Gizmorama
December 6, 2010
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Good Morning,
The military has been busy with some strange requests that
sound to me like pet projects for nerdy millionaires. The
Air Force has strapped together over 15 hundred Playstation 3
counsels to make a fast, cost efficient supercomputer, while
the pentagon has its eyes set on a flying car... Can you
imagine being the customer service rep for some of those
calls? "This is Todd with Sony customer care, how can I help
you?" -- "Ah well... how do I put this; I need approximately
2,000 PS3s".
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Russian GPS satellite launch fails
MOSCOW - A Russian rocket failed to launch three GPS satel-
lites into orbit and fell into the Pacific Ocean Sunday, an
aerospace industry source said. The DM-3 booster with three
Glonass-M satellites landed northwest of Hawaii, causing no
casualties or damage, RIA Novosti reported. The Glonass is
the Russian equivalent of a global positioning system. The
Russian Proton-M carrier rocket, launched from the Baikonur
space center in Kazakhstan with the three satellites and the
booster, went off course by 8 degrees, the source said. The
satellites were launched to complete Russia's global navi-
gation system but failed to reach their planned orbit and
may not work. They were supposed to go into operation in six
weeks. Russia currently has 26 Glonass satellites in orbit,
but three of them are not working.
Old galaxy seen making new stars
OXFORD, England - U.K. astronomers say a nearby galaxy, well
past its cosmic "prime" for producing stars, shows evidence
it is still churning out baby stars. Images from the Hubble
Space Telescope show the core of an elliptical galaxy known
as NGC 4150, thought to be well past its period of star for-
mation, surrounded by streamers of dust, gas and young, blue
stars considerably less than 1 billion years old, SPACE.com
reported Tuesday. Scientists say the finding suggests ellip-
tical galaxies can still have some youthful vigor left, pos-
sibly through encounters with smaller galaxies, and that the
star birth in NGC 4150 may have been kicked off by a collis-
ion and merger with a dwarf galaxy. "Elliptical galaxies
were thought to have made all of their stars billions of
years ago," astronomer Mark Crockett of the University of
Oxford says. "They had consumed all their gas to make new
stars. Now we are finding evidence of star birth in many
elliptical galaxies, fueled mostly by cannibalizing smaller
galaxies." Astronomers' theories on how these galaxies form
may change with the new findings, he said "These observations
support the theory that galaxies built themselves up over
billions of years by collisions with dwarf galaxies,"
Crockett says. "NGC 4150 is a dramatic example in our galac-
tic backyard of a common occurrence in the early universe."
U.S. builds supercomputer with game units
CLEVELAND - The U.S. Air Force used 1,760 Sony Playstation
3 video game consoles to create a supercomputer at about a
tenth the normal cost for such a setup, officials say. Named
the Condor Cluster and unveiled Wednesday, it's the fastest
interactive computer the Defense Department has, the Air
Force said. Researchers under the command of Wright Patterson
Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, harnessed the computing
power of off-the-shelf PlayStation 3 consoles linked to more
traditional graphical processing computer components, The
(Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported. The Condor Cluster can be
used to solve image-matching problems and assist in surveil-
lance situations, using radar enhancement and pattern recog-
nition capabilities, the Air Force said. The total cost of
$2 million is about 10 to 20 times cheaper than what a trad-
ition supercomputer system would cost, Air Force officials
said. Harnessing video gaming technology for super computing
may seem unusual but "unusual is a relative term," said Larry
Merkle, assistant chairman of the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering at Wright State University. Video
game consoles were developed with cutting-edge graphics capa-
bilities and the ability to handle extensive numerical comp-
utations, he said.
Pentagon wants driveable helicopter
WOBURN, Mass. - The Pentagon wants to develop a flying car
with the ability to take off like a helicopter and is working
with a Massachusetts company on a prototype. The Pentagon's
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants the vehicle
to be able to carry four people and travel 280 miles by air
and land, The Boston Globe reported. Part of the nearly $65
million in development money is going to Terrafugia, the
Woburn, Mass., company that has developed a flying automobile
that could go on the market by the end of next year. The
military vehicle, known as the Transformer, or TX, would
have what project officials called "unprecedented capability
to avoid traditional and asymmetrical threats while avoiding
road obstructions." While on the ground, the vehicle would
function like a four-wheel-drive Humvee, the report said.
The drivable aircraft could be used for medical evacuation,
avoiding improvised explosive devices, and to take Special
Forces into action. It would also have an automatic pilot
so non-pilots could fly it. "Our strong team of Terrafugia
engineers with recent experience designing and building a
dual purpose vehicle will bring a unique perspective to the
TX program," company chief Carl Dietrich said. Terrafugia
said it is the largest subcontractor to one of the two
winning teams that was selected for the project by DARPA.
Officials want a prototype within five years.
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