Stories tagged military
US missile test: There is nothing wrong with this picture.
Courtesy US Dept. of Defense (not Mark Ryan)Click here and look at the photograph accompanying the story. Agence France-Presse claims the image was obtained from a website of the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The photo makes it look like the Iranians are flexing their military muscle during a recent missile test launch, but in reality they seem to be merely flexing their Clone Stamp Tool in their (probably illegal) copy of Adobe Photoshop.
Now look at the stock photo on the right. This is a minuteman test done by the US military over the Pacific Ocean. I swear to God I have not manipulated this image in any way whatsoever. Not at all. Not one single pixel has been changed in this original photograph. Really.
Well, okay, actually I may have enhanced it just a bit, but only to make a point.
Photo tampering has been around since the earliest days of photography. It was (and still is) a practice used often in advertising, propaganda, magazine covers, and even news (where it is gravely frowned upon). So this kind of thing is nothing new. But advances in digital photography and computer software that allows for pixel-level image manipulation has really created an atmosphere ripe for extreme skepticism of any kind of photograph you see out there nowadays. And the Internet is full of such “real photographs”; stuff like the guy who keeps his dead wife encased in a coffee-table, paratroopers coming in over a lake full of hungry alligators, or president Bush having a good time in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. All lies!!
When I published a composite photo in a magazine some years ago, the publisher credited it as a “photo illustration” rather than photograph. And I had no problem with that. I’ve also sold (as photographs) images that were extensively manipulated by the addition and removal of elements to enhance the composition. Since I wasn’t trying to make any kind of editorial statement, I have no problem doing that. I look at it more as painting with pixels than tampering with photography. But it does raise the issue of photo ethics. Evidently, it’s okay when used in some ways (such as advertising where everybody expects everything to be a lie), but not okay in other ways (such as news photos).
If done correctly, and with a good deal of thought and meticulous attention to detail, a remarkable “photograph” can be created that even the experts will have difficulty determining whether it’s been doctored or not. Such as my fine illustrative example above. If I hadn’t told you otherwise, I’m sure you would have thought it was an actual photograph of multiple launches. People can be so gullible.
So, perhaps you want to join the Photo Tampering Bandwagon and learn the finer points of image manipulation, but you just don’t have the time to invest in reading the manual that came with your copy of Photoshop. Who can blame you? The thing is massive! I don’t even like reading it. But now, fortunately, there’s a wonderful series on YouTube called “You Suck at Photoshop”, which makes learning the ins and outs of what truly is a complicated program both fun and educational (especially if your current relationship is on shaky ground).
And, lastly, for those of you insisting on some sort of “science” angle to these posts, go here for that.
LINKS
More on the ethics of photo manipulation
Snopes Fauxtography site
Tags : A story on CBS news claims that military veterans commit suicide at a much higher rate than the general population. However, blogger Bill Sweetman argues that the report is flawed. It fails to account for the fact that the vast majority of veterans are men, who have a higher suicide rate than average. Most veterans are also young, and young people commit suicide far more often than older people. Once you account for these two factors, the supposed difference in veterans’ suicide rates disappears.
An invisible tank: Right in front of that other tank. (photo courtesy of wikimedia commons)Great Britain has been making some progress in the field of “ways to kill people with out them seeing you do it.” In the past, we had to be satisfied with impersonal methods like booby traps and poisoning, but, with the help of science, before long we should be able to safely view our own nefarious deeds - while hiding in plain sight! Sort of.
The UK’s Ministry of Defense has recently unveiled a prototype “invisible” tank, and predicts that similar models will be ready for service (the service of blowing things up! Yeah!) by 2012.. Unlike a lot of other invisibility research, which often focuses on bending light around an object, the invisi-tank (as I like to call it) relies on “cameras and projectors to beam images of the surrounding landscape onto the tank.” I’m not sure if these cameras and projectors are on the tank itself, or nearby. That’s probably a secret.
A soldier who was present at the trials was quoted as saying, "This technology is incredible. If I hadn't been present I wouldn't have believed it. I looked across the fields and just saw grass and trees - but in reality I was staring down the barrel of a tank gun."
It is also believed that the Ministry of Defense is “testing a military jacket that works on the same principals.”
I recommend that you take a look at the original article. The picture of the scientist in charge of the project is great. He completely redefines the stereotypical image of a scientist. Oh wait, no, I mean he reinforces it.
Sure, it can dance, but it can't feel love: A dancing robot, but not actually the Promet. (photo by Thomas Hawk on flickr.com)Taking a major stride in the international race to create the perfect DDR machine, Scientists at Tokyo University have taught a robot to dance. Or, as some would say, programmed a robot to dance. Either way, the HRP-2 robot, or Promet, now knows how to dance. Using video-capturing techniques to record human dance movements, the scientist have taught Promet the Aizu Bandaisan, a Japanese folk dance.
This may seem fantastic to some, but the rest of us know that dancing robots are nothing new.
The achievement here isn’t making a robot that can think (Promet can dance, but he won’t be doing do your calc homework), but making one that can mimic human movement so well. As this sort of technology advances, we can probably expect to see robots being taught to do a lot more than dancing. The military, in particular, has expressed considerable interest in robot education (as it were). Not so much in teaching them how to dance, though, more in teaching them how to rescue some soldiers and kill other soldiers. The US military is developing a remote controlled “Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot,” or “BEAR” for rescuing wounded soldiers from dangerous areas, and last year Samsung created a robot for the South Korean military capable of shooting targets up to 500 meters away. And Skynet is developing robots that can look and act just like Californian governors.
For now, though, I guess it’s pretty funny just to see robots dancing.
Boston Dynamics has created a robotic four legged pack horse named Big Dog. The Pentagon has given them $10 million in funding. I especially like how it recovers when they give it a big kick.
Nuclear test detection: photo from wikimedia
Was N. Korean nuclear test a dud?
James Acton of Vertic, an independent non-governmental organisation (NGO) in London that specialises in verification research, noted enormous discrepancies in the estimated size of the blast.
“I’ve heard from three different sources that it (the North Korean blast) was less than one kilotonne,” “If it turns out to be less than a kilotonne, it could look very much like a fizzle,” a bomb that failed to detonate properly and achieve a full chain reaction," said Acton, a nuclear physicist by training. Kahleej Times.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, however, has been quoted as saying that the nuclear device tested by North Korea ranged between five and 15 kilotons. That is the normal size of a successful test.
What data, besides seismic, can be used?
- In addition to seismic sensors run by national governments, the UN’s Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CBTO) in Vienna also has a network of 189 seismic and hydroacoustic monitoring stations designed to detect nuclear tests.
- Radioactive particles and gases that can vent from an underground nuclear blast are also a telltale, providing clues as to the type of material (uranium or plutonium) that was used and to the size of the weapon.
- A third monitoring technique is to use satellites with ground-scanning radars, which record the topography of a test site before and after an event. Movement or subsidence of the soil is the sign of a big blast.
How do we tell if it was a nuclear explosion?
Like earthquakes, large explosions send out shockwaves that can be detected on seismographs. Big nuclear bombs make big waves, with clear signatures that make them fairly easy to detect, analyze and confirm that they were caused by splitting atoms. But smaller blasts - as North Korea's appears to have been - are trickier to break down. York Daily Record
A nuclear explosion has a more instant shockwave than a chemical one. The differences between regular bombs and a nuclear explosion are very fine and subtle, and you need time to analyse the signatures.
"People have different way of cross cutting the data and interpreting them,"
The CTBTO's stations are more extensive than those used by most countries. They monitor seismic events but also underwater data, radioactive particles in the air and radiowaves.
"Within 72 hours we will have full data. Then all this will be available to member states," said Lassina Zerbo, director of the International Data Center at the CTBTO, which is based in Vienna, Austria.
While the North Korean explosion was small, potentially complicating monitoring efforts, sensors in South Korea were likely close enough to categorize it as nuclear, if that is what is was, said Friedrich Steinhaeusler, professor of physics at Salzburg University.
A nuclear blast also gives off a clear signature - a clear graph of peaks and curves - that differentiates it from other kinds of shocks, he added.
"We'll have the confirmation soon," he said.
Additional reading can be found on Rueters.
For updates I recommend this Wikipedia page
Mapleseed Nano Air Vehicle: Nano Air Vehicle Photo by Art Oglesby
Mapleseed Nano Air Vehicle
DARPA wants Lockheed to design a surveillance drone shaped like a mapleseed. The remote-controlled nano air vehicles (or NAVs, for short) would be dropped from hovercraft, whirl around a battlefield snapping pictures or delivering various payloads. Once the NAV delivers its payload, it would return to the warfighter for collection and refurbishment.
Besides controlling lift and pitch, the wing will also house telemetry, communications, navigation, imaging sensors, and battery power. The NAV will be about 1.5 inches long and have a maximum takeoff weight of about 0.35 ounces. A chemical rocket enclosed in its one-bladed wing will power a sensor payload module more than 1,100 yards. Delivered from a hover and weighing up to 0.07 ounces, the module will be interchangeable based on mission requirements.
According to James Marsh, director of Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL), "The challenges are both exciting and daunting, because some of the technologies vital to our success have yet to be discovered. We know going in that we need some of the best minds in manufacturing technology and in the development and integration of highly sophisticated, software- driven control technologies and mission systems." From Lockheed press release via Yahoo Finance
Want to design a mapleseed rocket?
Check out the science and design experiments on these web sites.
The USGS, the branch of our government that reports and monitors earthquakes, reported a small earthquake in southern Florida yesterday. Well, at least that's what they thought. Residents of the Tampa, Florida area felt strong shocks and sounds of explosions last night and many thought it might have been an earthquake too. But Florida doesn't usually experience these sorts of tremors. The military later released a statement saying that two F-18 fighter jets flying low and then landing at an area Air Force base created the shocks. But, is that the whole story?
Science Buzz and all related activities
Add a new comment