FASTER? PLEASE! Breakthrough rocket engine could accelerate to 99% the speed of light.

Burns’ concept, called the “helical engine,” is not a single closed loop. Instead, it’s a helical structure that resembles a stretched-out spring. Burns described the engine as accelerating ions confined in a loop to moderate relativistic speeds, and then varying their velocity to make slight changes to their mass.

The engine moves ions back and forth along the direction of travel to generate thrust. Notably, the engine has no moving parts, except for ions that travel in a vacuum line and are trapped inside electric and magnetic fields.

This concept sounds impressive in theory, but it has some significant practical challenges to overcome. According to New Scientist, the helical chamber would have to be quite large, precisely around 200 meters (656 feet) long and 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter.

Generating 1 newton of thrust would require producing 165 megawatts of energy, which is equivalent to the power output of a power station required to accelerate a mass of 1 kilogram per second squared. Therefore, despite the enormous input, the output is incredibly small, making it a terribly inefficient process.

But in the vacuum of space? It just might work. “The engine itself would be able to get to 99 per cent the speed of light if you had enough time and power,” Burns told New Scientist.

How much time and how much power aren’t exactly trivial questions.

HMM: Speaker McCarthy Warms Up to Impeaching Joe Biden.

SKYNET SMILES: Metals Magically Repair Themselves in Breakthrough Discovery That Could Bring About An Engineering Revolution. “Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories studying how microscopic cracks form in metals found that under the right circumstances, metals repair themselves, conjuring imagery similar to the famous villain seen in the film Terminator 2: Judgement Day.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: The FBI Verified Details About Hunter Biden’s Shady Business Deals, but It Didn’t Matter to the Prosecutor.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, CHAIRMAN XI: Chinese Foreign Minister, ‘Mistress’, Rocket Chiefs All Missing.

INFLAMMATION HAS TURNED OUT TO BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PREVIOUSLY APPRECIATED: Inflammation discovery could slow aging, prevent age-related diseases.

“RACISM UNDERLIES DISPARITIES IN MATERNAL MORTALITY IN AMERICAS, SAYS UN”:  No, it doesn’t, says Gail.

DECOUPLING: Cathie Wood’s $9 billion flagship Ark fund cut all exposure to China after Beijing started cracking down on Jack Ma. “We saw the trouble that Alibaba, Alipay got into — Jack Ma specifically, and we began to wonder ‘Oh no, is this a broad-based crackdown by the government on any company or person with too much power?’ And that’s exactly what it was, as it turns out, in hindsight.”

SEVERAL OF THE SHARKS ARE COMING OUT AS TRANS: Austin Gallagher: ‘Shark Week’ 2023 all about pushing boundaries.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: UAE and Turkey Sign MoU to Co-Develop Commercial Launch Vehicle and Launch Site.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: The DOJ Sues Texas Over the Floating Barriers. “Do you know what would be nice? If just for once the people in charge of Biden and all the rest of the Democrat Legion of Destruction would come out and say, ‘We hate you, we hate America, and we want to destroy you, your family, and everything you love. Then we’ll rebuild what’s left using our socialist playset so we can enjoy looking down at you from our after-party in Aspen while your children fetch us another drink.'”

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Rule of Law? What Rule of Law?

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Sedentary childhood linked to higher risk for metabolic syndrome in adulthood.

THAT’S GENERAL BERGER, NOT SOCK DOC THIEF SANDY BERGER: Berger Goes Salamander:

Again because it can never be said enough; our military will not be able to meet the challenge of this century until:

We replace Goldwater-Nichols.
We redefine the definition and emphasis of “joint” as it is now practiced, especially in the acquisitions arena.
The COCOM is re-baselined.
On the last part at least, Berger is with me.

Read the whole thing.

ONLY 10? 10 Media Hack Factories That Pooh-Poohed The Biden-Burisma Scandal As A Conspiracy Theory. “A scandal involving our now-president selling out his country for foreign dollars is nothing less than earth-shattering, but the biggest scandal of all is the coverup being run by everyone from the Justice Department and FBI to the compromised corporate press.”

Compromised, willing, complicit. criminal — take your pick.

READER FAVORITE: You Will Own Nothing: Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back. #CommissionEarned

NEWS FROM HIGHER EDUCATION: Seton Hall President Resigns After Law School Theft Scandal.

BREAKING: Ron DeSantis Involved in Car Accident in Tennessee.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: It’s NPR vs. NPR on ‘right-wing conspiracy theory’ about eating bugs.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Carlee Russell, who went missing in Alabama after 911 call about child, says through attorney she wasn’t kidnapped. “Derzis said charges against Russell are possible and his office is discussing the case with the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office. Police do not know what Russell’s motivation was, Derzis said.”

A BILLION HERE AND A BILLION THERE…: The Five States Sending the Most High Earners to Florida All Have This One Thing in Common. “The Florida Chamber of Commerce might just have a message for the five states sending the most high earners to the Sunshine State, even if it’s a sure thing they’ll never listen.”

HERE’S HOW THAT SPACE PROGRAM IS COMING ALONG: ‘Swarm of boulders’ in space shows the gory aftermath of NASA’s asteroid-smashing DART mission.

On Sept. 26, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft disintegrated as it smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos, which is 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, successfully changing the asteroid’s trajectory.

Now, by using Hubble to study the impact, astronomers have found that DART’s roughly 14,540 mph (23,400 km/h) impact on the asteroid produced a “swarm of boulders.” The rocks, which range from 3 to 22 feet (0.9 to 6.7 meters) in diameter, were most likely shaken loose from the asteroid’s surface during the impact. The researchers published their findings July 20 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“This tells us for the first time what happens when you hit an asteroid and see material coming out up to the largest sizes,” David Jewitt, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement. “The boulders are some of the faintest things ever imaged inside our solar system.”

One small step for planetary defense, one giant leap for Hubble imaging.

THE LEFT LOOKS AFTER ITS OWN: Leftist prosecutor booted from office gets $210,000 job at UC Berkeley: ‘If Boudin was hired to relate his experience, the only take could be how to destroy a city’s criminal justice system piece by piece,’ critic says. Plus, a reminder: “The new law center director is the son of Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, who both served time in prison for murder and robbery.” They’re former members of the Weather Underground. Boudin got a cushy setup with Columbia and a private foundation after getting out of prison; Gilbert got out of prison early thanks to Andrew Cuomo.

SURE, BUT THEY WANT YOU EXECUTED ANYWAY JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE A MAN: Piers Morgan: If I made a movie that treated women the way Barbie treats men, feminists would want me executed.

GET OFF MY LAWN: IRS to End ‘Unannounced Visits’ to Taxpayers.