Free Republic

Tweet TO MUCH fanfare, Italy celebrated 150 years since its unification two weeks ago. Less exuberantly, America is commemorating the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the civil war, a failed attempt to undo its union. Amid this flurry of historical fissions and fusions it is easy to overlook another, arguably more significant unification set in motion in spring 1861. In March of that year James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist (pictured above), published the first piece of a four-part paper entitled "On physical lines of force". Sprinkled amid the prose in the Philosophical Magazine were equations which revealed...

Huge 'launch ring' to fling satellites into orbit 16:00 03 October 2006 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga A ring of superconducting magnets fires a projectile off a ramp at 8 kilometres per second, fast enough to reach orbit (Artist’s conception: J Fiske/LaunchPoint) A cone-shaped shell would protect the payload during its passage through the atmosphere into space, and includes a rocket at the back end to adjust its trajectory (Illustration: J Fiske/LaunchPoint Technologies) An enormous ring of superconducting magnets similar to a particle accelerator could fling satellites into space, or perhaps weapons around the world, suggest the findings of a...

A large circular metal track could accelerate objects to supersonic speed using electromagnets and spit them out into space, says a report from the U.S. air force's Office of Scientific research. Tagged as the Launch Ring by its inventing company, Launch Point Technologies, the track would be several kilometers in diameter. Similar to trains that hover on electromagnetic tracks, a sled would hover over the ring and be propelled forward using powerful magnets. According to the company, a satellite protected by an eggshell-like capsule could sit atop the sled and slowly accelerate over a matter of hours to a supersonic...

Underwater Sub Detection: SBIR Tries to Think Like a Shark Posted 06-Jul-2005 05:10 DID has covered evolving US anti-submarine warfare strategy before, including the growing importance of dealing with super-quiet diesel-electric submarines in shallow-water littorals.In response, one of the early-stage Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) approaches involves thinking entirely outside the sonar box. We talk about "submariner dolphins" - but maybe the creature they really need to emulate is the shark. Unlike dolphins, sharks don't use sonar. Instead, they rely on both an acute sense of smell and on jelly-filled canals that pick up on the tiny electrical charges a...

Mice can predict big earthquakes: Japanese researchers 2 hours, 42 minutes ago Add Science - AFP to My Yahoo! TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese researchers said they have proved mice act strangely after being exposed to electromagnetism similar to that often monitored ahead of a big earthquake (news - web sites). In their experiments, researchers exposed mice to low levels of electromagnetism which people cannot feel, said Takeshi Yagi, professor at Osaka University in western Japan. "The mice then became unstable and ran around inside the cage, scratched their faces and stuck their heads into sawdust in the cage," Yagi said...