The Science & Technology News Thread

[Sweforce]

Blowing things up is the best science.

Considering my World of Warcraft days, any goblin engineer will agree with you.

[Sweforce]

Very nice. I hope we eventually get some transparent aluminum for our smartphone screens so we stop breaking them!

I guess we could make super strong covers today but they need to function as touch screens as well.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Perhaps a theoretical underpinning for the plasma focus? Scientists produce a knotted skyrmion, a stable form of plasma predicted 40 years ago.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I'm sure some of you have already heard about this. The SI redefined several units of measurement, including the kilogram, ampere, kelvin, and mole.

Arguments regarding why the mole manages to still be considered an SI unit of measurement, given that the number of molecules in any given thing is a dimensionless quantity, aside; it's a rather momentous decision.

[GrandAdmiralFox]

The CRISPR gene-editing technique has been used in a human subject for the first time.

http://www.nature.com/news/crispr-gene- ... me-1.20988

CRISPR is a breakthrough technique that makes gene-editing quick and inexpensive to use.

Eugenics war countdown: 3-2-1...

Yes I am a Star Trek fan to.

No, it'll more likely end up similar to the webcomic Genocide Man where every idiot and their ideas get the tools to attempt to make them reality... and those ideas like to boil down to basically killing entire ethnic groups or 'settle' ethnic grudges.

... yeah, and that means you'll not have privacy or a court case to go to because either will only end in mass killings. Oh and there will be people who will kill everyone in entire US states if it means that they kill the perp.

[Arioch]

Operational US Navy laser weapons:



Curiously, they are testing them on amphibious transports rather than destroyers. LPD-27 USS Portland is the current testbed.

[dragoongfa]

Curiously, they are testing them on amphibious transports rather than destroyers. LPD-27 USS Portland is the current testbed.

Modern warships are REALLY cramped in terms of equipment, to install a new kind of weapon would require both a refit and the removal of an installed weapon because there is simply not enough room to spare for the weapon itself, it's control station and cabling. There is also of course the fact that a modern warship is a unified digital 'whole' in terms of command and control abilities, any change has to be carefully thought out and planned in order to maintain combat effectiveness.

Despite their 'escort' tag, modern destroyers are full warships due to the amount of firepower they project; Arleigh Burke destroyers are in terms of tonnage alone the equivalent of light cruisers but with the firepower of a Battleship. They are far too important to spare as a testbed; LPDs on the other hand, they are both not in high demand and they have plenty of room to spare.

[Arioch]

Yeah, the Burke-class are cruisers in all but name.

[Gorbash]

Fascinating. I guess they were "upgraded" because there's no longer as much need for cruisers, and the tech was available to beef them up anyway?

That must also make them really, really hard to update with newer equipment.

[Arioch]

Future upgradability has become a major factor in the Navy's plans for new ships, both in terms of space for upgrades and in terms of power generation. I don't think they have any plans for future cruisers, but today's "destroyers" are more or less as large as cruisers used to be.

Unrelated: 60 Minutes interview with the Boston Dynamics crew. Some good interviews; I think this is the first time I've seen the founder or CEO.



(Though I was disappointed that they didn't mention SpaceX's BD robot, "Rex," which they use to survey the test pad after mishaps. Which I think would have been appropriate, as it seems to me that Boston Dynamics and SpaceX have a lot in common.)

[dragoongfa]

Fascinating. I guess they were "upgraded" because there's no longer as much need for cruisers, and the tech was available to beef them up anyway?

That must also make them really, really hard to update with newer equipment.

Destroyers became a de-facto 'jack of all trades' ship since WW2 as they were more than able to fulfill all the tasks that aircraft carriers and submarines are by their nature unable to do. This of course resulted in them becoming bigger in terms of gross tonnage as the introduction of more advanced and bulky weaponry in the form of missiles resulted in the need of more space, making them 'cruiser' sized when compared with WW2 cruisers while their power projection abilities with ballistic missiles do give them 'battleship' grade weaponry. However the primary role of destroyers still remains the protection of Capital and mission critical ships, such as carriers and amphibious landing ships while their size allows them to operate on all oceans of the globe

Should be noted that modern destroyers are fielded almost exclusively by blue water navies, the navies able to project power and force on a regional/global scale. In particular blue water navies willing to project force on a global scale and in rough seas, with the US, China, Japan and a couple of others do field modern destroyers in the same way that the US Navy does as they have to operate in waters that are subject to extremely rough weather that is more than able to outright sink small warships, as the US learned the hard way during WW2. Other blue water navies elected to field smaller 'frigates' that are still able to project power but are obviously smaller and cheaper.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, modern technology requires far more forethought and planning to install on any modern platform that previous generations; if only because of the modern requirements of digital connectivity between weapon platforms and the inherent requirements for both security and rapidity. Weapons and communication systems must work amicably together, same with fire control systems. A weapon's manufacturer may come up with a new revolutionary missile design but that doesn't mean that said missile can be adopted immediately, the rest of the systems must be adapted to work with the new weapon before it can be properly fielded. Refitting old weapon platforms is expensive as well, even if future proofing provisions were taken said weapon platform must be redesigned up to a point in order to receive the new weapon systems; this requires time, effort and said platform to be rotated away from active duty in order to receive said refit.

In times of war corners are cut and new technologies are rarely refitted in older weapon platforms; resulting in new weapon systems having a LOT of teething problems when fielded directly in actual combat.

[Ithekro]

The world has very few cruisers left in service. The primary US Navy cruiser, the Ticonderoga-class, is actually a destroyer leader hull reclassified as a cruiser when it was thought there was a "cruiser gap" against the Soviet Navy in the 1970s. It should be note that destroyer leaders in the US Navy, prior to 1975 were designated as "frigates". Only post-1975 was the American ship classification system redone to reflect other countries better, were the former destroyer escorts became the frigates of the fleet, and the destroyer leaders became the cruisers. The last true US Navy cruiser, USS Long Beach, retired in 1995.

The Ticonderoga-class cruisers will eventually be replaced by Flight III Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers.

[Arioch]

The primary US Navy cruiser, the Ticonderoga-class, is actually a destroyer leader hull reclassified as a cruiser when it was thought there was a "cruiser gap" against the Soviet Navy in the 1970s.

I think this says more about how destroyers have grown than it does about how cruisers have shrunk. Ticonderoga is larger and heavier than some WWII light cruisers.

The Ticonderoga and Spruance compared to some of their WWII counterparts:
CG-47 Ticonderoga: 173 m, 9,800 t
CL-51 Atlanta: 165 m, 8,470 t
CL-55 Cleveland: 180 m, 14,358 t

DD-963 Spruance (based on the same hull as Ticonderoga): 172 m, 8,040 t
DD-445 Fletcher: 114.8 m, 2,500 t
DD-710 Gearing: 119 m, 3,520 t

The Arleigh Burke Flight III DDG: 154 m, 9,700 t

[Mk_C]

Ah, yes, nautical classification - one of the purest fields for expression of OCD in all of nerddom.

[Ithekro]

USS Ticonderoga and USS Yorktown were ordered as DDG-47 and DDG-48, but changed to cruisers. The Virginia-class nuclear guided missile cruisers were originally nuclear guided missile frigates (destroyer leaders) before the 1975 reclassification.

The US Navy has not built a proper "cruiser hulled" warship since USS Long Beach in the 1960s. Cruisers built since then have been using destroyer based hulls, with the Ticonderoga using a modified Spruance hull. The planned future cruiser project was scrapped in in 2010 due t budget cuts and that a Flight III Arleigh Burke can pretty much do everything they US Navy needs anyway for a surface warships that is not needed to transports aircraft, troops, or submerge below the seas.

The 1975 reclassification is also why a lot of 80's era Star Trek pocket books novels that dealt with the more combat oriented side of Starfleet has some oddities of large frigates that were a big or bigger than the Constitution-class heavy cruiser, and some were a "destroyer" could either be a smaller ship (escort or picket starship) or a larger ship (battleship in all but name, like in the style of a Star Destroyer), depending on the author. Also explains a similar oddity between frigates and cruisers in the FASA Star Trek Roleplaying Game.

[StarCruiser]

And so many don't even know the different between a "Cruiser" hull and a "Destroyer" hull - not that it matters as much anymore. Or for that matter, that a "CV" is actually a "Cruiser, aViation" instead of "Carrier Vessel".

Technically, the Ticonderoga class were intended as improved Kidd class DDG's and reclassified as CG's before launch. The older Frigates of the 1950's and 60's were originally classified as DE's (Destroyer Escorts, sometimes called Ocean Escorts) and the DL's of the 60's were, for a while classed as Frigates and then reclassified as Cruisers (CG's).

Geesh - the U.S. Navy needs to sit down and actually rationalize the whole designation structure - as well as the whole organization of the fleet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_escort