New Bi-Plane Design Promises All of the Sonic, None of the Boom

The Concorde became the premiere transport across the Atlantic in part because it was precluded from flying over populated areas due to the sonic boom it created on takeoff. A new two-wing design, however, may hold the secret to silently breaking the sound barrier. Guile does not approve.
As a plane moves through the air, it stacks up air pressure in front of the plane and creates a vacuum in its wake. When the plane hits super sonic speeds—actually travelling faster that the sound wave it's creating—the plane will drag and compress the leading and trailing pressure waves together to form a single big shock wave moving at the speed of sound. The wave from this hits the ground is what's considered the sonic boom.
A team of researchers from MIT and Stanford University developed the bi-plane design based on a design devised in the 1950's by German engineer Adolf Busemann. He figured that a design using triangular wings connected at the tip would effectively cancel out the boom. His original design wasn't quite efficient—the inner channel prevented sufficient air flow— so the researchers had to tweak the design a bit.
And man what a tweak. The design they settled on—with a smooth finish on the inner edge of the triangle and small bumps on the outer—could reduce the plane's fuel consumption by 50 percent and allow speeds in excess of Mach 5. Not to mention they'd be able to fly over the country and not just the oceans. Get ready for two-hour jaunts across the continent if this design reaches the market. [Sonic Boom Wiki - LiveSciences]

Source: gizmodo
 

In the Future, Maglev Cannons Will Shoot Us Into Space

Today in grandiose space ambitions that would make even Newt Gingrich balk: a $60 billion, 1,000-mile long, 12-mile high, 20,000-miles-per-hour maglev train that starts on the ground and arrives in low Earth orbit. The minds behind the Startram project think it could reduce the cost per kilo (that's like 2.2 pounds American) for cargo from roughly $10,000 to just $50.
A quick cost-benefit analysis says this makes sense. But does the technology? Here's the gist, according to Startram (which, incidentally, is co-invented by one of the people who invented the superconducting maglev, Dr. James Powell): start a maglev train in a vacuum sealed tunnel on the ground, accelerate it for five straight minutes to speeds up to 5.6 miles per second, and launch it from the end of said tunnel—which, as it happens, needs to be raised about 12 miles into the sky where the air is thin enough that it won't destroy the spacecraft-train, which is now moving about 20,000 miles per hour.
Now, in principle, there's no part of building a super-fast maglev train that isn't doable (how safe it would be is another question entirely). But how do you permanently suspend the business end of this massive maglev cannon a full twelve miles in the air? With maglev, of course. Powell and his partner Dr. George Maise posit that if they were to run a superconducting cable through the ground beneath the ascending maglev tunnel carrying 200 million amperes and cable in the launch tube itself bearing 20 million amperes, the tunnel would remain suspended up there via magnetic levitation, with huge cables holding it in position.
Apparently Sandia National Labs has actually reviewed this proposal and couldn't find a reason to rule it out as a possibility entirely, though finding $60 billion in any budget for a far-out space train seems perhaps the least likely scenario out of all of this. But Startram does make a point: the space shuttle program alone cost nearly 3 times more than that over three decades. Maybe an express train to LEO is exactly what commercial space needs. But just for the record, we're not suggesting any of our readers sign up for the inaugural ride.

source: gizmodo

Even the Pedestrian You Accidentally Hit Now Gets Their Own Airbag

Volvo has always built some of the safest cars on the road, protecting the vehicle's passengers when the unthinkable happens. But now the company has added an additional airbag to its V40 that could save the life of a pedestrian.
In addition to a long list of new features designed to protect the passengers, the new V40 wants to make sure the chances of you hitting a pedestrian are lessened, and if you do, their chances of survival are increased.
First there's its new Pedestrian Detection system which uses a combination of grill-mounted radar and a video camera to detect and recognize a person in the vehicle's path. It can also gauge if they're moving and based on the car's current speed, whether the two are on a collision course. If there is a risk of the pedestrian being hit, an audible alarm will alert the driver. And if there's not enough time for them to react, the vehicle will automatically brake on its own.
But sometimes there's not enough time to avoid hitting someone who darts out in front of your car. So to minimize injuries, the V40 includes an external airbag designed specifically for passengers. Sensors in the bumper register the impact at which point the hood is released and automatically raised by an inflating airbag that extends far enough to provide a cushion as the person rolls up onto the vehicle.
The severity of the accident is dependent on the vehicle's speed and how the person was hit. But if I was a pedestrian who accidentally stepped out in front of a moving vehicle, I sincerely hope there was a Volvo logo on its grill. [Volvo via Gizmag]

Source: gizmodo

Wireless Data Could Move 1,000 Times Faster Thanks to Frequency Combs

That 4G connection pumping through your New iPad may seem lighting-quick compared to the 3G molasses you were used to, but LTE flows about as fast as old glass in the face of the Terahertz bandwidth that the University of Pittsburgh is studying.
Current radio frequency technologies are limited to operating on the Gigahertz range. However, a team led by physics and chemistry professor Hrvoje Petek has demonstrated a method of transmitting data in a portion of spectrum a magnitude higher—operating between infrared and microwave light. The team was able to devise a frequency comb "that spans a more than 100 terahertz bandwidth by exciting a coherent collective of atomic motions [read: oscillations] in a semiconductor silicon crystal." In fact, in their demo, the team achieved oscillations of 15.6 THz.
A frequency comb results from dividing a single color of light into equally-sized chunks that can be used in numerous applications—such as data transmission. "The ability to modulate light with such a bandwidth could increase the amount of information carried by more than 1,000 times when compared to the volume carried with today's technologies," Petek said in a statement.
The University of Pittsburgh News describes the team's endeavors as such,

To investigate the optical properties of a silicon crystal, Petek and his team investigated the change in reflectivity after excitation with an intense laser pulse. Following the excitation, the team observed that the amount of reflected light oscillates at 15.6 THz, the highest mechanical frequency of atoms within a silicon lattice. This oscillation caused additional change in the absorption and reflection of light, multiplying the fundamental oscillation frequency by up to seven times to generate the comb of frequencies extending beyond 100 THz. Petek and his team were able to observe the production of such a comb of frequencies from a crystalline solid for the first time.

Granted, this technology is still highly experimental but if it does reach market, users will be able to enjoy fiber-optic speeds—wirelessly. Of course, that's assuming Petek's team hasn't yet figured out how to leverage the coherent oscillation of electrons into petahertz (that's a QUADRILLION hertz) frequencies. [University of Pittsburgh - Pitt Lab of Ultrafast Dynamics via PC Mag]

Source: gizmodo