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Category: military – Page 3

If We Discover Extraterrestrial Life, What Happens Next?

The search for extraterrestrial life has evolved from philosophy to a serious scientific and national security concern, with governments and NASA actively investigating Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. While discovering alien intelligence could spark a scientific renaissance, offering advancements in medicine, energy, and technology, it also presents unprecedented security challenges. Different levels of discovery, from biosignatures to direct contact, carry varying societal disruptions. Risks include potential hostility, information warfare through deepfakes, and complex geopolitical issues regarding ownership and control of contact. Therefore, humanity needs a global framework for verification, coordination, and resilience to manage such a monumental event. The strategic question is not merely if we are alone, but if we are truly ready for the profound implications of an answer.

This Metal From Outer Space Could Radically Transform EverythingFrom Electric Vehicles to Nuclear Submarines

“When you’re faced with a critical material problem, you can do one of two things: You can find more, or you can use less,” says Tom Lograsso, director of the Critical Materials Institute, a mineral research laboratory within the U.S. Department of Energy.

The sheer quantity of rare earths required for magnet production is staggering when put into raw numbers. For example, a Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine requires 9,200 pounds of permanent magnets made with rare earths. (Permanent magnets are always magnetic, unlike electrical magnets that require an electrical charge to work.) And a proposal by the U.S. Departments of Energy and Interior to generate 86 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2050 would require more than 17,000 tons of neodymium.

“The biggest worry for the magnet industry is supply risk,” says Greer. That makes his breakthrough—a powerful magnet that doesn’t rely on rare earths—a potential game changer.

AI can now edit DNA and create deepfake viruses

The Screening Breakdown: The world’s primary defense against synthetic bioweapons is sequence matching. When a lab orders DNA, automated software checks the order against a “blocklist” of dangerous pathogens (like Smallpox or Anthrax).

AI is moving beyond text, images, and code. Now it’s learning to read and write — shall we say program — DNA.

In this episode of NEXT, John Koetsier talks with Eric Nguyen, co-founder and CEO of Radical Numerics, about the rapidly emerging world of biological AI.

Nguyen and his team helped create Evo and Evo 2, generative foundation models for DNA, and are now working toward what they call “general biological intelligence”: AI systems capable of understanding biology across DNA, gene expression, methylation, proteins, and other biological signals.

The potential upside is enormous.

Continue reading “AI can now edit DNA and create deepfake viruses” | >

Technological Convergence — the DARPA Lift Challenge

The DARPA Lift Challenge aims to shatter the heavy-lift bottleneck by seeking novel drone designs capable of carrying payloads more than four times their weight. This would revolutionize how we use drones across all sectors.

As military missions become more complicated, warfighters need more capable drones to use across diverse scenarios. The same applies to infrastructure inspection, package delivery, disaster response, and other civilian applications.

Current multirotor drones, also known as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), are simple, affordable, and easy to operate. But their payload-to-weight ratio is low, typically 1:1 or less.

DARPA Challenges accelerate technological breakthroughs by focusing the ingenuity of teams of innovators and giving wild ideas a place to thrive.

Follow along at www.darpaliftchallenge.com

New Generation Of Intelligent Drones Defined By Technology Convergence

One of the most fascinating instances of current technological convergence is the quick development of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), also referred to as drones. A sophisticated ecosystem of intelligent autonomous platforms that can support defense, homeland security, critical infrastructure, emergency response, agriculture, logistics, energy, healthcare, and environmental protection is rapidly emerging from what started out as remotely piloted aircraft for military reconnaissance and commercial photography.

It is increasingly evident in our new digital era that the most significant technological advancements seldom come from a single invention; rather, they emerge when several technologies develop concurrently and start to support each other. This is called technology convergence, and it is true with trends in drones.

According to Grandview Research The global drone market size was valued at USD 83.8 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow from USD 96.4 billion in 2026 to USD 182.4 billion by 2033. Those are impactful statistics.

Neutrons reveal how friction stir welding could strengthen steel armor

Using neutrons at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, researchers from The Ohio State University are studying residual stress caused by friction stir welding (FSW) to reveal how to strengthen armor steel welds, like those used in military vehicles. Their findings were published in the Journal of Materials Processing Technology.

“We are trying to develop a new way to join armor steel that produces joints with better ballistic and blast performance,” said Antonio Ramirez, a professor of materials science and engineering at OSU. “In the end, we want to be able to make structures that perform better.”

The team’s results will help fine-tune welding parameters to create a roadmap for engineering better armor systems.

Game-engine forests train drone AI to count trees with far less labeling

A drone swoops low over an alpine forest. It climbs suddenly to follow the contours of the sharply rising landscape. Pulses from its lidar—a laser mapping instrument—rapidly scan the trees below.

The forest, however, isn’t real. In fact, the entire landscape is a synthetic rendering created by University of Cambridge researchers to teach algorithms how to see trees.

The ability to recognize an individual tree in the forest canopy is essential for calculating how forests grow, how they respond to climate change and how much carbon they store. Until now, researchers developing forest vision systems would painstakingly trace the outlines of thousands of trees to provide the system with sufficient training data, a process that can take weeks.

Air Launch, Hypersonics & Responsive Space: Inside Starfighters Space | Tim Franta

Tim Franta, CEO, Starfighters Space

For decades, getting to space has largely meant one thing: launching vertically atop massive rockets from fixed launch pads. But what if the future of space access also includes aircraft capable of flying at more than twice the speed of sound, launching payloads from the edge of the atmosphere, and providing researchers with affordable access to hypersonic flight and microgravity?

Joining us today is Tim Franta, Chief Executive Officer of Starfighters Space (https://starfightersspace.com/), an aerospace company operating the world’s only commercial fleet of flight-ready Mach 2+ F-104 Starfighters. Based at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the company is building capabilities that span hypersonic flight testing, airborne research, astronaut and pilot training, and an ambitious air-launch platform known as STARLAUNCH, designed to provide more flexible and responsive access to space.

Tim brings an unusual blend of aerospace leadership, public policy, infrastructure development, and strategic finance. Before leading Starfighters Space, he helped shape Florida’s modern space ecosystem through leadership roles with Energy Florida and the Florida Space Authority, where he worked on launch infrastructure, legislation, and hundreds of millions of dollars in space-related investment.

Today we’ll discuss why aircraft may become an increasingly important part of the space economy, how commercial innovation is changing access to orbit, the growing importance of hypersonic technologies, and what the next decade of aerospace infrastructure might look like.

Continue reading “Air Launch, Hypersonics & Responsive Space: Inside Starfighters Space | Tim Franta” | >

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