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Submission + - Meet the men who deploy airstrikes (wired.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Lanxon
Lanxon writes: Wired followed US Army Staff Sergeant Kevin Rosner into Afghanistan to see first-hand the tools, tactics and pressures involved in coordinating military airstrikes. This lengthy piece explores the people and technology involved in high-risk airborne warfare, from their perspective. From the article: "Strapped to his chest, Rosner carries a handheld video player called a "Rover," built by L3 Communications, a New York-based defense contractor. The device, the size and shape of a PSP game console and costing tens of thousands of dollars, reads signals transmitted by the camera pods strapped to the underside of all NATO fighter aircraft. With his Rover, Rosner can see everything a pilot sees, from the pilot's perspective. On his back he carries a radio programmed with secure frequencies that tie him directly to the pilots overhead and to his unit's headquarters, several miles away. At the headquarters, another JTAC monitors a bigger, more sophisticated video terminal that displays the same video Rosner sees, plus other data." Continued at Wired.
Supercomputing

E=mc^2 Verified In Quantum Chromodynamic Calculation 268

Posted by kdawson from the tee-shirts-were-right-all-along dept.
chirishnique and other readers sent in a story in AFP about a heroic supercomputer computation that has verified Einstein's most famous equation at the level of subatomic particles for the first time. "A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms. ... [T]he mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five per cent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 per cent? The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons. ... [E]nergy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905." Update: 11/21 15:50 GMT by KD : New Scientist has a slightly more technical look at the accomplishment.
Earth

Zapping Contrails With Microwave Emitters 125

Posted by timothy from the set-it-for-beverage dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Dissipation of contrails with a powerful microwave beam aligned behind aircraft engines is being touted as a possible solution to help address air transport's effects on the climate. 'The remote heating of condensation nuclei could be achieved by applying electromagnetic radiation, such as microwaves,' says Cranfield University's Frank Noppel. 'Depending on assumptions made, calculation shows that the power required for such a device could be as little as 0.1% of the engine power.'"
AMD

AMD Shows Upcoming Phenom II CPU At 6.0 GHz+ 159

Posted by timothy from the calm-down-there-cowpoke dept.
Vigile writes "Today during a press briefing at AMD's offices in Austin, TX the company showed off some upcoming technology that should be available sometime early in 2009. What was most impressive was the overclocked speeds of the pending Phenom II X4 45nm processors. On air cooling AMD showed the quad-core CPU running at nearly 4.0 GHz while with much more extreme liquid nitrogen cooling help the same CPU reached over 6.0 GHz! It looks like AMD's newest processor might finally once again compete with the best from Intel, including its recent Core i7 CPUs."
Transportation

MIT and NASA Designing Silent Aircraft 176

Posted by samzenpus from the Fly-the-silent-skies dept.
Iddo Genuth writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics recently won a contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to design quieter, more energy efficient, and more environmentally friendly commercial airplanes. The two-million-dollar contract from NASA is just an initial step in bringing green technologies to the sky."
Image

The Science of the Lightsaber 197

Posted by samzenpus from the the-force dept.
Smartcowboy writes "Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina. Therefore you know that a lightsaber is an amazing and versatile device that is able to cut through nearly anything in a matter of milliseconds. Have you ever wondered how these remarkable weapons work? Where does the energy come from, and how are they able to contain that energy in a rod-like column of glowing power? In this article, you will have a chance to look inside a lightsaber and discover the source of its incredible characteristics." I was sure the blade was made from the focused hate and disappointment of the last three movies.

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