A team of US researchers at Purdue University, Indiana have built a ping-pong gun that can fire balls at supersonic speeds of more than 400 meters per second or Mach 1.2. The gun fires a ping-pong ball faster than a supersonic F-16 jet.
And the gun they built is not some hell of a machine, its just beautiful science :-)
Freaking amazing!
And the gun they built is not some hell of a machine, its just beautiful science :-)
Freaking amazing!
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Knowing that most revolutionary inventions happened accidentally, I must say that it 'pays to play with science'.
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The Question still remains: Application. All good science needs some form of application? Where do you see this fitting in?
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@Nicholas - Well, not every effort in the world of science is meant to culminate in a tangible application immediately. Applications may come later depending on how someone wants to exploit this principle for something useful. But for that somebody who is in search of a solution this principle can be yet another arsenal at his disposal. Lasers were invented long before they were exploited for anything useful and today we cannot imagine communications without them.
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My fear is this will become another facet of the Human sickness for killing each other in the future. Einstein never imagined that he would use his greatest accomplishments to commit some of the greatest atrocities in human history
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However Ping Pong fans every where just had wet dreams about one day training with something like that.
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@Nicholas - LOL. True! This principle could be used in some form of non-lethal arms that need to work with out an explosive mixture inside. On a side note, science gives us means and ways to achieve things. What we use them for is entirely up to us and the nuclear bomb apart from its debutant cruelty has averted major wars since then.
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Agreed but through the means of fear, which is in of itself the definition of terrorism
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You got it wrong buddy! The world din't see another major war since 1945 because of 'Mutually Assured Destruction'. In the decade after Hiroshima, almost every major power developed nuclear capability and created a state of equilibrium in Europe and beyond. No power can now risk conflict and hence the prospects of another major war are greatly reduced if not nullified. Terrorism is not war persee but a method to resist a larger more powerful group / ideology with violence.
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MAD is a terrifying concept isn't it? Terrorism isnt about violence. Violence is just a means to an end. The end is a very Machiavelli goal of getting what you want through what ever means necessary, and Fear is the strongest tool one could wield
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MAD is not as terrifying as it sounds. In fact conflict can only be avoided when every party knows that no one can win. Thats what every nation has aimed for in the past 6 decades. Nuclear Weapons are no longer intended to win a conflict but to avert conflict. As long as borders and different cultures exist, possibility of conflict cannot be discounted and nuclear capability is like an insurance for the nation in question. For a change fear is now playing a benevolent role in keeping peace.
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But then you get the crack-head dictator with self esteem issues because he's short threatens to nuke a larger country. It only takes one moron with the their finger on the trigger and nothing to lose to kill just about every one. Yet after the cold war when the "Dismantling" began Both the United States and the Soviet Union's space programs were using the same rockets that were used to fly a radiated death bomb as to go to space, and they used uranium to power probes, yet neither went to them
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contd... on either side, which would have been helpful right about now, could have saved a good buck and gotten rid of hazardous materials just like that. America is one big garbage man.
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Ofcourse, even though we are on a near ideal course, there are rogue nations, greedy nations, nations toppling legitimate democratic governments for access to minerals, etc. which continue to threaten the equilibrium. Nevertheless, if we look back there is relative peace after the invention of nuclear weapons than before them.
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@Nicholas - Looks like we are going off topic here... A topic about international diplomacy would be right place to discuss our ideas about these issues...
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@Praveen- True, sorry about that, got a little carried away
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I want to try this. Hope I remember to get around to it one nice afternoon. seems like it would be fun. spare pop cans to blasterize aren't hard to come by.
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