can be done. Then try three... that's pretty damn hard and the calculations needed to keep it balanced are pretty nasty. Humans are a three-broomstick model, meaning that there would need to be some really nice improvments to make truly functional cybernetic limbs (though the current protheses are nice, and have some feedback, they are no where near a normal leg's funcctionality.) so, there's my rant. Beyond all of the nuances, there's something I'd like to share about attempting to forsee technological advances and scientific endeavors: We don't know what's going to happen. Sure, there are a lot of questions that we have now, and we can see maybe one or two more questions beyond that, but there's things that come up that are always startling when a major project finishes. Look at the human genome project: we have a sequence, we don't know what anything does or what it looks like. Hence, we now are starting a structural genomics program to begin to see if we can predict sgtructure from the sequence for humans, and so forth. And, we don't know if someone in the next 10 years will make a breakthrough and discover some odd brand of physics that shows that quantum mechanics break down under certain circumstances much in the same way that quantum mechanics displays how Newtonian physics breaks down under certain circumstances. We can just look at questions and see what may come of them.... and for all I know, I could just be blithering badger spit right now, too. cheers.
Slashdot Mirror
Scientific American reported that the USAF was playing around with active camoflauge between two and three years ago. Apparently, there are several F-15s that have been fitted with the apparatus, and it makes them effectively invisible at about a mile away.
However, the problem is that the material used for the technique tends to reflect radar as well as aluminum coated mylar (aka chaff) and makes a real tasty target.
If this rock that struck the girl in the foot is indeed a piece of material cast off from a parent body by ablation, then it begs the question: Where is the parent body?
Is it possible that this is the original body, and the surface was warm from atmosphereic friction, but not necessarily hot enough to cause its outer layers to ablate?
A long time ago, during the height of the Cold War, military planners had intended to put people on orbiting weapons platforms. As far as I know, this never happened. From research, however, some interesting developments were made.
Apparently, the use of recorded brain waves were used to keep the potential occupants of these platforms awake, though not with music. Rather, electrodes adhered to the surface of the scalp were used to induce sleep or wake states within the brain by low voltage currents. It appeared to work well, as one guy who used to work on this stuff claimed that most people could easily stay awake for over 70 hours without the usual hallucinations, bumbling about, &c.
I wonder if we'll begin seeing a return of electronarcosis?
I think that the NYT is making a small naive mistake in saying a lot of the things are going to be discovered by the year 2010, especially when it comes to nanotechnology implants for heart care, etc. Digital books and the ilk are almost a sure thing, though, as that paritcular field is advancing at a breakneck pace. About the nanotechnology, though. It seems like a lot of people are touting cybernetic limbs and nanobots these days. I don't see much merit other than hopeful thinking in a lot of this. There's a reason behind this, though: the complexity of the proteins that are encoded by the human genome are many orders of magnitude more complicated than the one dimensional genome itself. There's a lot more to figuring out how to make a protein (one of the more likely cadidates for nanodevices) work than just knowing it's sequence. There is, currently, not a whole lot of evidence linking sequence to structure and structure to function, except in rudimentary forms like leucine zippers, etc (biochem. babble there). Beyond that, there would have to be some leaps and bounds in immunology to make a nanomachine that would work in humans very well, lest the body view them as non-self objects and set about destroying them en masse. In any case, I don't see bio-nanotech to be a very fast advancer in the next decade, but who knows, breaktrhoughs happen. About cybernetic limbs, etc. Legs will be difficult. Ever balance a broomstick in your hand? It's easy. Try two, it can be done. Then try three... that's pretty damn hard and the calculations needed to keep it balanced are pretty nasty. Humans are a three-broomstick model, meaning that there would need to be some really nice improvments to make truly functional cybernetic limbs (though the current protheses are nice, and have some feedback, they are no where near a normal leg's funcctionality.) so, there's my rant. Beyond all of the nuances, there's something I'd like to share about attempting to forsee technological advances and scientific endeavors: We don't know what's going to happen. Sure, there are a lot of questions that we have now, and we can see maybe one or two more questions beyond that, but there's things that come up that are always startling when a major project finishes. Look at the human genome project: we have a sequence, we don't know what anything does or what it looks like. Hence, we now are starting a structural genomics program to begin to see if we can predict sgtructure from the sequence for humans, and so forth. And, we don't know if someone in the next 10 years will make a breakthrough and discover some odd brand of physics that shows that quantum mechanics break down under certain circumstances much in the same way that quantum mechanics displays how Newtonian physics breaks down under certain circumstances. We can just look at questions and see what may come of them.... and for all I know, I could just be blithering badger spit right now, too. cheers.