BOOOOOOOM

Why it’s too late to stop World War 3
by Richard Overy

Apocalypse now: a nuclear test in French Polynesia, 1970 - Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Imagine, for a moment, that the Iranian government ann­ounces it has developed a nuc­lear bomb and threatens to use it on Israel. The United States reacts with the threat of military intervention, as it did in 1991 and 2003 in Iraq. Iran signals that it will not tolerate a third Gulf war and looks for allies. American forces mass to enter Iran, which orders national mobilisation. Russia, China and North Korea express their support for Iran, and Washington expands its intervention force, bringing in a British contingent. Russia enters the game, raising the stakes in the expectation that the West will back down. A nuclear standoff follows, but with tense and itchy fingers on both sides, as leaders gamble on the risk of not striking first, it all ends in disaster. The Third World War begins with an exchange of nuclear fire, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Or picture this: Chinese frustration over the status of Taiwan prompts a build-up of invasion forces. The United States is pre­occupied with its own domestic political crisis. Japan anxiously watches the exchange of harsh words between China and Taiwan, wondering whether to intervene. The United Nations condemns Chinese actions, and China repudiates the censure and orders invasion, confident that a quick victory will prevent others from intervening, as Hitler hoped when he invaded Poland in 1939. The United States now activates contingency plans to save Taiwan, and each side uses tactical nuclear weapons against the other’s armed forces. North Korea and Russia side with China. There is no general nuclear strike, but Russia warns Europe to keep out, dividing American strategy between the two theatres, as it was in the Second World War. The conflict continues to escalate.            READ MORE...

China is Developing Space Weapons

 China is developing anti-satellite weapons as part of a “breathtaking” military expansion, US defense experts have warned Gen Stephen Whiting.

Get info without leaving the page., the head of the US Space Command, said Beijing had “tripled the number of intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance satellites on orbit” in just six years.

“Frankly, the People’s Republic of China is moving at breathtaking speed in space and they are rapidly developing a range of counter-space weapons to hold at risk our space capabilities,” Gen Whiting said.


Counter-space attacks range from disruption of GPS signals or spoofing, to destroying a satellite by detonating a missile in space.

Experts have long warned of Beijing’s misuse of anti-satellite weapons and the need to clean up space from an environmental perspective. Debris still lingers in space from the ballistic missile China fired in 2007 to destroy an orbiting satellite.  READ MORE... 

Microplastics in Ancient Remains

Microplastics have been found in historic soil samples for the first time, according to a new study, potentially upending the way archaeological remains are preserved.

Researchers found microplastics in soil deposits more than seven meters (23 feet) underground, which were deposited in the first or second century CE and excavated in the 1980s, a team led by researchers from the University of York in the United Kingdom said in a statement published Friday.


In total, the study identified 16 different microplastic polymer types in contemporary and archived soil samples, the statement adds.

Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that are no larger than five millimeters (0.2 inches)—about the size of a single sesame seed—and form when larger plastics break down, either by chemically degrading or physically wearing down into smaller pieces.      READ MORE...

China Hacking US Documents

More than 570 documents reported to be from a Chinese state-backed hacking group were posted online.


They mentioned targets in at least 20 countries and territories, The Washington Post reported.


Officials have issued repeated warnings about China's hacking operations.


A reported trove of leaked Chinese hacking documents may have given the world a glimpse of how widespread and effective China's hacking operations could be.


More than 570 files and documents were posted to the developer platform GitHub last week, The Washington Post reported. They appear to document hacking activity across multiple countries and come from iSoon, which the Post identified as a private security contractor with ties to China's Ministry of Public Security.  READ MORE...

NOT WHAT THEY IMAGINED

NEW YORK — For one 29-year-old Venezuelan woman, who left her two children and partner behind in her home country to embark on a six-month journey to New York City, America represented hope. 

There, she thought, she would find safety and the opportunity to make a living. But four months after arriving in the U.S., she says it’s nothing like she had imagined.

“It’s too difficult to come to a place where you don’t know the language,” the woman, who agreed to speak anonymously to protect her safety, told Yahoo News.

Speaking in Spanish, the woman had been standing along the granite wall of a bustling midtown Manhattan restaurant attached to the Roosevelt Hotel, which in recent months has been transformed into the city’s migrant intake center.

Like many Venezuelans who’ve come to the U.S. in recent years, the woman explained that Venezuela’s corrupt and repressive government had left her with few options at home. 

She embarked on the dangerous journey to the U.S. by herself, traveling through the perilous Darién Gap that connects Colombia to Panama, then multiple countries including Nicaragua and Honduras, by foot and public transportation. 

She stopped for weeks at a time to work only long enough to make enough money for the next leg of her trip. Since arriving in New York, she’s struggled to make money and obtain basic necessities while navigating the city’s shelter system. 

Eventually, she says, she hopes to bring her family to America, but she’s unsure how she will make that happen.  READ MORE...

NASA Releases Images

We might not be able to travel to space, but as of last week, we at least have the most high-definition images of the universe ever taken. The images shared by NASA were rendered with the new James Webb Space Telescope (JBST). 

JBST began its science operations six months ago when launched into space at the end of December 2021. However, its first batch of images are among the most stunning and clear celestial pictures we have of space so far. 

The images reveled five neighboring galaxies called Stephan’s Quintet and the Carina Nebula.  The JWST is considered the most powerful telescope ever built revealing that not all galaxies are invisible. 

During the NASA press conference held on Tuesday, Eric Smith, the program scientist for the JWST mission, said JWST’s first photos are “especially phenomenal because they were technically nothing more than practice runs.”

The first image rendered showed the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723– as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, with many more galaxies in front of, and behind the cluster.  READ MORE...

Made in America

American manufacturers are increasingly bringing production back to the US to reduce their reliance on global supply chains that proved vulnerable to disruption such as the pandemic.

An overwhelming majority of American companies with production operations in China have already moved some back to the US or plan to do so in the next three years, according to Kearney's 2021 Reshoring Index.

Almost four in five corporations companies have already shifted production to the US and at least 15% are considering it due to high tariffs and ongoing supply chain challenges, Kearney's report shows.

However, imports from low-cost Asian countries to the US still increased last year.

"Reshoring" manufacturing has also been spurred by geopolitical disruption triggered by the Russia-Ukraine war.

General Motors announced in January it would spend $7 billion on four plants in Michigan. Last year it spent almost $40 billion buying parts from some 5,600 US suppliers.

The manufacturer behind Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac, and Hummer announced its biggest investment to increase its battery cell production to achieve its aim of becoming North America's biggest electric vehicle producer.

GE Appliances is also investing on expanding US production to make products closer to customers and create more American jobs.  READ MORE...

Controlling the Moon

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway and Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy declared that his nation would be the first to land a man on the moon. That ambitious goal would later be fulfilled as two NASA astronauts took wobbly steps across the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, much to the dismay of Russia’s own space program leaders.

More than 60 years later, a new space race to the moon has begun, albeit with much higher stakes and brand new players ready to make the 238,855-mile journey. This time, the race to the moon is about much more than just planting a flag on its dusty surface. Getting to the moon first could also mean calling dibs on its limited resources, and controlling a permanent gateway to take humans to Mars—and beyond.

Whether it’s NASA, China, Russia, or a consortium of private companies that end up dominating the moon, laying claim to the lunar surface isn’t really about the moon anyway—it’s about who gets easier access to the rest of the solar system.

Everyone’s Got an Agenda

James Rice, a senior scientist at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, remembers growing up with the Apollo program and getting bitten by the space bug as he watched the 1969 moon landing unfold on television.

“As a kid, I saw that happening and I wanted to be a part of it,” Rice told The Daily Beast. “That’s basically why I’m in this career today.”

As Rice reflected on the current space race, he recognized some key differences. “Things have really changed dramatically in terms of the technology and the players that are out there,” he said. “This is not the moon we thought of during the Apollo days.” Scientists have learned so much more about the moon through more detailed analysis of lunar samples, as well as several missions that have probed exactly what might be sitting on the moon’s surface and remain hidden deep underground.  READ MORE...

First Autonomous Electric Cargo Ship

OSLO (Reuters) - The world's first fully electric and self-steering container ship, owned by fertiliser maker Yara, is preparing to navigate Norway's southern coast and play its part in the country's plans to clean-up its industry.

The Yara Birkeland, an 80-metre-long (87 yards) so-called feeder, is set to replace lorry haulage between Yara's plant in Porsgrunn in southern Norway and its export port in Brevik, about 14 km (8.7 miles) away by road, starting next year.

OSLO (Reuters) - The world's first fully electric and self-steering container ship, owned by fertiliser maker Yara, is preparing to navigate Norway's southern coast and play its part in the country's plans to clean-up its industry.

The Yara Birkeland, an 80-metre-long (87 yards) so-called feeder, is set to replace lorry haulage between Yara's plant in Porsgrunn in southern Norway and its export port in Brevik, about 14 km (8.7 miles) away by road, starting next year.

It will cut 1,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year, equivalent to 40,000 diesel-powered journeys by road, and is expected to be fully autonomous in two years.

For Yara it means reducing CO2 emissions at its plant in Porsgrunn, one of Norway's single largest sources of CO2, Chief Executive Svein Tore Holsether said.

"Now we have taken this technological leap to show it is possible, and I'm thinking there are so many routes in the world where it is possible to implement the same type of ship," he told Reuters.

Built by Vard Norway, Kongsberg provided key technology including the sensors and integration required for remote and autonomous operations.

"This isn't about replacing the sailors, it's replacing the truck drivers," Yara's Jostein Braaten, project manager for the ship, said at the ship's bridge, which will be removed when the vessel is running at full automation.

The ship will load and offload its cargo, recharge its batteries and also navigate without human involvement.

Sensors will be able to quickly detect and understand objects like kayaks in the water so the ship can decide what action to take to avoid hitting anything, Braaten said.

The system should be an improvement over having a manual system, he added.  READ MORE...

China Builds Mockups of US Warships

BEIJING (AP) — Satellite images show China has built mock-ups of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and destroyer in its northwestern desert, possibly for practice for a future naval clash as tensions rise between the nations.

China has massively upgraded its military in recent years, and its capability and intentions are increasingly concerning to the United States as tensions rise over the South China Sea, Taiwan and military supremacy in the Indo-Pacific.

The images captured by Colorado-based satellite imagery company Maxar Technologies dated Sunday show the outlines of a U.S. aircraft carrier and at least one destroyer sitting on a railway track.

Maxar identified the location as Ruoqiang, a Taklamakan Desert county in the northwestern Xinjiang region.

The independent U.S. Naval Institute said on its website that the mock-ups of U.S. ships were part of a new target range developed by the People's Liberation Army.

It wasn't clear from the images how many details had been included in the apparent targets, although USNI said it had identified features on the destroyer including its funnels and weapons systems.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing Monday that he had no information about the images, saying, “I’m not aware of the situation you mentioned."

China's massive military upgrade has emphasized countering the U.S. and other countries' naval forces.

That includes the development of land, sea and air-launched missiles to repel and possibly sink opposing vessels, expressed most emphatically by the land-based DF-21D ballistic missile known as the “carrier killer."  READ MORE...

Witest White Paint

The whitest paint in the world has been created in a lab at Purdue University, a paint so white that it could eventually reduce or even eliminate the need for air conditioning, scientists say.

The paint has now made it into the Guinness World Records book as the whitest ever made.

So why did the scientists create such a paint? It turns out that breaking a world record wasn't the goal of the researchers: Curbing global warming was.

“When we started this project about seven years ago, we had saving energy and fighting climate change in mind,” said Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue, in a statement.

The idea was to make a paint that would reflect sunlight away from a building, researchers said.  READ MORE

Transatlantic Speed Records Set

Announcing an air-speed record from Savannah, Georgia, to Doha, Qatar, might sound trivial or even a little absurd. Until you consider the context: This was the world’s largest business jet flying 6,711 nautical miles nonstop at Mach 0.88, or 675 mph, for 13 hours and 16 minutes, on its first international flight. Then it becomes a corporate milestone.

Gulfstream’s new G700 then set another city-pair record from Doha to Paris, flying 2,953 nautical miles at an average speed of Mach 0.90 (690.5 mph) for 6 hours and 15 minutes, before returning to headquarters in Savannah.

Beyond the “records,” the transatlantic flights of Gulfstream’s new ultra-long-range jet shows the business-jet world—and potential buyers—that the aircraft lives up to the publicity it has attracted since first being announced in 2019. 

Plus, visiting the capital of Qatar was more than Gulfstream just throwing a dart at the map: Qatar Airways Group is its launch customer and plans to take delivery of the first G700, which has a list price of $78 million, next year. 

The flight gave Qatar Executive a chance to show off the Gulfstream flagship—with a fully outfitted interior—at a press conference in Doha.  READ MORE