Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-vampires-are-made-of dept.

Spies and soldiers might soon be able to go behind enemy lines using a parachute or glider made from a polymer that vanishes on exposure to sunlight.

“This started off with building small sensors for the government — microphones, cameras, things that detect metal,” says Paul Kohl at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who presented the work at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in California this week.

The idea was that these sensors could be spread across a battlefield, say, and used to collect information for the army. “But you don’t want anyone to discover it and take it apart and see how it works,” says Kohl.

[...] They based their polymer on a chemical called an aldehyde and mixed in other chemical additives that can either make it rigid for use in a glider or sensor, or flexible to make a fabric for a parachute.

Sunlight or artificial light can trigger the material to go poof. Or, in true spy style, a small light emitting diode can be placed inside a device to trigger the self-destruct process on demand. All that’s left behind is a residue and a faint smell, which Kohl says are from the additives that control the rigidity of the material.

Kohl says he and his team have already made a glider with a six-foot wingspan from the material. It can only carry objects weighing about 1 kilogram, so it could only be used to covertly transport objects, not people, for the moment. The glider would have to travel under cover of darkness to avoid disintegrating in flight.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:30AM (6 children)

    by aiwarrior (1812) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:30AM (#885977) Journal

    Why is the USA obsessed with battlefield things. This could as well be for fire monitoring or wide area non-polluting data gathering. It could be for Noooo. *battlefield* and other such thing. What an obsession.
    So much research into the battlefield yet fires happen in apocalyptic dimensions in California. Go figure.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Mer on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:20AM

    by Mer (8009) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:20AM (#885983)

    Why would you need UV self destruct for either of those things? A regular drone would do the trick and probably be more convenient.

    --
    Shut up!, he explained.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:22AM (2 children)

    by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:22AM (#885993) Journal

    "The idea was that these sensors could be spread across a battlefield, say, and used to collect information for the army. “But you don’t want anyone to discover it and take it apart and see how it works,” says Kohl."

    Replace the word 'battlefield' with 'earth' and you will have the correct idea which way this is going.

    Everyone is a combatant, all of the time. Everything is primarily a weapon, and then we might get some beneficial tools if there is no value in its secrecy.

    The 5kg 'package' they want to deliver to the moon will always be weapons though. The people who want to blow everything up all the time aren't very bright, so they have to find pretty lies to tell us technologists so we help them build the world to suit their nightmares.

    But looking for a human agenda in scientific development at this point may be hopeless, the job vacancy ad might as well say 'Intelligent masochists with no moral compass needed to help develop the next generation of human/cattle control mechanisms.'

    But if you tell the people who 'love america' it can be used to explode people who speak different languages and wear funny clothes on the other side of the world, you don't need to even print out any explanatory materials, it just gets approved.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:03AM (1 child)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:03AM (#886028)

      They don't want to blow everything up all the time, they're scared - living in constant fear that somebody else might blow them up, and so they want to make sure they can blow everybody else up just to be sure they at least get revenge, and maybe instill enough fear into the "other side" to ensure their safety. MAD - just as sane as it sounds.

      If you look across the last 100 years, most children used to be raised in fear of their parents, and by extension all adults or anyone big enough to cause them harm. All in all, it would seem that we're better off in this brave new experiment of raising children without a near-drowning in fear daily psychology, but, if you think about it, it's extremely un-natural. Only the apex predators could even pretend to not live in fear, and most of them still have plenty of mortal enemies.

      As old as our politicians are, they certainly saw some application of fear to control themselves and their peers - it's not surprising that they still live that way.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:40PM

        by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:40PM (#886326) Journal

        I would feel a lot more comfortable if the paranoid bunker dwellers did not seem to want to dissect my brain while I'm still living in order to make me a more accurate stick figure in their war game, or outright control the future of my country by playing miltary spy games on unsuspecting civilians while pretending to be under civilian control.

        Then handing all that data on me over to epstein and co so they can covertly ruin my life and get away with all crimes.

        Yeah, you can see my usa usa usa chant is growing feint...

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:58AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:58AM (#886027)

    Fire monitoring? As in: if the thing self destructs, there might have been a fire there?

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 27 2019, @03:21PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @03:21PM (#886121) Journal

    Why is the USA obsessed with battlefield things.

    Why are Defense Contractors obsessed with battlefield things.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.