All posts by Paul Raven

The facts of the (anti)matter

Antimatter has powered countless science fictional starships, but has yet to be used as a propulsion method in reality. Reasons are manifold: firstly, it’s very difficult and expensive to make even the tiniest amount of it; and second, we’re still not entirely sure what it is or how it works. Centauri Dreams reports on the state of antimatter research, and hopes that someday we’ll be able to use it to move between the stars.

That said, successful Space Shuttle launches aside, we’re still short of a simple and affordable route to orbit, let alone our nearest stellar neighbours. JP Aerospace reckons it has an answer to getting us at least half-way there – namely making lighter-than-air flyers to ascend to a sub-orbital space station, from which super-light orbiters could be launched. It’s a low-budget lo-fi approach, but if it works, why not?

Still hungry for space-related stuff? Carnival of Space #14  is live at Universe Today.

When cybermoths attack!

Orange fuzzy moth - cybernetic status uncertainI’ve blogged this here before, but it deserves mentioning once again just for its sheer science fictional majesty – good old DARPA have been implanting minute electro-mechanical devices into moth pupae, so that when the insects hatch they’re fully wired for … well, that’s the thing. They’re still working on a viable application for the idea (which is an odd methodology, but what the hell, they have the budget for it), but the idea of using the bugged bugs as some sort of reconnaissance companion for fighter pilots seems to be the way they want to go. [Gizmodo]

By the way, Wired’s Danger Room blog is on-site covering the current DARPATech convention, should you hunger for more weirdness of a similar ilk. [Image by Jurvetson]

Robot rock and roll

GTRBOT666I love my rock music, and I love robots, and I’ve been heard to remark once or twice that the two spheres of interest simply don’t converge often enough. I need never do so again, however, for thanks to Wired I have now discovered Captured! By Robots – a band that consists of one human guy in a gimp mask and a stage-full of freaky foul-mouthed automatons. Be warned – the video clips beyond the link feature synthesized swear-words and the sort of music that doesn’t make it onto daytime radio. Amen to that.

Electrical fields trounce brain tumors

If you have a friend or co-worker with a paranoid streak (or who simply consumes too much tabloid media), they may have informed you that electrical fields can cause cancers to form in your brain. Well, now you can tell them that the opposite is the case – an Israeli company has developed a device for killing brain tumors using weak electrical fields. Of course, your friend will just tell you how that’s what the Illuminati want you to think, but that’s half the fun. [BeyondTheBeyond]

Pig clones cloned, cloned and cloned again

Piglet clones

Aaah, aren’t these little piglets cute? They’re also fourth-generation piglet clones, apparently free of any abnormalities resulting from their engineered origin. Scientists have pinned great hopes on the cloning of animals as a potential solution to the world-wide shortage of transplantable organs; pigs, with their great similarity to human physiology, may well play a large part in such plans.