How it began :

Late 2004 — a Boeing anti-missile airborne laser achieved first light;

Oct’ 2006 — a laser-equipped 747-400F was deemed ready for testing;

Jan’ 2007 — an MD-10 with Northrop Grumman’s Guardian anti-missile system took off;

Mar’ 2009 — read on >>

Northrop Grumman, a leading global security services cum defense research company has announced the developing of a first-of-its-kind and State-of-art Solid-state Laser that can do more harm than blinding the enemy. The Project dubbed JHPSSL for ‘ Joint High Power Solid State Laser’ achieved a remarkable milestone in laser weaponry segment breaking the 100 Kilo watt barrier.

“Our modular JHPSSL design makes it straightforward to scale laser weapon systems to mission-required power levels for a variety of uses, to include force protection and precision strike missions for air-, sea- and land-based platforms,” said Dan Wildt, vice president of Directed Energy Systems for Northrop Grumman’s Aerospace Systems sector.

He also said, “This achievement is particularly important because the 100kW threshold has been viewed traditionally as a proof of principle for ‘weapons grade’ power levels for high-energy lasers. In fact, many militarily useful effects can be achieved by laser weapons of 25kW or 50 kW, provided this energy is transmitted with good beam quality, as our system does. With this milestone, we have far exceeded those needs.”
With the advent of laser it was predicted that the next big thing in wars would be lasers. That day is fast approaching with these ground shattering innovations. Who knows - the distant imaginative apocalypses proclaimed by the ‘Terminator’ and the ‘Matrix’ may soon become a reachable reality ! Gosh, We can only bemoan that to happen !

Hello Ubercool sci-fi enthusiasts,
I’m ‘Tinsel-geek‘ the alter-ego of ‘SpaceBoy’. Dude, now the question on ur mind is : Why me in the first place ? I tell you - the right kinda guy to deal with the tinsel world is me - The Tinsel-geek and not my nerdy :) brother Space Boy … I’l take over when the geeky stuff from the ‘Woods’ need to be discussed. Well, that’s about my introduction; now lets get into business.
What the tinsel town of hollywood has in store for the sci-fi film buffs in 2009 ?
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Hey crazy math geeks out there - a good piece of news for ya ! Today is commemorated as the ‘Pi’ or π day . Confused ? today’s date - 3/14. got it now ? Yes, the mathematical constant pi = 22/7 roughly equals 3.14. Know what ? The US House of Representatives has recognised 14 March as Pi Day officially.

This may seem silly and weird with the US bureaucrats having a hell lotta problems to address in reality, but let’s not ignore the special place π shares in the world of mathematics. The ratio of of any circle’s circumference to its diameter in Euclidean space; this is the same value as the ratio of a circle’s area to the square of its radius - π has taught a lotta things to us. I seriously doubt any other mathematical constant playing such a basic role for the building blocks of all known science to mankind ! Though pi is irrational, we should indeed be rational towards its importance :) !

Being an irrational number, it cannot be expressed purely by a fraction m/n where m and n both are integers. Also the decimal representation never ends or repeats. Such a peculiar number has made us all this technological innovations possible. And so, dude - we gotta do the honors for the number. or let us take this opporunity to pay respect for all those greatest mathematicians who transformed our lives to see the technology growing but hardly got the due ! Hail mathematics aka mathemagic ! Happy Pi day !

Remembering Pi :

There are some real geniuses out there who can recite  pi to some tens of thousands of  decimal places. For meeky-geeks like us, remembering even to the tenth digit is a big achievement. So how do those ‘highly intellects’ remember to such a big numeral to such high order of accuracy ? The method follwed is mnemonics, where in one remembers strange and catchy phrases and tries to relate with the numbers. Here’s an example : Say you wanna recite Pi to its 14 decimal places. Here it goes,

“How I want a drink? Alcoholic, of course. After the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.”

One can easily remember the above sentence. The hint and relation to pi here is the number of letters in each word. Each word relates to one decimal andt the number of letters equals the number => 3.14159265358979 So, give a try impressing others with mnemonics ! happy Pi Day dear geeks !

The three astronauts of Expedition 18 crew, manning the International Space Station climbed briefly into their Soyuz escape capsule for shelter as a precaution today after a piece of space debris was detected in the vicinity, too late to maneuver the station to a safe distance.

The crew spent 11 minutes in the soft-locked capsule until the debris, a portion of a spent satellite motor, passed by harmlessly at 12:39 p.m. EDT. They then re-entered the station. Had the debris hit the Station, they would have undocked their Soyuz TMA-13 capsule for escape. The tiny Soyuz craft has 141 cubic feet (4 cubic meters) of living space and contains life-support supplies and batteries generally used during descent as well as primary and backup parachutes and landing rockets.

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The European Space Agency (ESA) is about to launch the most sophisticated of Earth Observation satellites to investigate the Earth’s gravitational field with unprecedented resolution and accuracy. The Mission christened GOCE, for ‘Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer‘ will be crucial for obtaining accurate measurements of ocean circulation and sea-level change, both of which are affected by climate change. The data will help to better understand processes occurring inside the Earth which are linked to volcanoes and earthquakes.

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Lift Off: The Delta II rocket carrying the Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft lifted off at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The spectacular nighttime launch followed a smooth countdown free of technical issues or weather concerns. Kepler is designed to find the first Earth-size planets orbiting stars at distances where water could pool on the planet’s surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

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01 Mar’09 : From the NASA newsroom

With the Kepler spacecraft secured tightly to the top of a Delta II rocket, technicians placed the two-piece nose cone around the observatory as they continued working toward a launch no earlier than March 6 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Florida’s Atlantic coast.

It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth — rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life. Read the rest of this entry »

Just outside the small town of Rheinbach, the German army has begun preparations for a new kind of war. Close on the heels of attacks against the Internet infrastructure of Estonia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, as well as a large scale hacking attack by China against a number of European countries, the German army, or Bundeswehr, has established its first offcial unit dedicated solely to cyber war. According to a new article in Der Spiegel, the unit is still considered secret, and will work on both defensive and offensive operations.

Cyber attacks are not new - websites were being hacked into and brought down during the Kosovo war 10 years ago. According to Scott Borg, Director and Chief Economist of the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a non-profit founded by the US government that now independently consults with the government and businesses, about a dozen countries have developed cyber war capabilities.

“Other than Britain and France, European countries have not been very out front about their war-making capabilities,Since Germany is very careful about these things, the fact that they actually announced that they’re doing it may mean it’s not as everyday as it seems.”

Fact 1: In the last few years, the number of intrusion attempts on US Department of Defense computers has grown to over 500 a day

Nations on for Cyber Warfare:

With the Russian cyber attack that took out Estonia’s banking, government ministries and Internet for several days in 2007, the wired world joined the land, sea and air as a standard battlefield in modern war.

After the 2007 Estonia incident, Russians launched cyber attacks against Georgia during their 2008 war, and then took down the Internet of Kyrgyzstan on January 18th of this year. This is when NATO alliance realised it needed a proper cyber defence policy and fast. Suleyman Anil, a Turkish IT expert from the Nato Security Office is the man driving much of that policy.

Since 2007, cyber attacks have been used in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, between Indian and Pakistan, and between China and Taiwan and Japan.

E-mail attachments with sophisticated “worm” or “trojan” can, in theory, take over their computer, scan its files, send them on, delete them, or perhaps most damagingly, alter them without the user knowing.

What Germans think:

The impetus for creating this unit came from a spate of recent cyber attacks against Germany. In 2007, attempts by Chinese hackers to conduct industrial espionage against Germany became so bad that during a state visit to Germany, German chancellor Angela Merkel publicly asked Chinese officials to stop. Additionally, Germany has engaged in some spats over gas pipelines with Russia, a country that has launched cyber attacks every year since 2007.

So is cyber warfare the future of warfare?

The current answer is : Yes, it will be a factor within any future conflict.