First genetically engineered super horse, designed to be faster and stronger, could be born in 2019

Genetically modified horses will be faster and stronger than even champion racehorses like Frankel (pictured), and they could be born in 2019.

Genetically engineered super-horses could be born in 2019 after a genetic breakthrough by a laboratory that has previously cloned polo ponies.

Using gene editing technique Crispr, scientists could create faster and stronger racehorses - and they have already created a healthy embryo. 

Under current rules, the genetically enhanced animals would be allowed to compete at all international events, including the Olympics.

WHAT IS CRISPR?

Crispr is a tool for making precise edits in DNA, discovered in bacteria. 

The acronym stands for 'Clustered Regularly Inter-Spaced Palindromic Repeats'. 

The technique involves a DNA cutting enzyme and a small tag which tells the enzyme where to cut.

Experts from Kheiron Biotech, a specialist equine cloning facility based in Buenos Aires, have focused on the myostatin gene sequence which controls and limits the growth of muscles.

By changing this, the horses will be able to develop significantly more muscle mass.

In theory, by altering this process the animals will be able to run quicker for longer.

The process has already created healthy embryos and they are expected to be implanted into surrogate mothers within two years. 

Mr Sammartino, founder of the Kheiron Biotech laboratory, told The Telegraph: 'This technology brings additional progress in horse breeding. 

'It could be possible to achieve better horses in less time.

'Our next big challenge is not only to export our technology, but fundamentally develop these scientific advances in other animals for multiple purposes.'

Genetic engineering can be seen as a short-cut to achieve the same results as traditional breeding but in a fraction of the time.

Genetic modification has been used in equine sports for over a decade, with cloning becoming progressively more common since the first horse was cloned in 2003 by .

Last year, Adolfo Cambiaso rode six horses which were all cloned from the same animal and won the Argentinian open.

Crispr is a tool for making precise edits in DNA, discovered in bacteria. The acronym stands for 'Clustered Regularly Inter-Spaced Palindromic Repeats'. The technique involves a DNA cutting enzyme and a small tag which tells the enzyme where to cut

The International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) lifted a ban on cloned horses competing internationally in 2013. It said that a cloned horse is unlikely to offer an advantage over a traditionally bred animal (stock image)

The International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) lifted a ban on cloned horses competing internationally in 2013. 

Shannon Gibbons, an FEI spokesman, said: 'The performance of a cloned horse is unlikely to match that of the original horse for a number of reasons, including the maternal uterine environment, nutrition, training and the understanding that clones are not exactly the same as the original.

'Additionally, as progeny of cloned horses will be produced by conventional reproductive methods, such as natural covering or artificial insemination, maintaining fair play is protected.

'The FEI will therefore not forbid participation of clones or their progenies in FEI competitions. However, we will continue to monitor further scientific research.'

Cloning however, does not improve the lineage of a horse and 'improve' it in any way, it simply produces a genetically identical copy of the original. 

This new development would allow breeders and trainers to 'customise' the DNA of their horses in order to produce an animal with the most desirable traits. 

Currently, there are no rules in place to stop genetically modified animals from competing in any international competitions, including the Olympics.  

The results of the research will be published early next year in the journal Cloning and Stem Cells.

Transformer like statue in ‘Oriental Science Fiction Valley‘

Statue of a Transformer that is taller and heavier than the Statue of Liberty

China has a $1 billion to $1.5 billion virtual reality theme park that has 174 foot tall statue of a Transformer made of 750 tons of steel. The theme park is set to open in February 2018.

The copper statue portion of the Statue of Liberty is 150 feet tall and weighs 225 tons.
 
The Transformer statue is 3 times the weight and is taller.
The Theme park is in Guiyang city in Guizhou province.

The new VR park is named simply ‘Oriental Science Fiction Valley‘. The massive VR park spans 330 acres (134 hectares) and houses within its various sci-fi-inspired buildings 35 different VR attractions—including everything from shooters, virtual rollercoasters, to guided spaceship tours of the region’s most scenic spots










 



Unacknowledged: Raw UFO Footage 

Introducing the DF-17

China carried out the first flight-tests of a new kind of ballistic missile with a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) in November, The Diplomat has learned.

According to a U.S. government source who described recent intelligence assessments on the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) on the condition of anonymity, China recently conducted two tests of a new missile known as the DF-17.

The first test took place on November 1 and the second test took place on November 15. The November 1 test was the first Chinese ballistic missile test to take place after the conclusion of the first plenum of the Communist Party of China’s 19th Party Congress in October.

During the November 1 test flight, which took place from the Jiuquan Space Launcher Center in Inner Mongolia, the missile’s payload flew to a range of approximately 1,400 kilometers with the HGV flying at a depressed altitude of around 60 kilometers following the completion of the DF-17’s ballistic and reentry phases.

HGVs begin powered flight after separating from their ballistic missile boosters, which follow a standard ballistic trajectory to give the payload vehicle sufficient altitude.

Parts of the U.S. intelligence community assess that the DF-17 is a medium-range system, with a range capability between 1,800 and 2,500 kilometers. The missile is expected to be capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional payloads and may be capable of being configured to deliver a maneuverable reentry vehicle instead of an HGV.

Most of the missile’s flight time during the November 1 flight test was powered by the HGV during the glide phase, the source said. The missile successfully made impact at a site in Xinjiang Province, outside Qiemo, “within meters” of the intended target, the source added. The duration of the HGV’s powered flight was nearly 11 minutes during that test.

The HGV payload that China tested in November was specifically designed for the DF-17, the source told The Diplomat, while noting that parts of the U.S. intelligence community assess that the DF-17 is heavily based on the PLARF’s DF-16B short-range ballistic missile, which is already deployed.

“The missile is explicitly designed for operational HGV implementation and not as a test bed,” the source said, describing U.S. intelligence assessments of the DF-17. This was “the first HGV test in the world using a system intended to be fielded operationally,” the source added.

The DF-17, per current U.S. intelligence assessments, is expected to reach initial operating capability around 2020.

“Although hypersonic glide vehicles and missiles flying non-ballistic trajectories were first proposed as far back as World War II, technological advances are only now making these systems practicable,” Vice Admiral James Syring, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, remarked in June, during a testimony before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.

Outside these missiles, China has conducted seven known tests of experimental hypersonic glide vehicles. These tests took place between 2014 and 2016.


JF-12 hypersonic wind tunnel in Beijing.
The innovative setup is the largest of its kind in the world and is capable of testing missiles and aircraft up to 6,900mph (11,100kph). The TV clip aired on October 8 via CCTV.

Tests of the DF-17—the first missile designed for the operational deployment of an HGV with the PLARF—followed the first-ever appearance of a physical hypersonic glider test object in Chinese state media in October.

 
An image of a hypersonic glider-like object broadcast by Chinese state media in October 2017. No known images of the DF-17's hypersonic glide vehicle exist in the public domain.
Image Credit: CCTV screen capture via East Pendulum

It’s unclear if the object bears any relation to the tested DF-17, but the images released in October are thought to be the first of any glider-like object in Chinese state media.

In addition to China, the United States and Russia are also developing hypersonic glider technology, but neither country is known to have flight-tested a system in a configuration intended for operational deployment to date.


DF-ZF hypersonic vehicles, which is said to be capable of achieving speeds of up to 7,680 miles per hour (12,360 kph) – or 10 times the speed of sound.

Hypersonic gliders, by virtue of their low-altitude flight, present challenges to existing radar sensor technology enabling missile defenses. By flying at a low altitude instead of reentering from a much higher apogee on a ballistic trajectory, adversary radars would detect HGVs with less time for an interception to take place before the payload can reach its target.

HGVs, however, are considerably slower in the final stages of their flight than most reentry vehicles on a ballistic trajectory. This may leave them vulnerable to interception by advanced terminal point defense systems.

In a report detailing new ballistic and cruise missile threats to the U.S. released this year, the U.S. National Air and Space Intelligence Center observed that “Hypersonic glide vehicles delivered by ballistic missile boosters are an emerging threat that will pose new challenges to missile defense systems.”
Diplomat

THE NEW WIND TUNNEL 

 

 JF-12 tunnel.

To generate a the high-speed air flow needed to test hypersonic craft in the new tunnel, researchers will detonate tubes of explosive gases. The resulting shockwaves will be channeled via a metallic tunnel into the test chamber.

Officials have claimed China’s newest hypersonic craft will soon be tested in a secretive military-grade wind tunnel, which is set to be the world's fastest hypersonic facility when construction is complete 'by 2020. 

Dr Zhao Wei, a senior scientist working on China's secretive new tunnel, told the SCMP that it will be up and running by 2020.

Because planes can't fly during laboratory experiments, researchers need a wind tunnel that can generate gusts as fast as the desired speed of the aircraft to simulate a flying environment.

These ground tests help researchers iron out issues with the craft before test flights begin. 

The new tunnel will include a test chamber for large craft with wingspans of up to three metres (10 ft).

To generate the high-speed air flow needed to test hypersonic craft, the researchers will detonate several tubes containing a mixture of oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen gases to create a series of explosions.

The blasts will generate shock waves that give off one gigawatt of wind power within a split second, according to Dr Wei. 

A metallic tunnel will channel these shock waves into a test chamber, where the blast will envelope the prototype vehicle and increase its body temperature to 7,727°C (7,727°F), hotter than the surface of the sun, Dr Wei said. 

The craft must be covered by special materials with state-of-the-art cooling systems inside its frame to dissipate the heat.

Without this heat shield the vehicle would warp and could veer off course or disintegrate on a long-distance flight.

Plan to build world’s first experimental nuclear fusion power station

Harness the energy that powers the sun.

At least three Chinese cities are vying to host the world’s first experimental nuclear fusion power station after the country’s government threw its weight behind the ambitious project this month.
Chinese scientists have been working on the conceptual design of the project, which offers the prospect of an almost unlimited supply of energy, since at least 2013, but the central government’s imprimatur has now taken it on to the next stage – drawing up the engineering blueprints.

Shanghai, mainland China’s financial hub, has been joined by Hefei, the capital of Anhui province, and Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, in the race to win the lucrative project, which, according to some estimates, could cost more than 100 billion yuan (US$15.2 billion).

With completion scheduled for 2035, the reactor would heat hydrogen gas to a temperature 10 times as hot as the core of the sun. At such temperatures, atoms of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen, merge to form helium. A small bit of mass would be lost, creating a huge amount of energy.

Chinese scientists install an experimental tokamak reactor at a research facility in Hefei, Anhui province, in February 2006. Photo: EPA

Fusion, the same process that has kept the sun burning for the past 5 billion years, is regarded as the ultimate solution to humanity’s energy needs. Hydrogen is plentiful in Earth’s oceans, and, unlike today’s uranium-fuelled nuclear power plants, a fusion reactor would produce no radioactive waste.

On December 6, a day after the central government announced it was backing the project, Shanghai’s Communist Party secretary, Li Qiang, and the city’s mayor, Ying Yong, led a delegation to China’s largest nuclear fusion research device, in Hefei, to discuss “matters of cooperation”, scientists working at the facility told the South China Morning Post.

A researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Plasma Physics, which is based in Hefei, said Shanghai, home to a large pool of scientific talent, hoped to host the project.

“The city sits by the sea, with lots of water which can be used to dissipate the heat generated by the reactor,” said the researcher, who asked not to be named. “Personally, I’d like to see the project built by the coast, but it is not a prerequisite. The reactor could also be built in an inland area next to a lake or reservoir.”

The doughnut-shaped chamber at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak in Hefei. Photo: Chinese Academy of Sciences 

Officials in Hefei, supported by Anhui’s provincial government, have told local media they mount an “all out” effort to have the reactor built in the city, already home to the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, which has set records for the longest lasting plasma – the extremely hot gas in which fusion takes place.

Research facilities in Sichuan, in southwestern China, played key design and production roles in China’s nuclear weapons programme, and Chengdu’s bid is backed by the military and China’s powerful nuclear industry. 

The province is already home to several experimental tokamak devices and Chengdu argues that its researchers have more experience in building sophisticated, unconventional reactors than those elsewhere in China.

Yang Qingwei, a Chengdu-based nuclear physicist leading the engineering design of the fusion reactor, told the Post several cities were competing for the project.

An experiment conducted at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak in January. Photo: Chinese Academy of Sciences

“There is no consensus yet, nor any decision,” Yang, a researcher at the China National Nuclear Corporation’s Southwestern Institute of Physics, said, declining to reveal the names of candidate locations.

Xiao Jun, a nuclear scientist studying fusion at the Institute of Modern Physics at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the cities were attracted by the potential benefits of building what was likely to become the world’s first fusion power plant.

“The temptation is almost irresistible,” he said.

Major nations have been striving to make nuclear fusion a reality for more than half a century, with the tokamak, invented by Soviet physicists in the 1950s, the most popular experimental reactor design. It uses superconductive coils to generate a powerful magnetic field capable of containing the plasma in a doughnut-shaped chamber.

The United States also tried another approach, known as inertial confinement, at its National Ignition Facility in California. It aims to use lasers to achieve fusion, but has proved more difficult than originally thought, and the US Department of Energy admitted last year that the US$3.5 billion facility might never reach its goal.

With strong financial backing from the Chinese government, Chinese researchers have extended their fusion research lead over the US in recent years, setting records for the longest lasting, most stable plasma and developing new technologies and materials in state-of-the-art laboratories.

Construction work at the ITER site in Cadarache, southern France, in September last year. The tokamak reactor is scheduled to produce its first plasma in December 2025. Photo: AP

The planned Chinese fusion reactor will rely heavily on the design of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) under construction in southern France, but is aiming for a much more ambitious goal.

ITER, which has attracted investment totalling €22 billion (US$26.1 billion) from the European Union and countries including China, the US and Russia, is the most expensive scientific facility ever built. But it is only aiming for a fusion burn lasting about 10 minutes, while the researchers working on the Chinese reactor hope to achieve one lasting months.

Tang Jun, a fusion scientist at Sichuan University’s Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology in Chengdu, said achieving the goal would require the development of many technologies, instruments and materials that did not exist today.

For instance, the reactor’s inner wall would have to be made of super strong alloys to withstand the heat and bombardment of high-energy particles, the plasma would need to be tightly and precisely controlled to prevent destructive energy spikes and the electric coils would have to be bathed in a large volume of super-cold liquid to maintain their superconductivity, otherwise the magnetic field would disappear.

“This project will draw research talent from other cities in China and all over the world,” Tang said. “It could turn a city to one of the most vibrant innovation centres on the planet.”

According to a timeline posted on the website of the Chinese Academy of Sciences this month, the design work will take a couple of years, with construction starting in 2021.

Technicians make components for ITER at a factory in La Seyne-sur-Mer, southern France, in October last year. Photo: AFP

But Lei Yian, an associate professor at Peking University’s school of physics who was previously involved in fusion energy research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, said the cities in race should realise it was a high-risk endeavour.

“I doubt the facility can be up and running in 20 years,” he said.

Fusion projects around the world have encountered unexpected technical challenges that have led to serious delays. The ITER project, for instance, was scheduled for completion 10 years ago, but that has been postponed to the mid-2020s according to even the most optimistic estimate.

While China could learn lessons from ITER, and Chinese engineers and workers had a reputation for meeting deadlines, Lei said they would face huge technical obstacles to reach the targeted burning time.

“The cities must consider the risk that the project turns into a money pit,” he said, adding there were also environmental concerns.

When fusion starts, a large number of fast-flying neutrons are generated, which can not only damage the reactor’s components but also pose a threat to the wider world.

“If some of the neutrons escape to the environment outside, even at a small percentage such as one in a thousand, they will pose a serious threat to people living and working nearby,” Lei said.

SCMP

‘Not from Earth’: Navy pilot recalls encounter with ‘Tic Tac’ UFO

In the aftermath of the Pentagon disclosing videos of US Air Force sightings of unidentified, inexplicable flying objects, a former Navy pilot has come forward to reveal details of his encounter with a UFO. 

 

Cmdr. David Fravor, who was a Navy pilot for 18 years, told The Washington Post he saw the mysterious flying object while on a routine training mission off the Pacific coast between San Diego and Ensenada, Mexico, in November 2004.

Fravor said he was ordered by command to do so some “real-world tasking” as there were unidentified flying objects descending from 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet and then disappearing.
Officials told the former fighter pilot, who was the commanding officer of a Navy squadron of F/A-18 Hornet fighter planes at the time, they had encountered dozens of the objects over the previous few weeks.

The object was roughly the same size as Fravor’s plane but it had no wings and looked like a Tic Tac mint. It was “just hanging close to the water,” he said.
“As I get closer, as my nose is starting to pull back up, it accelerates and it’s gone,” he said. “Faster than I’d ever seen anything in my life. We turn around, say let’s go see what’s in the water and there’s nothing. Just blue water.”

Interestingly, he noted, it created no rotor wash – the air turbulence caused by the blades of a helicopter. “This is revolutionary technology to be able to accelerate, go up and down. Think about the advances that would bring to mankind,” he added.

A former Navy pilot believes he saw "something not from the Earth" while tasked to a Pentagon program dedicated to studying UFOs https://t.co/3g4BgBFKrA pic.twitter.com/fWuS5lzvim

— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) December 19, 2017

The Defense Department analyzed the encounter, but what the object was, or what it was doing, remains a mystery. “I think someone should have looked into it. Having talked to some of the other folks, it’s a big frustration that it’s coming out now and wasn’t discussed back in 2004,” Fravor said.
He was keen to dispel any notions that he was an unreliable source. “I don’t think I was a nut-job as an officer in the Navy. I wasn’t drunk, I don’t do drugs. I got a good night’s rest, it was a clear day”.
Footage of the incident was later released by the US Defense Department.



On Saturday, it emerged the Pentagon spent $22 million to study UFOs between 2007 and 2012. The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was led by former military intelligence official Luiz Elizondo, who resigned from the Pentagon in October.

In his resignation letter, which was seen by the New York Times and Politico, Elizondo lamented the lack of funding for the project and the fact that it continues to be shrouded in mystery. Speaking to CNN Monday evening, he said there is "very compelling evidence that we may not be alone”.

Elizondo said his program uncovered "a lot” of "anomalous” aircraft. “These aircraft – we'll call them aircraft – are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the US inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of.”

A former U.S. Navy pilot says he spotted an object, which he’s certain was “something not from the Earth” https://t.co/hB8Pt7qJsI

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) December 19, 2017

Astronaut found some bacteria on the ISS, and it's not from earth pic.twitter.com/MJ36IFeKQ2

— CNET News (@CNETNews) December 15, 2017

Mysterious interstellar object of cigar-shaped 'comet' flies through Solar system

   Last month, a mysterious cigar-shaped asteroid sailed past Earth, marking the first time an interstellar object has been seen in the solar system.

A mysterious large object that has come from a different star system is to be examined by one of the world’s biggest telescopes for signs of alien technology.

The Green Bank telescope will examine a mysterious object speeding through our solar system to check for signs of alien signals. The observation begins Wednesday and will be carried out by Breakthrough Listen, a global astronomical program searching for evidence of other civilizations.
The cigar-shaped body was first spotted in the solar system by researchers on the Pan-Starrs telescope in Hawaii in October, Breakthrough Listen reports. Named ‘Oumuamua after the Hawaiian word for “messenger,” it sped from interstellar space going as fast as 196,000 mph (315,000 kph) as it went past the sun.


The cigar-shaped object, named Oumuamua by its discoverers, sailed past Earth last month and is the first interstellar object seen in the solar system.

Another oddity is that Oumuamua is flying very 'cleanly', without emitting the usual cloud of space dust that astronomers observe around asteroids.

Experts say this suggests it is made of something dense: probably rock, but possibly metal.

“'Oumuamua’s presence within our solar system affords Breakthrough Listen an opportunity to reach unprecedented sensitivities to possible artificial transmitters and demonstrate our ability to track nearby, fast-moving objects,” said Andrew Siemion, Director of Berkeley SETI Research Center. “Whether this object turns out to be artificial or natural, it’s a great target for [Breakthrough] Listen.”

“Most likely it is of natural origin, but because it is so peculiar, we would like to check if it has any sign of artificial origin, such as radio emissions,” Avi Loeb, professor of astronomy at Harvard University and an adviser to the Breakthrough Listen project told the Guardian. “If we do detect a signal that appears artificial in origin, we’ll know immediately.”

The telescope, which is located in West Virginia, will listen for radio signals from 'Oumuamua across four different radio transmission bands. The powerful telescope can pick up signals as small as those that come from a mobile phone. 'Oumuamua is located twice as far from Earth as the sun.



The 400 meter-long celestial body is ten times longer than it is wide, and was thought to be an interstellar asteroid by many astronomers, but its shape is unlike anything seen before.
The Breakthrough Listen project was launched by Stephen Hawking in 2015 and is funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. It aims to listen for radio signals coming from potential other civilisations outside our solar system.

Over 1000 drones light up sky in magnificent record

The night skyline of the Chinese city of Guangzhou lit up by a spectacular show in which hundreds of drones took to the air. In putting on the show, the city broke its own world record for the biggest number of drones involved in one performance. 

 

Spectators reached for their phones to capture the dazzling light show as some 1,180 drones soared up against the backdrop of futuristic skyscrapers, gleaming in different colors. Marking the end of the 2017 Fortune Global Forum on Thursday, the display saw the swarm of aircrafts forming the Chinese ideograms for “innovation,”“open” and “fortune.” A ship and a kapok flower, the city’s official symbol, also showed up in the sky.



The eight-minute show was orchestrated by a single operator, the Asia Times reported. The drone manufacturer eHang developed a system to manage the one-ton squad on a single console, enabling the aircrafts to sync with each other.

“Drones can produce very impressive artistic effects,” company official in charge of the event Li Zhiyuan said, as quoted by the SCMP. “We hope that drone performances can one day replace fireworks in the business of night sky illumination.” Each of the drones had a price tag of some 10,000 yuan ($1,500), he added.

Doomsday on screen: How Hollywood & video games to sell new ‘axis of evil’

America’s greatest enemies have been lined up for the latest add-on to Grand Theft Auto Online – perpetuating the old trope of an imminent global threat that only the US can meet.

Within seconds of the opening of the trailer for the popular game’s ‘Doomsday Heist’ add-on, all the usual suspects are named as possible culprits behind a bid to start a war against the US. “It has to be the Russians... or the North Koreans... or the Chinese... or the Iranians,” a billionaire tech mogul tells his crew of true US patriots assembled to save the fictional state of San Andreas from total annihilation.

Rockstar Games / YouTube
While the tone of the trailer may be somewhat tongue in cheek, it continues a global trend of presenting whoever happens to be the bogeymen of US foreign policy as the perennial bad guys. And in the eyes of the western entertainment industry, the new axis of evil of Russia, North Korea and Iran, is ripe for picking.




Some of the most successful US TV series’ of recent years were plotted on the concept of the foreign enemy. In the Netflix series ‘House of Cards,’ fictional Russian president Viktor Petrov shares striking similarities to the western media’s characterization of Vladimir Putin.

Similarly, ‘Homeland’ has plots that often run parallel to political goings on while also pushing Islamophobic stereotypes. Meanwhile, ‘The Americans’ bolsters Russian paranoia by  reminding the audience that even your next door neighbour could be a KGB officer.

Dr Matthew Alford, a Teaching Fellow in Politics at the University of Bath, whose research focus is on the relationship between screen entertainment and political power in Western democracies, told that “popular culture provides mood music for political culture.”
“Collectively our mainstream entertainment provides considerable support for the national security state,” he added.

New post (Doomsday on screen: How Hollywood & the Pentagon combine to sell new ‘axis of evil’ (VIDEO)) has been published on GRTX - https://t.co/6ogolEZS2I pic.twitter.com/wJSJ1VVlW6

— Grtx (@GrtxNl) December 9, 2017

Earlier this year, Alford co-authored the book ‘National Security Cinema,’ an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the US government and Hollywood. Based on thousands of pages of US military and intelligence documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, the book reveals the power of the Pentagon to stop a film from being made by refusing or withdrawing support.




One such film is ‘The Recruit’, the 2003 film starring Colin Farrell as a CIA agent in the making. Documents reveal the movie, which also featured Al Pacino as Farrell’s mentor, was heavily influenced by the CIA’s long-serving entertainment liaison officer, Chase Brandon.
The blockbuster includes lines about the new threats of the post-Soviet world along with rebuttals of the idea that the CIA failed to prevent 9/11.

“The level of military manipulation on film scripts has been fairly comparable since the early years of Hollywood. Over the last twenty years though, there has been a real spike in the military's involvement in TV and the CIA has gotten much more pro-active,” Alford said.

The cliché of the Russian baddy has been around so long that it’s perhaps no surprise that recent political allegations against the nation have been so easy to swallow. Is there really a need for concrete evidence of Russian interference in US elections when audiences have been digesting negative propaganda about the country and its people since the height of the Cold War.




However, it’s not just the Russians that get the stereotypical arch-villain treatment. Any one’s game as long as it doesn’t affect box office dollars. The 2012 remake of Red Dawn (originally about a Soviet invasion of the US) intended to pit the Americans against an invading Chinese army, but later the antagonists were changed to North Koreans in order to maintain access to China’s profitable box office.

“The potential influence on the public of military-backed record-breaking blockbusters like Avatar should ring alarm bells in a democracy. This story of censorship has been routinely suppressed and soft-pedaled for decades,” Alford said.

Beijing pumping billions into the development of ‘molten salt’ reactors

   Molten Salt Reactor


Beijing pumping billions into the development of ‘molten salt’ reactors, amid revived interest among nations in the potentially safer and more powerful technology.

China is to spend 22 billion yuan (US$3.3 billion) trying to perfect a form of technology largely discarded in the cold war which could produce a safer but more powerful form of nuclear energy.

The cash is to develop two “molten salt” reactors in the Gobi Desert in northern China. Researchers hope that if they can solve a number of technical problems the reactors will lead to a range of applications, including nuclear-powered warships and drones.

The technology, in theory, can create more heat and power than existing forms of nuclear reactors that use uranium, while producing only one thousandth of the radioactive waste.

It also has the advantage for China of using thorium as its main fuel. China has some of the world’s largest reserves of the metal.

China is not alone in trying to revive the technology because of the potential benefits. Companies in the United States are working in the field, while Japan, Russia and France have all expressed renewed interest in the technology.

The Chinese project has been funded by the central government and the two reactors are to be built at Wuwei in Gansu province, according to a statement on the website of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The lead scientist on the project is Jiang Mianheng – the son of the former Chinese president Jiang Zemin – and it is hoped the reactors will be up and running by 2020.

The US air force built a 2.5-megawatt molten salt reactor in the 1950s as part of a programme to develop nuclear-powered aircraft engines.

The reactors use molten salt rather than water as a coolant, allowing them to create temperatures of over 800 degrees Celsius, nearly three times the heat produced by a commercial nuclear plant fuelled with uranium. The superhot air had the potential to drive turbines and jet engines and in theory keep a bomber flying at supersonic speed for days.

The US project was shelved in the 1970s. Problems were encountered trying to reduce the size and weight of the reactor, and there were public concerns over the safety of the technology when placed in an aircraft.

Another problem was the erosion to pipes and the reactor chamber caused by the hot salt used in the fission process.

Yan Long, a researcher involved in the Chinese project at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, said the Gansu facility might eventually help China develop a thorium-powered warship or aircraft.

He said it was now possible to build a very small molten salt reactor and that after years of research and government funding, scientists had developed special alloy and coating materials to prevent chemical corrosion.

The reactors in Gansu were designed to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology, he said.

The Convair NB-36H Peacemaker experimental aircraft was part of the US’s Nuclear Aircraft Programme in the 1950s. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The research facility in Gansu will be built by a lake with high salt levels, according to the project blueprints.

Both reactors will be underground and the heat they generate will reach 12 megawatts. The heat will be channelled to a power generation plant, several factories and a desalination plant by the lake to produce electricity, hydrogen, industrial chemicals, drinking water and minerals.

After the experiment, China may move on to commercial or military use of the technology on a larger scale, Yan said.

“We are now developing new materials for warships. The materials must come with relatively low cost for mass production and they must be compact and light, otherwise the reactor won’t fit in a ship,” he said.

Chen Fu, a thermal physicist at the Harbin Institute of Technology involved in the development of new power generation systems for China’s navy, said the heat generated by a thorium molten salt reactor could be perfect to help generate power on a warship.

“It should be able to generate enough electricity for propulsion and electric equipment on an aircraft carrier,” he said.

Chen said the higher the temperature, the higher the power generation efficiency – a thorium-powered carrier could operate faster and longer than existing carriers using uranium as fuel.

“But the ship will need a very different structure to accommodate the new power source. It will be a difficult and tricky job because the rest of the ship must be strengthened to handle the increased power,” he said.

Artist impression of the molten salt reactor.

A military drone researcher in Beijing said a molten salt reactor could be used on a new generation of large, endurance drones operating at very high altitudes because it could be made very small and its operation did not require water.

“These drones would stay aloft over the oceans such as the Pacific. They would serve as a platform for surveillance, communication or weapon delivery to deter nuclear and other threats from hostile countries,” said the researcher, who asked not to be named.

“A nuclear-powered drone may be technically more feasible than manned aircraft because it does not require building a cockpit with lead to protect the human crew from radiation. It will also have more public acceptance. If an accident happens, it crashes into the sea,” the person said.

Yan said, however, that the aircraft research project still faced many challenges. To mount a reactor on an aircraft would require ultralight, super-strong materials which were still under development in the laboratory.

“This is where the Americans have failed,” he said.

Navy to scrap $500mn next-generation railgun

The US Navy is turning its attention away from a decade-long, electromagnetic railgun program, opting instead, for a less expensive alternative that uses the projectiles as ammunition in existing guns, rather than a next-generation weapon. 

 

Last week, the Congressional Research Service released a report, which said the Pentagon is looking to divert from a decade-long electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) program, but are planning to use the projectiles developed in the program, which are compatible with its current powder artillery gun systems.

Instead of relying on traditional explosive propellants like gunpowder, EMRG uses electrical currents to fire a projectile at speeds of up to 5,600 mph, or more than seven times the speed of sound.
The Navy has been developing the EMRG since 2005 in conjunction with defense contractors General Atomics and BAE Systems. Testing the weapon has cost an estimated $500 million, according to Popular Mechanics.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR), which is focused on developing new technologies for the service, broke the world record for muzzle energy with an EMRG prototype in 2010. Researchers fired a 23-pound projectile at 32 megajoules, enough to propel a projectile up to 100 nautical miles away.


electromagnetic railgun (EMRG)

In July, the Navy released a video, showing they were able to fire 4.8 shells a minute. In 2013, the Naval Sea Systems Command called for the ONR to develop a railgun that could fire 10 shells a minute and store up to 650 shells.

In 2015, the Navy estimated that EMRG weapons could be installed on a Zumwalt (DDG-1000) class destroyer by the mid- 2020s.
However, the report states that there are “a number of significant development challenges” with the weapon which would require “years of additional development work,” adding, that “ultimate success in overcoming them is not guaranteed.”

Apart from the costs, the electromagnetic fields necessary to operate the weapons require a significant amount of energy, much more than most Navy vessels can currently generate.
Instead, the Department of Defense (DoD) has “particular interest” in a hypervelocity projectile (HVP) program, according to the report. The US Navy began the HVP program after they realized the low-cost guided projectiles designed for the EMRG could also be fired from their existing powder guns.

The projectiles are compatible with guns currently installed on cruisers, which provides the Navy with a “potential for rapidly proliferating HVP through the cruiser-destroyer force.” The Pentagon is also interested in the projectiles because they have the potential to be utilized “across multiple US military services.”

When fired from 5-inch powder guns, HVP projectiles can achieve a speed of Mach 3, half the speed of the EMRG, but twice the speed of conventional rounds fired from 5-inch guns.
The guided projectiles can also be used to intercept anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) and anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs).



“They hit with the impact of a train slamming into a wall at 100 miles per hour,” the report states, citing a piece from the Washington Post. “The high-speed, hence high-energy projectiles, which cost just $25,000, can radically improve fleet-protection capabilities: A barrage of them could counter an enemy’s more expensive anti-ship missiles.”

The Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), an arm of the Pentagon created to develop new technologies, has reportedly been reallocating funds from the EMRG to the HVP program, which has the potential to leave the “supergun” project “dead in the water” by 2019, a defense contractor told Task and Purpose.

SCO spokesman Chris Sherwood said his division has not abandoned the EMRG program, but are focusing on “developing the [HVP] for use in existing powder gun systems to give the Navy and Army near-term, cost-effective long-range fires and missile defense solutions.”
“SCO shifted the project’s focus to conventional powder guns, facilitating a faster transition of HVP technology to the warfighter,” Sherwood told Task and Purpose. “Our priority continues to be the HVP, which is reflected in the program’s budget.”

Task & Purpose conducted an analysis of the Navy’s 2018 RDT&E funding request and found that funds for the Power Projection Applied Research fell more than $75 million due to  cuts from railgun barrel testing.

“Money is being put into HVP, and not railgun projects, which is why the two are being split,” a senior legislative official told Task and Purpose. “We’ve been able to rescue some of this funding, but Big Navy sees different opportunities, and because [the railgun] is a major challenge, they don’t want to explore it.”

Technology of the future: Robots use foresight to imagine actions

Scientists have developed new technology that allows robots to imagine their future actions, enabling them to maneuver objects they have they have never encountered before – all without human assistance. 

 

Using a technology called ‘visual foresight,’ robots can imagine what their camera’s will see if they move objects in a certain way. Though the robot, called ‘Vestri,’ currently can only use its powers of foresight to imagine a few seconds into the future, it is thought that the technology will one day be used in self-driving cars and produce more intelligent home assistants.

Researchers at UC Berkeley in California are at the forefront of this breakthrough, which allows the robots to learn how to perform these tasks without any prior knowledge about the objects, physics or its environment. Vestri’s visual imagination is learned entirely from scratch. Much like a child, the machine simply plays with the objects. In fact, the researchers took inspiration from what they call babies’ “motor babbling,” programing that kind of learning into the robot. When playtime is over, it builds a predictive model of the world and then uses it to manipulate objects, and all without the help of mom and dad.

Using its cameras, the machine produces a variety of scenarios which haven’t yet happened, it imagines what will happen, and then chooses the most effective way of moving an object from one place to another.



“In the same way that we can imagine how our actions will move the objects in our environment, this method can enable a robot to visualize how different behaviors will affect the world around it,” Sergey Levine, an assistant professor at Berkley, said in a university press release. “This can enable intelligent planning of highly flexible skills in complex real-world situations,” he added.

The method relies solely on autonomously collected information, unlike conventional computer-vision methods in which thousands or even millions of images must be painstakingly labeled and programed into a machine. For this reason, researchers say the technology is “general and broadly applicable.”

The team will demonstrate Vestri’s abilities at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference in Long Beach, California, on December 5.