Death Rays Are Here To Stay......

Much as we would like that title to be some sort of weird musical, it isn't.

The Chinese military has a device called the Poly WB-1. It has the ability to concentrate  microwave beams.

Japan looking at space based power generation

Now here is a theme that has been bandied about the science fiction community for some time and now looks like someone is seriously looking into implementation. Shaun Saunders sends in an article from PopSci.com concerning a power project being considered by the Japanese. This power plant, if constructed, would power 300,000 homes and being solar, would have a very very low carbon footprint. But what truly makes this plant unusual is its location - Earth orbit.

According to the article:

• The satellite will have a surface area of four square kilometers, and transmit power via microwave to a base station on Earth.

The cost of the project is slated at about 21 billion with a majority of funding coming from Mitsubishi.

Microwaves for Crowd Control

As Shaun puts it, disgusting example of how MallCity is now 2 steps closer. - From NewScientist online -

A US company claims it is ready to build a microwave ray gun able to beam sounds directly into people's heads.

Yep that that's right, microwaves beamed right into your skull! oh and it get even blacker!

The device – dubbed MEDUSA exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. A series of pulses can be transmitted to produce recognizable sounds.

umm and this is safe becaaaaaaaaaaause? I mean do I have to go any futher? They heat up your gray matter to such a point that it causes a shockwave and they do it long enough that you start hearing voices? We are talking about something so much worse than the brown note here folks! Yes, that rushing noise you hear in your ears is your brains draining out your nasal cavities! So, you want more? Oh yes, it gets worse!

MEDUSA involves a microwave auditory effect "loud" enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation and normal audio safety limits do not apply since the sound does not enter through the eardrums.

If you want to read more of this madness click < more >

Black Holes Produce Enormous Gas Cloud

A giant cloud of superheated gas 6 million light years wide might have been formed by several super-massive black holes. The plasma cloud, might also be the source of mysterious cosmic rays that permeate our universe. The plasma cloud is located about 300 million light years away, and is spread across a vast region of space thought to contain several galaxies with supermassive black holes, or active galactic nuclei (AGN), embedded at their centers. The cloud might be evidence that AGNs convert and transfer their enormous gravitational energy, by a yet-unknown process, into magnetic fields and cosmic rays that spread across the universe. The new finding could also help explain the unwanted and confusing “noise” scientists observe in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is a ubiquitous radiation in the universe that is said to be a remnant of the Big Bang.