The U.S. Office of Naval Research recently asked scientists and gadget-makers to send in their ideas for projects that will form the foundation for tomorrows Counter Directed Energy Weapons (CDEW) as the Navy begins to prepare for the threat of Directed Energy Weapons to surface ships. [More]
Researchers have successfully passed the 200-kilowatt threshold for a magnetoplasma rocket, raising hopes for a 10- to 20-megawatt engine that could propel human missions to Mars in just 39 days as opposed to conventional rockets that could take six months or more. [More]
Key Indian Figures Call for New Nuclear Tests Despite Deal With U.S. — Rama Lakshmi —Washington Post — Oct 04, 2009
A little more than a year after India and the United States signed a historic civilian agreement lifting a 30-year ban on nuclear trade, some former top nuclear scientists here are arguing that India needs to conduct another weapons test. [More]
Report Says Iran Has Data to Make a Nuclear Bomb — William J. Broad and David E. Sanger —New York Times — Oct 02, 2009
Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable atom bomb. [More]
The Pentagon's efforts to develop a beam weapon that can deter an adversary by causing a burning sensation on their skin has taken a step forward with the development of a small, potentially hand-held, version. The weapon, which is claimed to cause no permanent harm, could also end up being used by police to control civilians. [More]
Campaign Asks for International Treaty to Limit War Robots — Nic Fleming —New Scientist — Sep 29, 2009
A robotics expert, a physicist, a bioethicist and a philosopher have founded the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) to monitor the development of autonomous weapons and to campaign for the preventative arms control like the regulations that govern nuclear and biological weapons to be applied to robots. [More]
The quest for eternal life, or at least prolonged youthfulness, has now migrated from the outer fringes of alternative medicine to the halls of Harvard Medical School. [More]
NASA is running out of the special kind of plutonium needed to power deep space probes, worrying planetary scientists who say the U. S. urgently needs to restart production of plutonium-238. [More]
Wanted: Home Computers to Join in Research on Artificial Life — John Markoff —New York Times — Sep 27, 2009
In October, a small team of Silicon Valley researchers plans to turn software originally designed to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life to the task of looking for evidence of artificial life generated on a cluster of high-performance computers. [More]
Venezuela's science and technology minister said his country is working with Russia to detect deposits of uranium but withdrew an earlier denial that the country was also working with Iran. [More]