RQ-170 Sentinel

RQ-170 Sentinel

Despite making headlines around the globe after falling on Iranian soil, little is known about the specifications or capabilities of the RQ-170 Sentinel, other than its use of special coatings and unusual shape to help it evade enemy radar. The Sentinel can intercept communications and take photographs, and is believed to fly at 800 to 950 kilometres per hour.

technology of 2012-2040

The Year 2012

• Completion of the International Space Station – The largest man made structure to ever enter orbit.  Weight is 345,000 kg, and it will be approximately 110 meters wide.
• The Mars Science Laboratory Lands on Mars – This will be the first time a video camera is brought to another planet, as well as the first 3D camera.
• Windows 8 is Released
• Google+ Passes Twitter in Member Accounts – With an estimated 290 million Users Google+ ranks 2nd only to Facebook for social networks, in terms of user totals.

The Year 2013

• Gaia Mission Launched – Will map out over 1 billion stars in a 5 year period from 2013-2018.
• 4G Becomes Standard -  The wireless standard will be used for all smartphones and wireless devices.  Offers bandwidth of 100 mbps for mobile devices and 1 gbps for stationary reception
• Products Using Memristor Technology Are Available – Computer memory will work on the atomic level instead of the conventional on/off switch level.
• 14 Nanometer Chip are Mass Produced – Currently chip sizes are mass-produced at around 24 nms.

The Year 2014

• Internet Will Outreach Televisions in the US – As internet and TV converge on each other, there will be more internet users than Traditional television viewers.
• Robotic Mules Work for the Military – These robotic mules will be able to traverse terrain that normal vehicles could not, allowing soldiers to carry equipment to remote areas
• Playstation 4 Launched by Sony – Will compete with the Xbox 720, and Onlive for video game dominance.
• Hadron Collider Reaches Max Operating Power – Currently it’s operating at 50% power until 2014.

The Year 2015

• Masdar City Completes First Phase – The city being constructed in the United Arab Emirates will be the first zero-waste, zero-carbon city.  Cost $22 billion.
• Scientists Resurrect the Woolly Mammoth – Extinct for 5,000 years, new technologies will allow cloning of the DNA of the Wooly Mammoth.
• Lunar Tourism Emerges – A company called Space Adventures will sell the first tickets to the moon, or at least within 100 miles from the moon.  Cost: $150 million per person
• The New Horizons Pluto Probe Arrives on Pluto – Will transmit pictures back from the icy planet, 4 billion km away.
• Google+ Eclipses Facebook in Total Users – With nearly 1.2 billion users, if current trends continue, Google+ eclipses the total member base of Facebook, making it the Worlds largest social network.

The Year 2016

• The Worlds First Space Hotel – A Russian space group called Energiya launches the world’s first space hotel, in a partnership with US firm, Orbital Technologies.
• Holographic Versatile Discs or HVDS Replace Blu-Rays – It’s possible that solid state memory may make this technology useless, even though each disk will hold as much data as 200 DVDs.

The Year 2017

• Teleportation of Molecules Made Possible – Scientists already are able to teleport single atoms and light.  Next up are simple molecules.

The Year 2018

• Scientists are Able to Drill Into The Earths Mantle – What many people thought of as science fiction years ago, will be made possible due to technological advances.  Little is known about the mantle.
• Computers Break the Exaflop Barrier - That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second.
• Everyday Appliances, Cars, and other Items Connected to Internet – via RFID chips the size of a grain of sand, all your appliances and everyday items will be able to communicate with the internet.
• Devices With 100Gbit/s Transfer Rates Emerge – Light Peak technology will take over USB 3.0, and provide upwards of 100gbit/s transfer rates.
• Spinal Cord Injuries No Longer a Problem – Through stem cell research, any acute spinal cord injury will be able to be treated and cured.  The method is already done in mice.
• The ITER Fusion Reactor Switched On – At a cost of $20 billion the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor has been in the works for quite a while.  Success of this project would mean an almost infinite amount of clean power for the world.

The Year 2020

• 5 Billion Internet Users World Wide – Over 5 billion people will have access to the internet.
• Brain Machine Interface Technology Makes Texting Easy - You will be able to text message simply by thinking.  Other Brain Tech interface technologies will also take off.
• Holographic Television Becomes Mainstream – Scientists have already found ways to make this technology possible.  The only problems have been the long refresh rates.
• Traditional Microchips Reach Their Smallest Size Possible – Traditional microchips will give way to new technologies as they reach nearly the size of an atom, 4nm.  In order for Moore’s Law to continue, new technologies will need to come about.
• Stem Cell Organ Manufacturing – No longer will there be a need for organ donations.  Through the use of stem cells, scientists will be able to grow your own organs for you.

The Years 2022 -2025

• Nanotech Clothing and Carpet is Mainstream – Self cleaning carpets, as well as completely waterproof clothing is made possible by nano technology
• Deafness is Curable and Teeth Can be Regenerated – Stem cells will be able to regenerate teeth, as well as cure those who can not hear.
• SD Cards With 1 Petabyte of Data – Forget those 64 GB cards, even the thought of 1 TB cards.  1 Petabyte CD cards are now available.
• Medical Nanobots Emerge – tiny robotic particles will be able to possible cure diseases like cancer.
• Vertical Farming Becomes Mainstream – Skyscrapers filled with vegetation will be the norm, helping alleviate world food shortages.
• Human Brain Simulating Computers Emerge – Because of the exponential growth of computer power, we now have computers capable to simulating a human brain.  The First step towards Cyborgs.
• Immortality Coming Close to Reality – The worlds first 10-year-old mouse is created, and as technology progresses we may be able to extend the average human life by an additional year or more for each year of additional research.

The Years 2026-2030

• Wireless Electricity is Mainstream  -All electronics will have an antenna and get their power from a single electrical node in the center of one’s home.
• Limb Regrowth Possible – Scientists will find a way to By switch off a particular gene called P21, meaning that adult mammalian cells can be induced to behave like regenerative embryonic stem cells.
• Human Like AI Is a Reality – Artificial intelligence that mimics that of man is now available.  The next phase is singularity where super intelligence emerges in the coming years.

The Years 2031-2040

• TeraBit Internet Speeds Emerge – Think 100 mbits/s is fast?
• Weather Forecasts become 99.9% accurate – Hurricane prediction as well as every day weather will be nearly perfected with the Zetaflops of computer power now available.
• Exabyte Storage is Now Available -  This may seem like too much storage to even be needed, but AI, and other new technologies will need this space.
• First Man on Mars – Finally a Man will step foot on the red planet.
• Internet 4.0 Emerges – Many, many devices, and every day tools and appliances will make the Internet a much more complex environment.
• Quantum Computing Is Available – These computers will revolutionize future technology
• Alzheimer’s Disease is Now Curable – After reverse engineering the human brain, scientists are now able to cure Alzheimer’s.
• Teleportation of DNA Made Possible – Advances in the field will allow complex Molecules of DNA to be teleported over a distance.

Core CPUs From Intel and AMD

What is it? With the gigahertz race largely abandoned, both AMD and Intel are trying to pack more cores onto a die in order to continue to improve processing power and aid with multitasking operations. Miniaturizing chips further will be key to fitting these cores and other components into a limited space. Intel will roll out 32-nanometer processors (down from today's 45nm chips) in 2009.

When is it coming? Intel has been very good about sticking to its road map. A six-core CPU based on the Itanium design should be out imminently, when Intel then shifts focus to a brand-new architecture called Nehalem, to be marketed as Core i7. Core i7 will feature up to eight cores, with eight-core systems available in 2009 or 2010. (And an eight-core AMD project called Montreal is reportedly on tap for 2009.)
After that, the timeline gets fuzzy. Intel reportedly canceled a 32-core project called Keifer, slated for 2010, possibly because of its complexity (the company won't confirm this, though). That many cores requires a new way of dealing with memory; apparently you can't have 32 brains pulling out of one central pool of RAM. But we still expect cores to proliferate when the kinks are ironed out: 16 cores by 2011 or 2012 is plausible (when transistors are predicted to drop again in size to 22nm), with 32 cores by 2013 or 2014 easily within reach. Intel says "hundreds" of cores may come even farther down the line.

Memristor circuits lead to ultrasmall PCs. Intel and AMD unleash massively multicore CPUs. Samsung TVs respond to your every gesture. These and other developing technologies will fundamentally change the way you think about--and use--technology.

What is it? As its name implies, the memristor can "remember" how much current has passed through it. And by alternating the amount of current that passes through it, a memristor can also become a one-element circuit component with unique properties. Most notably, it can save its electronic state even when the current is turned off, making it a great candidate to replace today's flash memory.
Memristors will theoretically be cheaper and far faster than flash memory, and allow far greater memory densities. They could also replace RAM chips as we know them, so that, after you turn off your computer, it will remember exactly what it was doing when you turn it back on, and return to work instantly. This lowering of cost and consolidating of components may lead to affordable, solid-state computers that fit in your pocket and run many times faster than today's PCs.
Someday the memristor could spawn a whole new type of computer, thanks to its ability to remember a range of electrical states rather than the simplistic "on" and "off" states that today's digital processors recognize. By working with a dynamic range of data states in an analog mode, memristor-based computers could be capable of far more complex tasks than just shuttling ones and zeroes around.

 When is it coming? Researchers say that no real barrier prevents implementing the memristor in circuitry immediately. But it's up to the business side to push products through to commercial reality. Memristors made to replace flash memory (at a lower cost and lower power consumption) will likely appear first; HP's goal is to offer them by 2012. Beyond that, memristors will likely replace both DRAM and hard disks in the 2014-to-2016 time frame. As for memristor-based analog computers, that step may take 20-plus years.

Boeing 787 Dreamliner enters service

Boeing 787 Dreamliner enters service

In October, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner finally went from a dream, a prototype, a test plane, and a show-off to a fully functional, passenger-carrying commercial airliner. On October 25, it flew a charter flight, in the service of All Nippon Airways, from Tokyo to Hong Kong with around 230 passengers tucked into its upholstered seats. That milestone was supposed to have been reached in May 2008.

With some justification, Boeing has proclaimed the 787 the "first all-new airplane of the 21st century," despite its rather conventional design. A lot of that has to do with the heavy use of composite materials in its main structure, along with a bevy of high-tech features including sensors and controls designed to minimize turbulence. The Dreamliner is also designed to be notably quieter and significantly more fuel-efficient.

SHUTTLE ATLANTIS

Shuttle Atlantis returns home

 

Here at CNET, we're big fans of things that go zoom through the skies. It doesn't much matter whether the flying machine hovers close to the earth, soars across the stratosphere, or heads off in the farther reaches of space, we'll always stop to gaze and to reflect upon the marvel, even after all these years, of breaking away from the embrace of Mother Earth. So without further ado, we give you a look back at some of the most significant aerospace events and accomplishments of 2011. 

After 30 years and 135 missions, NASA put an end to its space shuttle program with the final mission of the Atlantis, seen here landing in Florida on July 21. "Having fired the imagination of a generation, a ship like no other, it's place in history secured, the space shuttle pulls into port for the last time, its voyage at an end," mission control commentator Rob Navias said on that occasion.
                            
Like many shuttle missions before it--Discovery and Endeavour also recorded their final missions this year--this flight of the Atlantis ferried supplies to the International Space Station. Over the decades, the five shuttles in NASA's fleet took more than 3.5 million pounds of cargo into orbit, ranging from humble provisions to the Hubble Space Telescope. The shuttles remain the only reusable manned spacecraft ever built.

tech news

n 2011, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner carried passengers


for the first time, and the space shuttle landed for the final time.
For aviation buffs and aerospace junkies, those were the signature events of the year. In the case of the shuttle, there were actually three such moments, and each time we got more verklempt: Discovery, Endeavour, and Atlantis all flew their final missions. But as the door closes on that 30-year piece in history, a window is opening to private space ventures like SpaceX and the newly unveiled Stratolaunch effort from Paul Allen and Burt Rutan.
Boeing got a lot of mileage out of the hoopla around its Dreamliner, but the company also scored a major win from the Pentagon with the $30 billion contract to build the KC-46A aerial tanker.
To borrow and bend a little from "The Graduate," however, we really have just one word for you: drones. As unmanned aircraft like the Predator continued to fly over places like Afghanistan, there were other cutting-edge robo-planes catching the spotlight, if not always for the right reasons--yes, we're looking at you, RQ-170 Sentinel, on the ground in Iran.