471032
submission
toxcspdrmn writes:
Bad news for Spinal Tap fans. The BBC reports that researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, have produced the darkest known material by manufacturing "forests" of carbon nanotubes. This forms a surface that absorbs or scatters 99.9% of all incident light.
4847
submission
toxcspdrmn writes:
Volunteers at Bletchley Park have recreated a working replica of the electromechanical bombe used to crack the Enigma encryption. The bombe was designed by Polish cryptologists and refined by Alan Turing and colleagues at Bletchley Park. It joins a recreated electronic Colossus — generally considered the first electronic computer, also at Bletchley Park. Impressive work when you consider that Winston Churchill ordered the originals to be completely destroyed at the end of WWII.
