• Asteroid collision: How to defend Earth, II

    Asteroid impacts are much rarer than hurricanes and earthquakes, but they have the potential to do much greater damage; moreover, what if an asteroid hits Earth in the Middle East or the Asian subcontinent? Such an event could be misinterpreted as a nuclear attack — both produce a bright flash, a blast wave, and raging winds; the result may be a nuclear war

  • TSB funds technology development

    The U.K. Technology Strategy Board will award £39.5 million investment to help U.K. businesses develop technologies that address global challenges

  • MIT researchers develop powerful object recognition system

    The new object recognition system could allow computers in the future automatically to search through hours of video footage for a particular two-minute scene; intelligence analysts should be happy

  • Lockheed Martin show 360-degree IR sensor for better targeting

    The hand-launched Desert Hawk III is designed to operate in extreme temperatures and high altitudes and has provided the British Army with critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan; it will now be equipped with an upgraded 360-degree color electro optic (E/O) sensor, providing 10 times continuous zoom capability and aiding in contact identification

  • Better targeting technology reduces civilian causalities

    New technology allows missiles an accuracy of 2 meter — meaning they never miss a target by more than that amount

  • Developing enzymes to clean up pollution by explosives

    Demolitions used in war, or on testing grounds, contaminate the soil; Canadian researchers develop an enzyme that cleans up such pollution

  • Imagining new threats -- and countering them

    DHS air transport security lab is in the business of imagining new threats — then developing the technologies to counter them; their dream? To build a “tunnel of truth” in each airport lined with hidden sensors, scanners, and rays; passengers would get zapped and sniffed as they passed, and would not need to take off their shoes, toss their liquids, or anything else

  • Using a giant light-gas gun to blast object into space

    Former scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) launch a company dedicated to, well, launching objects into space by using a giant gun; with a barrel 1.1-kilometers long, it uses compressed hydrogen gas to fire projectiles weighing 450-kilogram at six kilometers per second

  • Raytheon to export new ray gun

    Skin-heating Silent Guardian has attracted negative commentary from its earliest development days, and repeated requests for it from U.S. commanders overseas have thus been denied; foreign governments do not have such qualms

  • IBM's wants to make food smarter

    Big Blue offers systems for tracing the raw materials of food products through “an increasingly complex global supply chain”

  • New DARPA director seeks to deepen relations with universities

    Under the Bush administration, the relationship between DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, and leading U.S. universities became strained; the new director has embarked on a tour of university campuses to re-energize the government-academia cooperation in defense research

  • Penny-size nuclear battery developed

    Small nuclear battery, intended to power various micro/nanoelectromechanical systems, provides power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries

  • Day of charged-particles engine nears

    A Texas rocket company tests world’s most powerful ion engine; the engine uses radio waves to heat argon gas, turning it into a hot plasma — a state of matter in which electrons are no longer bound to atomic nuclei; magnetic fields then squirt the superheated plasma out the back of the engine, producing thrust in the opposite direction

  • Strap-on UGV kit

    Now you can turn you car into a UGV (unmanned ground vehicle): A retrofit from a Utah company allows you to turn your car into a UGV in about four hours

  • Princeton, Rice researchers develop new sensor for nitric oxide

    Researchers develop new nitric oxide detector; the sensor could now be incorporated into a portable, shoe-box-sized system ideally suited for mass deployment in large-scale unattended sensor networks