Zmobie - Slashdot User

Submission + - F-16 Jets Converted to Fly as Wing-men Drones (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by Zmobie on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @03:29PM

Zmobie writes: In a new program the US Air Force has converted and tested F-16 planes as drones able to fly with complex mission parameters. The program is designed to use retiring F-16 jets to act as autonomous wing-men for manned F-35 jets and fly their own strike missions. From the Article: "The US has used F-16 drones before as realistic targets for the F-35 to blow up in training, but on Monday it announced fully autonomous air-to-air and ground strike capabilities as a new capability thanks to joint research between the service and Lockheed Martin's legendary Skunkworks.... But having F-16 drones plan and fly their own missions is only part of a much larger picture. The future of the US Air Force may well depend on advanced platforms like F-35s commanding fleets of unmanned drones which can act as additional ears, eyes, and shooters in the sky during battles."

Submission + - Scientists in Iceland turn CO2 into Stone (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Zmobie on Friday June 10, 2016 @01:27PM

Zmobie writes: The unique project promises a cheaper and more secure way of burying CO2 from fossil fuel burning underground, where it cannot warm the planet. Such carbon capture and storage (CCS) is thought to be essential to halting global warming, but existing projects store the CO2 as a gas and concerns about costs and potential leakage have halted some plans.

The new research pumped CO2 into the volcanic rock under Iceland and sped up a natural process where the basalts react with the gas to form carbonate minerals, which make up limestone. The researchers were amazed by how fast all the gas turned into a solid – just two years, compared to the hundreds or thousands of years that had been predicted.

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