Former astronaut Mae Jemison (above) has been given the top job by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a special branch of the US Department of Defense. Before you get out your Vulcan salute, the 100-Year Starship Project isn’t quite what it sounds like, but it’s still very intriguing.
Soldiers could one day conduct covert operations in complete secrecy, now that Pentagon-backed physicists have figured out how to mask entire events by distorting light.
It sounds insane, but DARPA recently laid down a challenge to computer scientists: work out how to reconstruct shredded pages of paper. The winning team has finished — two days ahead of schedule.
Imagine if giving docs a single drop of semen was all it took to keep you healthy. Your dream could soon become a reality, as the Pentagon pushes for every male soldier to hold his health, quite literally, in the palm of his hand.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a ninja or a polar bear blinking in a blizzard — if you’ve got a heartbeat, this new sensor system will find you. It’s called “Biometrics-at-a-distance” and does everything but smell your fear.
Not merely satisfied with having the the top research labs develop robotic dogs and cheetahs and humans, DARPA’s latest endeavour will see the military agency team up with MIT to develop FastRunner, a robotic ostrich capable of outrunning us all.
The Pentagon’s already got brain-controlled prosthetics, and they are a major improvement over old-school artificial limbs. The devices are far from perfect, however. They rely on metal implants, which aren’t compatible with the body’s tissues, and they can only transmit a few signals at a time — turning what should be a simple movement into a Herculean task.
Launching satellites is a risky proposition–costing as much as $US10,000 a pound to make orbit and little recourse if a critical piece malfunctions. So, DARPA has devised a system to recycle the $US300 billion worth of orbiting dead satellites into a zombie antenna array.
