Technology Radio-powered airships High-flying airships could be used as a cheap alternative to satellites, but their propulsion systems and transmitters need more power than solar panels can deliver. The Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California thinks radio energy can help (US 2004/0156400). A millimetre-band transmitter beams a megawatt of radio energy at an airship hovering at an altitude … 51¶¯Âþ
Humans Westminster diary A GERMAN U-boat crept through the hitherto safe defences of the home fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney, on 14 October 1939 and torpedoed the battleship Royal Oak. A huge quantity of dangerous ordnance remains aboard the Royal Oak and other sunken warships. How to salvage the ordnance safely is a huge challenge. These ships are … Opinion
Dark side of the sun On 1 September 1859, Richard Carrington had just completed his morning observation of the sun when he saw a pair of bright crescent shapes forming near a large group of sunspots. For years, Carrington had been observing the sun by projecting its image onto a screen and meticulously sketching what he saw. He had never … Features
A singular planet Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, Orbit, £12.99, ISBN 1841493333 Reviewed by David Langford SINGULARITY SKY is UK author Charles Stross's first novel: an imaginative, melodramatic and often hilarious space opera. It is set centuries after our technological progress accelerates beyond comprehension into a "singularity" (today's favourite SF concept) that changes everything. Yes, now there is … Books & Arts
A Reason for Everything: Natural selection and the English imagination by Marek Kohn (2004) Books & Arts
Feedback IF A tree makes a phone call in the forest and no one answers, did it happen? Our updated version of the famous philosophical question from Bishop George Berkeley is made necessary by the proliferation of fake trees trying, without ever quite succeeding, to pretend they are not cellphone masts. Now there is, inevitably, a … Regulars