It's not sharks with frickin' laser beams, but ...

... pretty cool regardless:

Modern militaries depend on fuel. Nearly 80 percent of the supplies delivered to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan consist of fuel, and it's no surprise that those military convoys are frequently the targets of insurgents.

"Do you know how many people have died delivering gasoline?" said Tom Nugent, president and co-founder of LaserMotive, a Kent, Wash.-based company looking to replace fossil fuels with laser power.

The answer to Nugent's question? Nearly 1,000 soldiers in the last decade. And that's why Nugent wants to drastically reduce the need for delivering fossil fuels. His company's approach could save lives.

It starts with a machine able to emit a beam of laser light. The beam is different from the lasers used in pointers and industrial applications. It's wide -- about 8 inches wide as it leaves the transmitter -- and then spreads wider as it travels. The beam emitter is located at a ground-based unit and operated by a person, who could control it from the same location or remotely from an entirely different place altogether.

The operator uses the machine to fire the laser beam at a photovoltaic collector located on an unmanned autonomous vehicle (UAV), small plane or helicopter. The current range of the system is about a kilometer.

By the time the beam reaches the collector on board the UAV, it's still about 10 times as intense as sunlight, although human eyes can't see it since its wavelength is deep red to near-infrared. The power levels are in the hundreds of watts to kilowatt range -- definitely hot, but not deadly at the range where it hits the plane.

When the laser hits the photovoltaic device, the photons in the light beam are converted to electricity in the same way that solar cells convert sunlight into electricity. But because the laser beam is comprised of a single wavelength of light, the conversion to electricity is much more efficient than converting multiple wavelengths of sunlight to energy.
The photons become electricity and the energy needed to fly the AUV.

Awww ...

3-week old Sand Cat (Felis margarita) near Tel Aviv, Israel.

Speed Bump Installation, Amsterdam Style

As documented in an earlier post, street work began beneath my window at 7 this morning, and it turns out that what they were installing was one of the large, gently sloped speed bumps you see on many streets in the historic center.  They got this done between 7 and noon ... I suspect this would take about two weeks in Seattle:

Interest from one of the neighbors

The other day they did brickwork on my corner, I think that's a car-sharing parking spot

EU Galaxies Now Far, Far Away

The BBC reports that Apple has been granted an injunction against Samsung that will prevent sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Europe, alleging that the Galaxy is basically just a copy of iPad 2.  Apple is after the same relief in the U.S.

Already owning the No. 2 tablet in the world, the ASUS Transformer running Android 3.2, not an Apple or Samsung, I can only look at this and say "Huh ... ain't that a shame?"

Apple remains worried about this:

"Hey what's all the racket?"

7:30 this morning, time for some craftsmanlike street repair below my window! Fortunately jetlag has me wide awake at 5:30 am, but I'm not so sure all my neighbors are on that schedule. Notice that this does not stop bicycle traffic at all, of course!

**update** -- the hole is now twice as big, but now that they've opened up that gaping hole in the street, the boys have been on a break for the last hour or so. Good union!

Liftoff for Jupiter

OK, enough of the doom and gloom about us not having any manned space launches on U.S. vehicles for a little while ... we're still the ones exploring this solar system. Here's the liftoff aboard an Atlas V booster of NASA's Juno mission, set to reach Jupiter in 2016 on a scientific research mission.

SONY distribution center, Enfield, England

"Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."
The Dark Knight