Archive for May 4th, 2011
Completely Automatic Robot Jet Fighter Passes Further Tests
The X-47B looks exactly the same as the B-2 stealth bomber but there is one major difference, it is totally automated. The X-47B is the US Navy’s newest UAV and it’s the very first robotic fighter to exist.
Robotic predator and Reaper drones that are currently in Iraq and Afghanistan are controlled by pilots on the ground but this aircraft is fully automated and actually flies itself from A to B dith no intervention.
It first flew on February 4, 2011. The tests that have recently been carried out on the robustness of the jet make the aircraft one step closer to it actually landing on an aircraft carrier which is scheduled for 2013.
It is difficult to detect by radar because it has no tail fin. With a ceiling of 40,000 feet and a 4500 lb weapon load capacity with supersonic speeds and 2100 nautical mile range it will be THE future weapon.
The X-47B will be joining 7000 UAVs and 2000 ground robots that are already on battlefields around the world. This is one step closer to a fully automated battlefield. In the future this could include all elements of a nation’s military force including soldiers that don’t get tired and can continually fight. This may mean that war is pursued continuously but let’s just hope that the hackers of the world aren’t quite up to the task of hacking automated weapons.
Via Completely Automatic Robot Jet Fighter Passes Further Tests
The world’s only ‘immortal’ animal
If you’re thinking McLeod, you couldn’t be further from the truth. What you have to do is think small; not microscopic, just big enough to see with your naked eye. Turritopsis nutricula is a hydrozoan, and it’s considered by scientists to be the only animal that cheated death.
Solitary organisms are (according to current belief) doomed to die, after they completed their life cycle. Hydrozoa are a huge class of predatory animals that live mostly in saltwater, closely related to jellyfish and corals. Eggs and sperm from an adult jellyfish (medusa) and they then develop into polyp stage. Medusae evolve asexually from polyps.
Still, our Turritopsis nutricula (could we call it Joe??) managed to find a way to beat that. What these little folks do is they revert completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after they reach sexual maturity. They’re even cooler than that. When they’re young they’ve got only several tentacles, but at a mature stage, they get to 80-90 of them.
They’re able to return to polyp stage due to a cell change in the external screen (Exumbrella), which allows them to bypass death. As far as scientists have been able to find out, this change renders the hydrozoa virtually immortal.
Sea level rise of up to 1.6 meters projected for 2100
It is no longer a question if multi-meter sea level rises will happen, but only of when. According to the latest estimate from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme it seems the accelerated climate change in the Arctic including a thaw of Greenland’s ice could raise world sea levels by up to 1.6 meters by 2100.
“The past six years (until 2010) have been the warmest period ever recorded in the Arctic,” according to the Oslo-based Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), which is backed by the eight-nation Arctic Council.
“In the future, global sea level is projected to rise by 0.9 meters (2ft 11in) to 1.6 meters (5ft 3in) by 2100 and the loss of ice from Arctic glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland ice sheet will make a substantial contribution,” it said. The rises were projected from 1990 levels.
“Arctic glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland ice sheet contributed over 40 percent of the global sea level rise of around 3 mm per year observed between 2003 and 2008,” it said.
Back in 2007 the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that they estimate an increase of sea levels between 18 and 59 cm by 2100, however these conservative numbers did not take in consideration the drastic acceleration of thaw in the arctic.
“It is worrying that the most recent science points to much higher sea level rise than we have been expecting until now,” European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told Reuters.
“The study is yet another reminder of how pressing it has become to tackle climate change, although this urgency is not always evident neither in the public debate nor from the pace in the international negotiations,” she said.
The UN is currently in entangling talks on how they can battle the increase in temperature and sea levels, but progress is sluggish described at best. But the climate doesn’t wait, actually it’s said the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice free in summers within 30 to 40 years, earlier than projected by the IPCC.
Awaiting Asteroid ‘Flyby’ This Fall
Since the dawn of the space age, humanity has sent 16 robotic emissaries to fly by some of the solar system’s most intriguing and nomadic occupants — comets and asteroids. The data and imagery collected on these deep-space missions of exploration have helped redefine our understanding of how Earth and our part of the galaxy came to be. But this fall, Mother Nature is giving scientists around the world a close-up view of one of her good-sized space rocks — no rocket required.
“On November 8, asteroid 2005 YU55 will fly past Earth and at its closest approach point will be about 325,000 kilometers [201,700 miles] away,” said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “This asteroid is about 400 meters [1,300 feet] wide – the largest space rock we have identified that will come this close until 2028.”
Despite the relative proximity and size, Yeomans said, “YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over, at the very least, the next 100 years. During its closest approach, its gravitational effect on the Earth will be so miniscule as to be immeasurable. It will not affect the tides or anything else.”
Then why all the hubbub for a space rock a little bit wider than an aircraft carrier? After all, scientists estimate that asteroids the size of YU55 come this close about every 25 years.
“While near-Earth objects of this size have flown within a lunar distance in the past, we did not have the foreknowledge and technology to take advantage of the opportunity,” said Barbara Wilson, a scientist at JPL. “When it flies past, it should be a great opportunity for science instruments on the ground to get a good look.”
This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was generated from data taken in April of 2010 by the Arecibo Radar Telescope in Puerto Rico. Image credit: NASA/Cornell/Arecibo
2005 YU55 was discovered in December 2005 by Robert McMillan, head of the NASA-funded Spacewatch Program at the University of Arizona, Tucson. The space rock has been in astronomers’ crosshairs before. In April 2010, Mike Nolan and colleagues at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico generated some ghostly images of 2005 YU55 when the asteroid was about 2.3 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Earth. (See related story: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-144)
“The best resolution of the radar images was 7.5 meters [25 feet] per pixel,” said JPL radar astronomer Lance Benner. “When 2005 YU55 returns this fall, we intend to image it at 4-meter resolution with our recently upgraded equipment at the Deep Space Network at Goldstone, California. Plus, the asteroid will be seven times closer. We’re expecting some very detailed radar images.”
Radar astronomy employs the world’s most massive dish-shaped antennas. The antennas beam directed microwave signals at their celestial targets — which can be as close as our moon and as far away as the moons of Saturn. These signals bounce off the target, and the resulting “echo” is collected and precisely collated to create radar images, which can be used to reconstruct detailed three-dimensional models of the object. This defines its rotation precisely and gives scientists a good idea of the object’s surface roughness. They can even make out surface features.
“Using the Goldstone radar operating with the software and hardware upgrades, the resulting images of YU55 could come in with resolution as fine as 4 meters per pixel,” said Benner. “We’re talking about getting down to the kind of surface detail you dream of when you have a spacecraft fly by one of these targets.”
At that resolution, JPL astronomers can see boulders and craters on the surfaces of some asteroids, and establish if an asteroid has a moon or two of its own. (Note: the 2010 Arecibo imaging of YU55 did not show any moons). But beyond the visually intriguing surface, the data collected from Goldstone, Arecibo, and ground-based optical and infrared telescopes are expected to detail the mineral composition of the asteroid.
“This is a C-type asteroid, and those are thought to be representative of the primordial materials from which our solar system was formed,” said Wilson. “This flyby will be an excellent opportunity to test how we study, document and quantify which asteroids would be most appropriate for a future human mission.”
Yeomans reiterated Wilson’s view that the upcoming pass of asteroid 2005 YU55 will be a positive event, which he describes as an “opportunity for scientific discovery.” Yeomans adds, “So stay tuned. This is going to be fun.”
Teperdexrian 