Well, yet another milestone has occurred, the army is now ready to deploy a roughly dog-shaped robot that can function as a pack animal for soldiers in the field. The initial version of this robot is going to be controlled remotely, but later versions will rely on their own artificial intelligence to navigate them around the battlefield. The army hopes to offload 100 lbs from the backs of the soldiers and onto the back of this robot who knows no fear, and will not bolt during a firefight.

I can’t possibly see how this could go wrong for us. Except, well, ever see that movie Red Planet? They had a similar robot, designed to help them cope with the hostile environment on mars. It eventually tried to kill them….

Does this robot look familiar?

Read the full story on Popular Science

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The United States has enjoyed a period of uncontested superiority in space exploration, and it’s about to end. Many other countries around the world are gearing up to join us in the pursuit of daring the vacuum. My personal opinion, the more the merrier, I think a greater emphasis on learning about our universe can’t be a bad thing. Read the full story San Francisco Chronicle
Lunar missions planned by nations worldwide include:

China: A lunar orbiter is being prepared for launch in 2007 or 2008, followed by lunar-landing probes and, after 2017, landings by astronauts.

Europe: A probe, Smart-1, is circling the moon. The European Space Agency hopes to send landing probes to our sister orb in later years.

India: Chandrayaan-1, a robotic spaceship, is scheduled for launch in September 2007. Its goals include orbiting the moon to map its minerals and seek frozen-water deposits that might be consumed by future astronauts.

Japan: A robotic probe, SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) is slated to visit the moon later this decade. However, its timing is uncertain because of repeated launch delays and the Japanese space program’s well-publicized technical problems of the past decade.

United States: NASA plans to launch its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in late 2008 as a prelude to President Bush’s goal to send American astronauts back to the moon, perhaps as soon as the second half of the next decade.

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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Max-Planck Institute/P. Appleton (SSC/Caltech)

This shockwave, visible in this false color image of the Stephen’s Quintet galaxy, is larger than our own Milky Way. Four of the five galaxies pictured are involved in a massive collision, and the shockwave is being produced by one of the galaxies falling toward the other at over a million miles an hour. Amazing! Que the music, “Da da dumm… when galaxies collide.”

Read the entire story on Spaceref.com

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This monster runs 59 trillion calculations per second………………..

The total peak performance is 59.45 terra flops……………………..

What do you do with a computer this fast you may ask? You hook it up to a high energy accelerator to do research in particle and nuclear physics. I’m sure it handles Snood and Minesweeper just as well though.

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Turns out that being blond is an 11,000 year old mutation that developed simply for, you guessed it, getting laid.

At a time when males were dying out rapidly on hunting expeditions women developed the blond mutation to increase their visual appeal. The Down side is that the blond gene is expected to be extinct in 200 years. Good thing you discovered bleaching ladies.

Read the full story on the BBC

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 Episode 4 [56:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Episode 4 of the Unsayable Podcast is now available for download. Jason and Chris queue up the hits and spin only the very best news into a creamy little treat we’ve been calling Episode 4, enjoy!

Stories for this week’s show include:

• Guide Star Laser System
• Pinwheel Galaxy in HD
• Launch date for Bly-Ray player
• Mutated Pond Scum
• Laser Plasma Generated 3D Images
• Halo 3 News
• This Week in DARPA
• PET Scanner
• PS3 Delay… Who Knew?
• Playstation Conference Good For Nothing
• Call of Duty Adds Pulled
• ilovebees 2?
• Microsoft New Handheld: The Origami

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A PET scanner, which stands for Positron Emission Tomography, utilizes an encircling ring of detectors that record the impacts from gamma rays. These gamma rays are created when an electron and a positron collide inside the body and annihilate each other. This collision in turn release two energetic gamma rays which are emitted in opposite directions. Over a period of time these gamma emissions upon striking the detector are interpreted into an image. Read the entire article here. My favorite part of this picture is the little line pointing to a green explosion inside the man’s head reading “gamma rays created,” because that’s what you want more of inside your head, gamma rays.

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Here’s the quote from the website:

The purpose of the Intelligent Multi-modal Volume Angio Computed Tomography (IM-VAC) Program is to create a digital imaging system that is capable of performing a total body scan of a person using the multiple scanning techniques of computed tomography (CT), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), and Single Positron Emission Tomography (SPECT) on a single detector. Such a capability will be able to produce a single image that represents both anatomic (CT scan) and functional (PET and SPECT scans) information about the person in an image that will be automatically registered (data fusion) from the single detector plate. This capability will provide revolutionary new insight into the functioning of the human body as well as provide patient-specific (and soldier-specific) information in treating injury or disease. The first critical tasks of this effort are to develop the multi-modal detector capable of acquiring all three modalities and integrating the detector into a rapid scanning system to provide images in less than a minute.

I love nothing more than science fiction becoming science reality:

It’s only a matter of time…

Hopefully the real thing will have a “try me” button too.

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