Pentagon Use 'Time Hole' to Make Events Disappear

Soldiers could one day conduct covert operations in complete secrecy, now that Pentagon-backed physicists have figured out how to mask entire events by distorting light.

A team at Cornell University, with support from Darpa, the Pentagon's out-there research arm, managed to hide an event for 40 picoseconds (those are trillionths of seconds, if you're counting). They've published their groundbreaking research in this week's edition of the journal Nature.

This is the first time that scientists have succeeded in masking an event, though research teams have in recent years made remarkable strides in cloaking objects. Researchers at the University of Texas, Dallas, last year harnessed the mirage effect to make objects vanish. And in 2010, physicists at the University of St. Andrews made leaps towards using metamaterials to trick human eyes into not seeing what was right in front of them.

Masking an object entails bending light around that object. If the light doesn't actually hit an object, then that object won't be visible to the human eye.

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Where events are concerned, concealment relies on changing the speed of light. Light that's emitted from actions, as they happen, is what allows us to see those actions happen. Usually, that light comes in a constant flow. What Cornell researchers did, in simple terms, is tweak that ongoing flow of light -- just for a mere iota of time -- so that an event could transpire without being observable.

The entire experiment occurred inside a fiber optics cable. Researchers passed a beam of green light down the cable, and had it move through a lens that split the light into two frequencies, one moving slowly and the other faster. As that was happening, they shot a red laser through the beams. Since the laser "shooting" occurred during a teeny, tiny time gap, it was imperceptible.

Sure, the team's got a ways to go before they're able to mask 30 seconds of action, let alone several minutes. But the research certainly opens up new possibilities. For one, masking super-quick events, like those that occur with data transmission, could help conceal covert computer operations.

In the words of Nature editors, the research marks "a significant step towards full spatio-temporal cloaking." But it could be decades before military personnel will basically be able to zap history, as it happens: According to Cornell scientists, it'd take a machine 18,600 miles long to produce a time mask that lasts a single second.

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DARPA's Shredder Challenge! Win $50.000 till December 4, 2011

Reading Between the Lines The first of five puzzles. Each puzzle is a shredded document that DARPA put through a brand-new commercial shredder. The pieces were then arrayed text-side up and scanned at 400 dpi. DARPA. Environment Clean Generations

DARPA’s latest tech challenge should make you hesitate to throw out your shredded documents, instead opting for the handy caveman solution of simply burning them. Until DARPA comes up with a way to read ashes as well as messages on shredded paper.  Environment Clean Generations

Troops often confiscate the remains of destroyed documents — the SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden took plenty of paperwork, for instance — but they’re difficult if not impossible to reconstruct, as DARPA explains on the challenge website. So DARPA is turning to puzzle lovers and computer scientists in search of a new technique. Winners will take home $50,000 and the sense of pride that comes with unnerving millions of people who thought their shredded documents were secure.

To make the five puzzles, DARPA officials bought some commercial-grade paper shredders and put single-sided handwritten documents through them. Some are multiple pages long, and although the pages were shredded separately, their remnants have been mixed together. The pieces were arranged text-side up and scanned at 400 dpi. To solve the puzzles, competitors must reconstruct the documents and answer a puzzle embedded in the context of the rebuilt document, DARPA says. As the puzzles increase in difficulty, solvers can win more points. The puzzles were unveiled Oct. 27 and solvers will have until Dec. 4 to make sense of them.Environment Clean Generations

Go to the DARPA Shredder Challenge site, register, and download the five puzzles, which come with high-resolution TIFF images and a text file containing instructions and puzzle-specific questions. Registered participants can submit solutions for any or all of the puzzles.

“The goal is to identify and assess potential capabilities that could be used by our warfighters operating in war zones, but might also create vulnerabilities to sensitive information that is protected through our own shredding practices throughout the U.S. national security community,” DARPA explains.Environment Clean Generations

So maybe shredding paper is not as secure as we all thought. Unless you use it to line the hamster cage, in which case puzzle solvers would have a lot more to deal with.

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Posted in: darpa,darpa shredder challenge,environment clean generations,pentagon,puzzles,shredder,technology,war

Art On Paper Moves to Hard-Disk

Although E FUN may have just released its APEN, Wacom today introduced its very similar - yet different - Inkling digital sketch pen. Like the APEN, Inkling is a ballpoint pen that writes in ink on regular paper, and is combined with a small receiver that users clip to the top of the page. 

That receiver logs the location of the pen on the paper. When that data is transferred to a computer, a digital image of whatever was written or drawn is the result. Inkling is unique, however, in that it also incorporates pressure-sensing technology. 

This means that the relative line weights of the inked content will be transferred to the digital images, which makes it particularly well-suited to artwork.

The pen can detect 1,024 different levels of pressure, so it's quite sensitive. The receiver can reportedly store thousands of sketches at a time, and can also facilitate multiple layers of a single sketch. When users want to render their drawings for emailing, editing or other reasons, the receiver is simply hooked up to a computer with a USB cable.

Inkling exports its files directly to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (CS3 or newer), and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro (2011). Wacom's included Sketch Manager software also allows users to edit, delete or add layers to their work, or to save files in a variety of formats, for manipulation using other applications.

It would also be possible, of course, simply to put pen-and-ink drawings through a scanner. That could be quite time-consuming, however, plus the user would need access to a scanner-equipped computer. With Inkling, however, any machine running Sketch Manager would suffice. The pen and receiver are also much smaller than a typical scanner.

Inkling will be available through Amazon and the Wacom store as of the latter half of September, at a price of US$199.

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Falcon HTV2 - The 20,000 km/h Aircraft

About three hours ago the federal government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA launched the fastest plane ever into the sky. The Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 is still in research and development, but had its second test run. And how fast was the plane flying in its test run? The Falcon HTV-2 is supposed to fly through the atmosphere at 13,000 mph or 20,000 km/h. That’s 20 times faster than the speed of sound, and fast enough to fly from New York to Los Angeles in 12 minutes.

            From that we know all was going well until the craft entered its glide phase and lost communication with DARPA’s monitoring stations. DARPA’s Twitter feed tell us that the HTV-2 launched around 8 am PT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and was successfully boosted into the Earth’s atmosphere at near orbital speeds by the Minotaur IV Lite launch vehicle. The HTV-2 then separated from the rocket and used its Reaction Control System to orient itself for reentry. After entering a reentry phase, the craft entered a pull-up phase to control the speed and altitude of the glide.

            Once in the glide phase, the HTV-2 was supposed to perform maneuvers to test the aircraft’s aerodynamic performance. The last phase was to be its Terminal Phase, which has the aircraft roll and dive into the ocean to end the flight.

            DARPA said in a Twitter post that it lost telemetry with the unmanned aircraft after the Glide Phase about two hours ago. The latest Tweet from DARPA says that “downrange assets did not reacquire tracking or telemetry.” DARPA tweeted that the HTV-2 has an autonomous flight termination capability and it would update us with more info. 

           On the Falcon HTV-2’s first flight, DARPA also lost contact with the vehicle nine minutes into the flight before completing its controlled landing in the ocean. The first flight proved it could travel 3.6 miles per second and still maintain GPS signals. 

            The intent of the second flight was to perform more tests while the plane is in flight to increase DARPA’s technical understanding of the hypersonic flight regime. The testing is something that can’t fully be replicated on the ground and must be tested in the air to validate the assumptions of DARPA’s aerospace engineers. 

            Monitoring stations along the craft’s flight path over the Pacific Ocean could not find the HTV-2, which means the craft is still MIA. We will keep you updated when we hear the latest news from DARPA about the status of the HTV-2.

           

   

     

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Posted in: darpa,HTV-2,pacific ocean,pentagon,technology