Free Republic

What happens when engineers build something that works perfectly — and the world still finds a way to make it disappear? The Napier Deltic was a genuinely bizarre piece of engineering: a diesel engine shaped like an equilateral triangle, with three crankshafts, thirty-six pistons, and no cylinder heads at all. Born out of postwar desperation at D. Napier and Son — a company that had built some of the most powerful aircraft engines of the Second World War and suddenly had no aircraft left to power — the Deltic went on to serve in Royal Navy minesweepers for over thirty...

The five-year survey finished ahead of schedule and with more data, hinting at unexpected dark energy properties. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has achieved its goal. Every single area of the sky that the collaboration set out to map has been mapped, and slightly ahead of its five-year target. DESI was set to gather data on 34 million galaxies and quasars. The final tally of the survey was 47 million galaxies and quasars, the largest high-resolution 3D map of the Universe ever assembled. The ultimate goal is to understand dark energy. Dark energy is a crucial component that is...

Archaeologists in Chile have uncovered a 16th-century silver coin, confirming the location of one of South America's most infamous failed colonial settlements at the site of Rey Don Felipe – later known as Puerto del Hambre, or "Port Famine".Located on the north shore of the Strait of Magellan, Rey Don Felipe was founded in 1584 with around 300 Spanish settlers. According to historical accounts, the extreme conditions led to the settlers starving or freezing to death, and by the arrival of English navigator Thomas Cavendish in 1587, the settlement was mostly in ruins.The coin, valued at eight reals and bearing...

Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, has repeated his belief that Iran will take part in the World Cup this summer despite the federation failing to attend congress in Vancouver. A three-man delegation representing the Iranian Football Federation flew to Toronto on Tuesday, but one of their number was denied entry to Canada, with the two others declining to attend congress in an apparent act of protest. Iranian media reported earlier this week that the IFF president, Mehdi Taj, was turned away at Toronto’s Pearson airport despite having been given permission to travel. Fifa sources described the matter as a “regrettable situation”...

Our own commercial shipbuilding industry has a lot of catching up to do. We should pass the SHIPS for America Act to support it as soon as possible. Last month an eye-popping headline came out of the Chinese shipping and logistics industry: Cosco, a state-owned shipping conglomerate based in Shanghai, had struck a deal with another state-owned firm – China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) – for 87 new vessels across all segments of its fleet. Maritime Executive said the order includes “ultra-large container ships, ultra-large bulk carriers, ultra-large oil tankers, grain transport ships, multi-purpose heavy lift vessels, MR tankers, ro-ro...

… If cigarettes are suddenly back in the frame, it’s because they suit the mood. “We have moved on from clean girl culture and we're interested in this sort of hedonistic, slightly rebellious, even nihilist culture,” says Wellman. Pop culture is starting to grow bored with self-optimization and more interested in looking messy and a little destructive — think “Brat Summer” — a vibe that suits cigarettes. In popular media, smoking signals someone is “cool, edgy and sexy,” according to Grace Kong, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine with expertise in preventing youth tobacco use. Cigarettes...

Unmanned Surface Vessels and Submarines Form Ghost Fleet's Core · U.S. Navy Plans 10 of Each by 2028 · Aegis Combat Systems and Multiple Missiles Onboard Deployed Ahead of Carrier Strike Groups.. Within and outside the U.S. military, critics frequently point out that aircraft carrier operations — long a showcase of America's supreme military power — have become dangerously vulnerable. The concern is that China has been building up its arsenal of long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles capable of destroying U.S. aircraft carriers and Aegis destroyers, potentially cornering the United States in a contingency. China has completed development...

Archaeologists from the University of Warsaw have discovered a concentration of shipwrecks near the ancient port of Ptolemais in northern Libya... one of the five cities that formed the Pentapolis of Cyrenaica, established by the Ptolemaic dynasty between the late 4th and 3rd centuries BC. The city emerged as a major hub for maritime trade until the Arab conquest in the 7th century AD.Covering a stretch of over 100 metres, the large concentration of submerged material suggests that multiple shipwrecks accumulated over time as a navigational danger for ships approaching the harbour.After a 13-year hiatus due to the Libyan civil...

American officials are considering foreign designs and having U.S. warship components built in overseas yards as part of an expansive manufacturing study proposed in the Fiscal Year 2027 budget,... Specifically, the Pentagon has directed the Navy to consider Japanese and Korean shipyards and designs for use in the U.S. fleet, USNI News has learned. Earlier this week, when asked about the study, the now former Secretary of the Navy John Phelan told USNI News that the Department of the Navy was considering foreign shipyards for not only auxiliary supply ships, but also for work on U.S. warships... South Korea and...

Spanish archaeologists have documented over 30 shipwrecks in the waters between the Rock of Gibraltar and the port of Algeciras.This discovery follows a three-year study titled Project Herakles. Led by the University of Cádiz, the team identified 151 archaeological sites and 134 total wrecks, according to The Guardian...The researchers worked with colleagues from the University of Granada to document 34 specific wrecks.These vessels represent a diverse array of eras and cultures:Punic era: One ship dating back to the fifth century B.C.Roman period: 23 Roman ships and two late Roman ships.Medieval period: Four vessels, including three that may clarify seafaring practices...

The easiest way to misunderstand the Navy’s shipbuilding mess is to treat it as a shipyard story. That is how the issue is usually framed. Too few workers, too much complexity, too much bureaucracy, too many delays. None of that is wrong, but it is only the visible part of the problem. The deeper problem sits upstream. The Navy’s procurement troubles reflect not just industrial strain, but a long stretch of strategic drift. If Washington cannot decide what kind of fleet it wants, shipbuilders will never deliver it on time... For most of the Cold War, the Navy knew what...

In April, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance. It aims to address the nation’s dependence on foreign manufacturers of commercial and military ships. To make this possible, we are going to have to restore conditions and levels of investment that haven’t been seen since the 1970s. That was the last time the U.S. had anything approaching global maritime dominance. The U.S. needs warships as well as containerships and bulk ships, and it needs them pronto. We don’t have the workforce required to mount the kind of resurgence the government is looking for, and costs are...

The United States has burned through thousands of missiles since the Iran war began on Feb. 28, diminishing the armaments needed in a potential future conflict with China tied to its tensions with Taiwan.The U.S. military has used 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles — nearly all of the total number left in Washington’s stockpile — and fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, The New York Times reported. The U.S. only produces roughly 100 Tomahawks a year, meaning under current production, it could take 10 years to replace.In addition, in less than eight weeks American forces have spent more...

A starving baby sea lion that was found last month waddling down the middle of a street in Silicon Valley has made a full recovery, rescuers announced Thursday. The California sea lion pup was found on Bordeaux Drive in Sunnyvale, next to the Google campus, according to the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety. The young pinniped was named “Bordeaux” based on where he was rescued. Bordeaux, the California sea lion pup rescued in Sunnyvale, was released back to the wild after recovery. (Photo: Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety) Bordeaux was skinny and starving, rescuers said, and was taken to The...

Many European countries are in a pickle of their own making: they’ve allowed unfettered immigration (often by people who despise their Western values), they’ve gone all in on green energy despite the fact that it’s not ready for prime time, and they’ve embraced woke politics even more than some of the wide-eyed leftists in our own country. But the small northwestern Euro country of Belgium (population 11.8 million) is waking up to the unfortunate fact that a lot of what’s going on isn’t doing them any favors. They can do all the windmills and solar farms they want, but if...

This video has gone viral in the last day on Instagram, X, and TikTok. Reading ability (proficiency and literacy skills) among youth has declined in recent years, especially in the US, with scores hitting historic lows on national assessments. 👀📚 pic.twitter.com/CCMpWdx2Ls— Rain Drops Media (@Raindropsmedia1) April 29, 2026Like a ghostly silhouette, this video demonstrates the gauche condition of America's hollow education system and its extraordinary failure to teach children to read. Here's Google Gemini reminding us that "extraordinary" is an intermediate level word. It's not a five-dollar word. It's just a normal part of language. "She wore a silhouette of...

US Robotics player Figure has rapidly scaled production of its Figure 03 humanoid robots, marking a shift from prototype to mass manufacturing. At its manufacturing facility, BotQ, in California, the company boosted output from one robot per day to one per hour—a 24-fold increase achieved in under four months. The ramp-up, supported by custom software and over 150 networked workstations, has enabled the delivery of more than 350 units. According to Figure, with improved supplier quality and rigorous inspection processes, production yields are rising steadily. The expansion is also accelerating data generation, a key factor in advancing the robots’ autonomous...

Are you ready for your car to decide if you’re fit to drive? If not, you’d better buckle up. A federal mandate declares new vehicles must have in-car surveillance for 2027 models onward that can decide if a person is fit to drive and can make the car inoperable via a so-called “kill switch.” And don’t count on brushing your teeth or gargling with Listerine to work around the driver monitor if you’ve had one too many. Most new cars won’t make the determination via breathalyzer, but infrared cameras continually monitoring potential impairment cues. They include pupil size, head movements,...

Police say one man has been taken into custodyPolice are investigating after two children were found deceased in a vehicle in northwest Calgary. At approximately 10 a.m. on Thursday, officers were called to the 4300 block of 14th Street N.W. Upon arrival, police located and searched a stopped vehicle. A man nearby was taken into custody. Staff Sgt. Darren Smith said the children are believed to be under the age of 10. The deaths are considered suspicious and the homicide unit is investigating, Smith said. "It was very shocking," Smith said. "This is very hard on our officers. Our officers...

The family of Freddy Ray Baca told authorities they "long feared what had happened to him,” although they never reported him missing. On Wednesday, those fears were confirmed. Remains found in 2023 “between two walls” in a building in Ruidoso Downs have been identified as Baca, who was 41 or 42 when he was last seen in 2018, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office announced in a news release. The sheriff’s office said the case is being investigated by the 12th Judicial District Major Crimes Unit. The release did not give a cause of death for Baca, and a call to...