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The age of the ray gun is almost upon us after the US Navy took delivery of a near-operational high-energy tactical laser weapon called the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system from Lockheed Martin that can be installed in existing warships. When the first laser was invented by Theodore Maiman at the Hughes Research Lab in Malibu, California, in 1960, it was almost immediately seen as a potential superweapon – the death-ray of science fiction come to life. While the ability to generate beams of coherent light provided scientists and engineers with a unique tool that...

Sailing through the smooth waters of vacuum, a photon of light moves at around 300 thousand kilometers (186 thousand miles) a second. This sets a firm limit on how quickly a whisper of information can travel anywhere in the Universe. While this law isn't likely to ever be broken, there are features of light which don't play by the same rules. Manipulating them won't hasten our ability to travel to the stars, but they could help us clear the way to a whole new class of laser technology. Physicists have been playing hard and fast with the speed limit of...

ALBANY, N.Y. —A Ku Klux Klan member conspired to use a remote-controlled X-ray device hidden in a truck, which he called “Hiroshima on a light switch,” as a weapon of mass destruction to harm Muslims and President Barack Obama, a prosecutor told jurors on Monday. But a lawyer for Glendon Scott Crawford at the start of his trial said that government undercover agents dragged him further into the plot to build what media dubbed the “death ray” machine after he tried to pull away in the initial stages, when he had no more than “a piece of paper” sketching out...

Ex-General Electrics worker was building remote-control 'death ray' that would have killed bystanders with radiation and planned to sell it to KKK' Glendon Crawford indicted for conspiracy to use weapon of mass destruction Industrial mechanic 'planned to build remote-controlled device that would kill victims through radiation poisoning' Synagogue called FBI after being offered device to 'kill enemies of Israel'An ex-General Electric employee from New York has been indicted on federal charges of plotting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, was arrested with Eric Feight, 54, in June after the FBI alleged the pair tried to...

For the last time: Archimedes did not invent a death ray. But more than 2,200 years after his death, his inventions are still driving technological innovations — so much so that experts from around the world gathered recently for a conference at New York University on his continuing influence. The death ray legend has Archimedes using mirrors to concentrate sunlight to incinerate Roman ships attacking his home of Syracuse,... --snip-- With his law of buoyancy, he was able to determine whether a paraboloid (a shape similar to the nose cone of a jetliner) would float upright or tip over, a...

Plastic sheet focuses sun light to the point that it can melt pennies, boil water, more Grant Thompson, also known by the online moniker “The King of Random”, has posted a wildly popular video on YouTube in which he hacks an old, 50-inch TV to remove a plastic sheet from it for use as a “solar scorcher.”  Thompson’s “solar scorcher” device. A bit more specifically, Thompson removed the TV’s front screen and separated the three parts that make up the component. Of the pieces, the TV’s Fresnel Lens displays a perfect ratio, Thompson notes, as it allows him to focus the sun’s...

I just saw something unusual in the night sky, and was wondering if anyone knows what this is/what caused it. This was observed at about 9:30 PM above the Ithaca, NY area. There were several long, wide areas of pale red light (perhaps something to do with light clouds??). They had a NW/SE orientation, and appeared to be drifting in an east to west direction. The sun had been down for about 3 hours, and there wasn't any moon. I've lived here for 45 years and never seen it before. It was quite pretty, but puzzling!

Eric Jacqmain, from Indiana in the US, covered an ordinary fibreglass satellite dish with 5,800 tiny mirror tiles - and made his very own 'death ray'. When aligned correctly it can generate a heat spot a couple of centimetres across, with an intensity of 5,000 shining suns, the 19-year-old claims. The inventor then posted video of his invention on YouTube, with people commenting in awe of the power of the satellite. The ray generates enough power to melt steel, vaporize aluminum, boil concrete, turn dirt into lava, and obliterate any organic material in an instant. It stands at 5ft 9ins...

The wife had jury duty at the Douglas County courthouse in Castle Rock, Colorado yesterday. She found they, too, now have the backscatter nude imaging machines, and they are mandatory. So, to excercise our constitutional rights to the courts or to appear as mandated by the court we must submit to a strip search and radiation. According to the TSA web site, these machines are also in other courthouses throughout the country. Just thought you should know.

If you weren’t watching C-SPAN today, you missed Kip's testimony before the Committee on Homeland Security's Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The Congressional Hearing was centered on how the Transportation Security Administration will continue to enhance security for all modes of transportation.[...] Millimeter wave will allow our TSOs to view a noninvasive image of a passenger revealing any items that were not divested. These images are friendly enough to post in a preschool. Heck, it could even make the cover of Reader’s Digest and not offend anybody.[...]

Japan is getting prepped to drop $21 billion on a solar power station in space. The whole deal is being put together by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and industrial design company IGI Corp. The plan involves a gigantic solar panel floating around in space, soaking up a gigawatt of energy and beaming it to Earth without the use of cables. And they hope to have it ready to rock within four years.

Black holes are weird. Well, duh, right? But they do something that surprises most people: besides hoovering down almost everything nearby, they can also eject material as well. And by eject, I mean send it out screaming at nearly the speed of light and heated to a bazillion degrees. Picture from Chandra of the active galaxy pair 3C321 The image above is from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and it’s all about this scary scenario. Let’s take a walk down the gravity well, shall we? Basically, as matter swirls down into the maw of the hole, it forms a flattened disk...

OK, here's a thread where all the Steve Irwin bashers can post away to their hearts content. Please leave the threads titled "In Memory..." or "Tribute to..." alone. Not every single thread about Steve Irwin on FR has to include the incident of him holding his son in the croc enclosure, a mention of Darwin, and/or the word "Fool" Sometimes the old saying is true "If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all."

From the remnants of Saddam's Baathists at Uruknet: What Types of Gruesome Weapons Did Israel Use in Lebanon? Nada Sayad, Global ResearchAugust 23, 2006Some doubts have been expressed regarding the use by Israel of Internationally Forbidden Weapons in its war on Lebanon.The South Medical Complex in Saida is investigating this matter. It is examining 24 samples from corps that were hit in the area of South Lebanon in a trial to discover the nature of the substances that lead to death.In a phone call done by "Assafir", the Lebanese local newspaper, Dr. Omar Morabi, the president of the Association of...

Doomsayers and Chicken Little-types can now strike "deathray from a star" from their list of possible ways to die. A new study finds that the chances of a gamma ray burst going off in our galaxy and destroying life on Earth are comfortingly close to zero. Gamma ray bursts, or GRBs, are focused beams of gamma radiation emitted from the magnetic poles of black holes formed during the collapse of ancient, behemoth stars. They can also form when dead neutron stars merge with each other or with black holes.

SAN FRANCISCO - It wasn't exactly the ancient siege of Syracuse, but rather a curious quest for scientific validation. According to sparse historical writings, the Greek mathematician Archimedes torched a fleet of invading Roman ships by reflecting the sun's powerful rays with a mirrored device made of glass or bronze. More than 2,000 years later, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Arizona set out to recreate Archimedes' fabled death ray Saturday in an experiment sponsored by the Discovery Channel program "MythBusters." Their attempts to set fire to an 80-year-old fishing boat using their own versions...

Inventor Nikola Tesla is beginning to remind me of the Michigan Mushroom—that underground fungus, nearly as large as its native state. He keeps cropping up unexpectedly like a truth suppressed. In 2004 this once forgotten scientist peppered films as motley as the smoky Coffee and Cigarettes, the silicone-sleek Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and the shoestring Primer. Tesla, beside inventing the radio (check with the Supreme Court, Marconi fans), the radar, remote control, and alternating current (AC electricity), also tinkered with a series of dreamy though equally ingenious ideas: plans to light the oceans, photograph thoughts, use insects...

"Rays of Death": Who stole them? - 11/24/2003 17:50 The idea of an "ultimate weapon" capable of defeating an enemy from an astonishingly remote distance has been dominating human's conscious since the "beginning of times." However, only in the course of the past hundred years did science approach practical realization of such question. Whereas present-day weapons mainly consist of strategic rockets and bomber aircrafts (all of which constitute material carriers of combatant supply), engineers have been working on slightly different projects in the beginning of the 20th century. Their main goal was to develop something other than bombs, rockets and...