A supersonic jet engine capable of travelling more than six times as fast as the speed of sound has a sucessful over the outback in Southern Australia on Saturday.

The supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet), called HyShot III, was launched by a Terrier-Orion rocket and was in flight for just 10 minutes.

“It was quite amazing.”  “We know that the launch was almost perfect” said University of Queensland scientist Michael Smart.

Some hope to see scramjets used for commercial flights. In theory, they could be used to travel between Sydney and London in just two hours, a journey that currently takes 20 hours.

Personally I have been waiting on a “Star Trek” like transporter, but this looks like it might be the next best thing.  Something about having your method of transportation launched via a rocket does sound a bit scary though. 

While chip processing power continues to grow steadily, it has become less noticeable in terms of boosting performance in most of today’s common computing tasks.  Increased CPU performance recently associated with 3-GHz clock speeds, for example, have not offered many noticeable differences in everyday office applications compared to the differences in performance between a 2-GHz and a 1-GHz or slower device.

Intel has announced plans for a new desktop chip that promises a 40 percent boost in performance over its best existing designs.  But will it matter and will a higher price tag stop consumers from spening money on new systems? 

With new CPU hungry software on the horizion we think the extra power will be needed soon enough.

Corning Inc.,  maker of glass for electronic displays, on Monday raised its forecast for growth in the LCD glass market, citing strong sales of flat-panel TVs. 

The company said it estimates the compound average growth rate of LCD glass market volume will be 37 percent between 2005 and 2007, up from its previous estimate of 32 percent.

It also said it now estimates that the volume of the LCD glass market will grow 40-50 percent in 2006. It previously forecast growth of only 40 percent.”

I can’t wait till I can afford one of these beauties, just another year I bet with prices coming down the way they have been!

Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin and Charité, the medical school of Berlin Humboldt University in Germany have created a “mental typewriter”.

The machine makes it possible to type messages onto a computer screen by mentally controlling the movement of a cursor.  A user must wear a cap containing electrodes that measure electrical activity inside the brain and they imagine using their left or right arm in order to maneuver the cursor around.

Curio says users can operate the device just 20 minutes after going through 150 cursor moves in their minds. This is because the device rapidly learns to recognize activity in the area of a person’s motor cortex, the area of the brain associated with movement.

The number of uses for this type of technology is literally incalculably.

Amit Weisman an Israeli inventor has filed a patent for a new type of electromagnetic hand-held security wand, the type you see at the airport frequently.

The wands are now built to detect metal hidden under clothing and sniff for traces of gases.  But what happens if the nervous terrorist gets scared and sets of the bomb righ there at the security check-point?

Well this new wand might be the solution, because it packs a whooping  100 kilovolts, more than enough to incapacitate a potential threat!

Here is a brief but useful Q and A on nanotechnology:

Q. What is the definition of nanotechnology?

A. The term nano originates from a Greek word meaning dwarf.

Nanotechnology is science and engineering at the scale of atoms and molecules.  It is the manipulation and use of materials and devices so tiny that they can’t be seen by the naked eye.  Materials at the nanoscale are typically between 0.1 and 100 nanometres (nm) in size - 1 nm is one billionth of a metre (10^-9 m).

Most atoms are 0.1 to 0.2 nm wide, strands of DNA are around 2 nm wide, red blood cells are around 7000 nm in diameter, while human hairs are typically 80,000 nm across.

A nanometre is to a centimetre what the length of a human footprint is to the width of the Atlantic Ocean. A nanometre is also about the length human fingernails grow by each second.

Q. Why all the excitement?  What can nanotechnology be used fo?

A. These tiny machines would repair and maintain the human body from the inside out, fighting disease and making fixing problems, making humans virtually immortal.

Most realistically in the short term, nanotechnology could lead to important advances in computing, medicine and technologies to benefit the environment and all types of sciences.

In addition, Environmental scientists are also finding useful applications for nanotech in clearing up toxic waste from groundwater and polluted sites, as well as producing new more efficient solar power and fuel cells.

Q. Is nanotechnology already in use?  Where?

A. US government’s National Nanotechnology Initiative lists the following “in-use”:

• Computer hard drives
• Car parts and catalytic converters
• Scratch- and wear-resistant paints and coatings
• Sunscreens (titanium dioxide nanoparticles are transparent, yet absorb UV light at the same time) and lipsticks
• Longer lasting tennis balls, and hardwearing yet lightweight tennis racquets
• Metal cutting tools
• Antibacterial bandages incorporating silver nanoparticles
• Anti-static packaging for sensitive electronic equipment
• Nanofilm-coated “self-cleaning” windows and
• Stain-resistant fabrics

Q. Are there risks in the use of nanotechnology?  What are they?

A. In 2004 the UK’s Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering published a very thourough report and found that nanotechnology will present very few if any risks.

Motorola is patenting a cellphone that displays the layout of a guitar neck on its screen, and allows its keypad to be “plucked” or “strummed” by a user. The resulting guitar sounds can be played through the phone’s speaker or can be inflicted on a friend at the other end of the line.

Two words to describe this new gadget: Super Cool!