Astronomers, Even Solomonides and Yervant Terzian, will be presenting a study at this month’s American Astronomical Society that claims Earthlings shouldn’t expect to hear from aliens for another 1,500 years. The reasons? Because the Milky Way Galaxy is enormous, and humanity, by comparison, is nothing special. The Cornell University researchers rectified the Fermi Paradox (suggesting…
Tech Throwback: The First American Woman Flies into Space
On June 18, 1983, the space shuttle Challenger launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, carrying the five-member STS-7 crew, including Mission Specialist Sally Ride—the first American woman to fly into space. Ride played a pivotal role in deploying communications satellites, conducting experiments, and utilizing the first Shuttle Pallet Satellite. Despite being an instant media hit and…
NASA: Grow Organs, Get Money
Enter your homegrown, functional human tissue in NASA’s Vascular Tissue Challenge, and the space agency may award you some serious wampum for your efforts. The purpose of the challenge is to advance the field of bioengineering, which is indispensable to NASA’s plans to send its astronauts deeper into space. “Tissue” is defined as a grouping…
Drone of the Week: Navy Drones Dive Beneath the Arctic Ice
Every Combat Vehicle in the U.S. Military, Pictured On One Intrepid Graphic
In case you needed wall art to spruce up your tactical-themed living room. A new infographic (available in poster form here) showcases, to scale, every active combat vehicle of the U.S. military. And what an impressive array of undaunted, armored fighting prowess it is. The graphic separates the 180 vehicles by air, land/amphibious, and sea, further…
Drone of the Week: Drone Swarms Will Soon Fly Alongside Fighter Jets
Right now, the military’s largest unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as the big, bad Predator and Reaper, are controlled via ground control stations. But according to the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Chief Scientist, groups of drones may soon be fully operated from the cockpits of advanced fighter jets flying nearby. This technological advancement would enhance…
Apache-Drone Combo Points to More Manned-Unmanned Teaming in the U.S. Military
The Textron Shadow unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has recently hit an operational milestone, becoming the first of the U.S. Army’s mid-range (or Group III) drones to fly one million hours. The aircraft have been clocking in some serious hours in Iraq, working in tandem with Apache attack helicopters in the fight against ISIS. So far,…
A Look Back in Incredible Photos: D-Day, June 6, 1944
Seventy-two years ago today, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France to liberate a German-occupied Western Europe. Over 9,000 allied troops were killed or wounded during the invasion, but by the end of the battle, the Allies had regained their foothold in Europe, a critical move that turned the tide of the Second World…
King Tut’s Dagger is From Space…
Here’s some fodder for those of you who believe that aliens constructed the pyramids… A new study says that King Tutankhamun, famed Egyptian boy king, was buried with a blade of meteoric origin. Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, a team of researchers from Milan Polytechnic, Pisa University, and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, confirmed that the…
Drone of the Week: Drone That Delivers Snacks to Golfers is a Hole in One
My golfing experience is limited to conquering the putt-putt obstacles of a mini-golf course or attempting to whack balls at a driving range with the sloppy brutality of Happy Gilmore. But I know people who do play, and I can tell you it isn’t the quickest of games. That being said, eighteen holes of golf…
Tech Throwback: Morse Sends First Telegraphic Message
“What Hath God Wrought?” That was the telegraph message that American inventor Samuel F. B. Morse dispatched from the U.S. Capitol to Alfred Vail, who was at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) station in Baltimore, Maryland. Members of Congress witness the demonstration, which took place on May 24, 1844—inaugurating the world’s first commercial telegraph…
Drone of the Week: Drone Captures 70 Sharks Feasting on a Whale
Hearty beach-goers, take heed. Just in time for summer, a drone, operated by cruise service Eco Abrolhos, recently captured incredible footage of 70 tiger sharks feeding on a dead humpback whale. The drone came across the feeding frenzy as it was following two boatloads of tourists in Dirk Hartog Island, off the western coast of…
Is it Possible to Bond with Robotic Battle Buddies?
One of my favorite Internet pastimes is looking up videos of military servicemen and women coming home to their floppy, four-legged friends after deployment: the unbridled excitement, the tail wagging, the jumping, and the slobbering—it will bring a tear (or tears, if you’re me) to your eye. Similarly, canines employed by the military will forge…
Tech Throwback: Army Signs Contract to Develop ENIAC ‘Giant Brain’
On May 17, 1943, the U.S. Army signed a contract to develop its Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), an all-electronic computing system. Designed by University of Pennsylvania’s J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly, it was the first system to utilize vacuum tubes instead of electromagnetic switches. Dubbed the “giant brain,” the computer had…
Drone of the Week: ‘Buggy’ Drone Can Perch on Ceilings and Walls
Students at Stanford’s Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Laboratory have been working on designing an unmanned aircraft that can effortlessly alight on walls or ceilings. Because quadcopters can only hover in the air for tens of minutes at a time, “perching” would increase the drone’s endurance; with its motors shut off, the drone’s sensors can collect…
Top 5 Drones from the Unmanned Systems Show
Drone of the Week: ‘Bomb-Sniffing’ UAVs Can Detect Nuclear Weapons
Researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Fusion Technology Lab have devised a system that, when attached to a series of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), can detect nuclear and chemical weapons. In other words, scientists have invented bomb-sniffing drones. The technology actually integrates several aircraft, each with an indispensable function to the overall system. A relay drone…
SpaceX Hires Hollywood Costume Designer to Create Its Spacesuits
From landing a reusable rocket on a drone-ship to planning to send its Dragon spacecraft to the Red Planet, SpaceX seems bent on making the kind of name of itself that so far only exists in comic books. It therefore makes sense that SpaceX founder Elon Musk would hire acclaimed superhero costume designer Jose Fernandez…
Tech Throwback: First American Sent into Outer Space
On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shephard became the first American to be launched into space. The goal of Shepard’s mission, Mercury-Redstone 3 (or Freedom 7), was to send an astronaut into orbit around the Earth. The resulting 15-minute suborbital flight, in which the spacecraft hit a speed of 5,180 mph and an altitude of…
Drones Put on Dazzling ‘Magical’ Display at Mount Fuji
As technology develops, so too does art. Sometimes the two are one in the same. Case in point: Japanese company MicroAd recently programmed a fleet of drones to perform an aerial ballet against the beautiful backdrop of Mount Fuji, dubbing the dazzling show “Sky Magic”—a reference to science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. “Any sufficiently…
Drone of the Week: This Unmanned Aircraft Flies With Only One Moving Part
The Monospinner, developed at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC), boasts being the “mechanically simplest controllable flying machine in existence,” integrating only one moving part: the rotating propeller. That’s it. It has no other parts—no flats, hinges, or control surfaces. No valves or other actuators. While the Monospinner can’t hover like a…
Drone of the Week: How the Air Force Plans to Develop Shape-Shifting UAVs
The United States Air Force (USAF) is pursuing the development of a miniature drones that can transform from flying aircraft into underwater vehicles. A step in that direction, Cornell University researchers have created a new composite material consisting of both silicone and metal, resulting in a kind of “morphing” material that the USAF wants to integrate…
That Time an Astronaut Ran a Marathon Faster Than Most Terrestrials
On Sunday, April 24, European Space Agency’s Tim Peake completed the London Marathon 248 miles above the Earth, making him the second astronaut to complete a 26.2 mile run in space. He ran alongside thousands of runners in London while strapped into a treadmill aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Before the run began, Peake…
Tech Throwback: Moore’s Law Promises ‘More’ Transistors, ‘More’ Progress
Prepare for your new weekly dose of history, as WDD recaps significant events that took place in the tech and engineering space. On April 19, 1965, Electronics magazine published an article by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor, describing a phenomenon that has come to define (and at the same time, influence) the…
Drone of the Week: Watch this Drone Catapult into Pork Because Science
At Aalborg University’s Drone Research Lab, a team devised an experimental setup, featuring a motorized catapult and high-speed camera to document what happens when a hobby drone hits objects or people. Note: no humans were harmed in the making of this video. Instead, to measure the speed and force of drone impacts, researchers used the…