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President Jiang Zemin gets an update on China´s Terfenol-D project. The U.S. Navy spent millions of dollars to develop Terfenol-D in the early 1980s, and intelligence experts estimate that the People's Republic of China (PRC) has devoted extensive resources to try to steal it. Insight has learned that these PRC efforts have paid off. The spy target is an exotic material made up of two types of rare-earth metals called lanthanides, terbium and dysprosium, plus iron (FE). The NOL stands for Naval Ordnance Laboratory. Hence the name Terfenol-D. Those who have worked with this exotic material call it almost magical....

China produces the entire world’s supply of samarium, a rare earth metal that the United States and its allies need to rebuild inventories of fighter jets, missiles and other hardware.China’s strict controls on the export of heat-resistant magnets made with rare earth minerals have exposed a major vulnerability in the U.S. military supply chain.Without these magnets, the United States and its allies in Europe will struggle to refill recently depleted inventories of military hardware.For more than a decade, the United States has failed to develop an alternative to China’s supply of a specific kind of rare earth crucial for the...

Strange Blue jelly-like balls fall from the sky. Related to Hurricane Helene? Military Experiment? Good Conspiracy?................... 00:5:39 VIDEO.....................

Most cultural institutions and research laboratories still rely on magnetic tape to archive their collections. Hitachi recently announced that it has developed a medium that can outlast not only this old-school format but also CDs, DVDs, hard drives and MP3s. The electronics giant partnered with Kyoto University's Kiyotaka Miura to develop “semiperpetual” slivers of quartz glass that Hitachi says can preserve information for hundreds of millions of years with virtually no degradation. The prototype is made of a square of quartz two centimeters wide and two millimeters thick. It houses four layers of dots that are created with a femtosecond...

WASHINGTON, D.C. November 13, 2009 -- A group of researchers at the City College of New York is developing a new way to generate power for planes and automobiles based on materials known as piezoelectrics, which convert the kinetic energy of motion into electricity. They will present their concept later this month at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society's (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics will take place from November 22-24 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. About a half-inch by one inch in size, these devices might be mounted on the roof or tail of a car or...