Believe it or not, a revolutionary form of transportation has been designed to travel twice the speed of Concorde and five times the speed of sound.

At its speed, the A2 aircraft can travel from London to Australia in under five hours while still being able to board 300 passengers. Details of the plane in the full article.

Rafi Yoeli, founder of Urban Aeronautics and had once worked for Boeing and Israeli Aerospace Industries, is currently building a new type of battlefield ambulance able to rescue wounded soldiers where land vehicles and bulky helicopters can't get to.

Dubbed the "Mule," the vehicle Yoeli has designed is sort of what you'll get if you cross a sled with a hovercraft. Light and fast, these little critters land and take off vertically, making it ideal and strategic for its purpose: search and rescue amidst the chaos and danger of a full on battle.

Each Mule can carry two persons at a time and is controlled by air flow instead of being entirely dependent on surfaces. It requires no driver and can speed up to 100 mph without passengers. It has been raised that a patient being transported with proper medical care while on the vehicle would be dangerous, but it was pointed out that there might be no other alternative, especially if the patient is in critical condition.

Janina Frankel-Yoeli, Rafi Yoeli's wife and marketing director, says that there might be some psychological factors that might affect the Mule's task. "The problem is overcoming the natural fear of entering a vehicle without a pilot," he added, but both civilian and military outfits in the US and other countries have already shown interest.

Image by Peter Bollinger.

Our solar system is not static, it travels through space at about 62 MPH (100,000 KPH). Merav Opher and her research team from Virginia's George Mason University has found that our system has a "bullet like" shape because of the said movement.

Our system travels "within a bubble of solar wind" which is composed of charged particles from the sun. This is known as the Heliosphere. Opher has said that the solar system's magnetic field is inclined at a 60 degree angle relative to the plane of the Galaxy">Milky Way. Now, when this bubble meets with the Milky Way galaxy's magnetic field, our system takes on a "bullet shape" or as Opher puts it - a "streamlined shape."

She added that "The shape of the solar system, this bullet, is really shaped by what lies ahead of us—the interstellar magnetic field. The [prevailing] idea is that the environment just outside our solar system is patchy and turbulent." Now, you may wonder what causes this turbulence? Opher explained that "there are lots of stars exploding and dying outside our solar system."

This news shouldn't surprise a lot of our budding scientists out there since it's a given fact that objects tend to go into the most stable state. If our solar system is moving at a relatively constant speed, wouldn't it be logical to assume that it would take a streamlined form to help facilitate its movement?

I only know France for - you know, museums, cafes, Napoleon, kissing and fries (yeah, you can call me culturally ignorant). But only recently, France has set a record for having the world's speediest train ride on conventional rails. The French train V150 buzzed off to a record speed of 357.2 mph, breaking the record of another conventional rail train that buzzed off to a speed of 320.2 mph, set by - why, another French train.

The speedy train ride has been made possible by Alstom Transports. France, Germany and Japan are competing for contracts on China's plans for building more than 7,500 miles of high-speed railways in coming years, at the cost of more than US$ 250 billion. The ride was a demonstration by France, to show how they excel in research, innovation and technology.

The V150 record fell short of another record made by the fastest train in the world, though, to be found in Japan. But the Japanese did not use conventional rails. Instead, the fastest train ride made by Japan, set at the record of 361 mph, has been made possible by another technology: the magnetically levitated train.

French President Jacques Chirac praised France's newest achievement as a magnificent demonstration of France's formidable capacities in research and innovation. The record-breaking trip made by V150 blasted off from Preny, east of Paris to Champagne at an impressive 15 minutes. Operator Eric Pieczac is very happy, feeling a mixture of pride and honor to be able to reach such speed.

Whenever we eat mashed potatoes and roasted cashew nuts, it never occurred to us that what we got from our food could someday turn into car parts. But this is exactly the idea that an engineering doctorate at the University of Warwick, and his team, had in mind.

Ben Wood, project manager of WMG (a provider of innovative solutions to industry) tweaked an original racing car engine to make it more bio-friendly. Called Eco One, the racing car has tires made from potatoes, and brake pads from cashew nut shells. It also runs entirely on bio-fuels and bio-lubricants.

Wood says that almost everything on the car can be made out of biodegradable or recyclable materials. "All the plastic components can be made from plants and, although the chassis has to be made from steel for strength, steel is a very recyclable material." They had the shell, brake pads, fuel and tires of the car sorted. Wood relates that his aim is to race a car that is 95 percent biodegradable or recyclable.

The car was originally designed with a top speed of 125 MPH, and Ben claims he can achieve up to 150 MPH, given a long and straight tail wind. Eco One will be at the Sexy Green Car Show alongside green offerings from major names in the motor industry at the Eden Project in Cornwall from Friday.

Before Roald Amundsen and Robert F. Scott braved the harsh environment of the South Pole, it pretty much equated to one of those areas on old maps where the only description is, "Here Be Dragons."

A recent article from NASA reveals that the situation on the sun is much the same today. According to solar physicist Arik Posner of NASA headquarters, "The sun's south pole is uncharted territory." It can barely be seen from Earth, and most of NASA's sun-studying aircraft have a poor view of it. Except for Ulysses, that is, and today the spacecraft is making a rare South Pole flyby.

"On February 7th, the spacecraft reaches a maximum heliographic latitude of 80oS—almost directly above the South Pole," says Posner who is the Ulysses Program Scientist for NASA. The spacecraft, a joint mission of NASA and the European Space Agency, has flown briefly over the sun's poles only twice before--in 1994-95 and 2000-01.

Ulysses's south pole flyby will attempt to bring solar physicists closer to solving the following mysteries:

• The sun's north magnetic north pole sticks out the south end of the sun. Magnetically, the sun is upside down. The Earth actually has the same situation. On the sun, the flipping happens every 11 years on the sun in synch with the sunspot cycle. On Earth, it happens every 300,000 years or so, but scientists have no idea yet what the flipping is in synch with. They that studying the sun's polar magnetic field will lead to a better understanding of the Earth's own magnetic field.
  

• There are holes over the sun's poles--"coronal holes." These are places where the sun's magnetic field opens up and allows solar wind to escape. "Flying over the sun's poles, you get slapped in the face by a hot, million mph stream of protons and electrons," says Posner. Ulysses is experiencing and studying this polar wind right now.
  

• There is evidence from earlier flybys that the north pole and the south pole of the sun have different temperatures. "We're not sure why this should be," says Posner, "and we're anxious to learn if it is still the case." Ulysses will also be flying over the sun's north pole in early 2008 for a direct comparison of the sun's two poles.

NASA's Science Mission Directorate dedicates its efforts during the Ulysses' South Pole flyby to Ronald Amundsen, Robert F. Scott and Richard E. Byrd - brave explorers who dared to defy nature and the elements and learn more about the South Pole. Much like Scott, whose entire team - including him - never made it home again after reaching the South Pole, Ulysses will never come home either. It will remain in space when its internal power sources fail.

In the midst of strong emotion, politicizing, accusations and conspiracy rumors, one member of the scientific community is using a rational approach to determine exactly what happened that fateful day, five years ago. How was it that two planes, colliding with the World Trade Towers, were able to cause both structures to collapse the way they did?

Using mathematical models to create computer simulations, Christoph M. Hoffmann, a professor of computer science at Purdue University has recreated the physics of what happened when two medium-sized passenger planes collided with the Twin Towers at over 500 MPH, creating a fire that was fed with 10,000 gallons of fuel.

"This required a tremendous amount of detailed work," Hoffmann said. "We have finished the first part of the simulation showing what happened to the structure during the initial impact. In the coming months, we will explore how the structure reacted to the extreme heat from the blaze that led to the building's collapse, and we will refine the visual presentations of the simulation." The initial simulation took about 80 hours to create, using a high-powered computer with sixteen processors.

The key to the buildings' collapse seem to be the 47 heavy steel I-beams that comprised the core of the structures. "Current findings from the simulation have identified the destruction of 11 columns on the 94th floor, 10 columns on the 95th floor and nine columns on the 96th floor," said Hoffman. "This is a major insight. When you lose close to 25 percent of your columns at a given level, the building is significantly weakened and vulnerable to collapse."

The study is being funded by National Science Foundation. It is hoped that understanding of how these buildings collapsed will provide future engineers with the knowledge to design safer buildings.

What ordinary thing could withstand Florida thunderstorms, 300,000 gallons of water, and a very powerful upward burst through the Earth's atmosphere? The answer, apparently, is bird poop. Yes, the STS-121 may not be experiencing foam issues (thank God!) but apparently, bird droppings could be found in the shuttle's black, right wing edge.

The funny part about it is that three weeks ago, shuttle lead flight director Tony Ceccacci said he saw the same splotches on the same place and was surprised. The shuttle is in need of some good cleaning, if that's the case. It's quite a laugh that the bird droppings held its ground even during the July 4 launch. Discovery went from zero to 17,500 mph in just under nine minutes.  

Some of the droppings were already removed during liftoff and Mr. Ceccaci speculated that the rest of it will burn up during landing when the aforementioned bird poop affected area would be 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit hot.

If it still remains amidst all that heat, then maybe there ought to be an enterprising and skilled scientist who can harness the power of bird droppings. But looking on the bright side, if you're the type who's into superstitions, it is believed that when birds poop on someone or something, they would be blessed with good luck. Well, in this case, let's hope for that.