Page 5 - Technology Facts

The Department of Defense used 1760 Playstation 3s to build a supercomputer because it was the cheapest option!

The United States Air Force Research Laboratory has completed what it calls the Condor Cluster, a supercomputer made entirely of PlayStation 3 consoles. The Condor Cluster, housed in Rome, New York, reportedly has capabilities heads and tails above every other interactive computer in the Department of Defense.

Made of 1,760 PlayStation 3 processors and 168 general purpose processors, the Condor Cluster provides extreme power for it's relatively low cost. It has the ability to calculate 500 trillion floating point operations per second (TFLOPS), but was made for $2 million thanks to the cost of the PS3.

Mark Barnell, director of the Air Force Research Laboratory's High Power Computing division, says this is "a cost savings of between 10 and 20 times for the equivalent capability." It also uses 1/10 the power of a comparable supercomputer, apparently making it "green."

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Traveling between any 2 points on Earth through a gravity train through the center of the Earth would take just 42 minutes!

A gravity train is a theoretical mode of transportation intended to go between two points on a sphere. It follows a straight line through the center of the sphere. If you've seen the remake of Total Recall, you might remember that a gravity train was a major plot point of the movie.

On earth, a gravity train would take 42 seconds to to go from any two points on the planet. This would be the case if it was a perfect sphere and of uniform density. There are a number of reasons why a gravity train is a practical impossibility.

For starters, the pressure that a train would be put under through the center of the Earth is extremely high. There is no known material that could withstand that kind of pressure. Extreme heat would also be a problem. Finally, there tunnel would have to be completely airless, because air friction would make the train unusable.

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The default Windows XP desktop is a real picture of a real location with no digital enchantments

You may be familiar with the Windows XP background. It shows a beautiful green field underneath a crystal blue sky. A few clouds are scattered across the screen. The background is named "Bliss" and is an actual photo taken in Sonoma County, California.

Professional photographer Charles O'Rear took the photo for the digital design company HighTurn. Despite it's unreal appearance, O'Rear maintains that the photograph was not digitally enhanced.

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All the batteries in the world could only support 10 minutes worth of the world's demand for energy

The world is in an energy crisis. Due to the negative side effects and limited nature of fossil fuels, we need to come up with another, more sustainable way to power our planet. Some of the more well-known alternatives are solar, wind and hyrdro-electric power.

One less known option is battery power. While we frequently interact with batteries in our every day life, they are not incredibly efficient. We will most likely need a big innovative breakthrough in battery power. As it is now, all the batteries in the world could store less than 10 minutes of all the energy in the world.

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By replacing metal wires with fiber optics, the next US tank will be 2 tons lighter than the current ones!

The first Abrams tank, the M1, entered military service in 1980 and is named after General Creighton Abrams. Only two other Abrams tanks have been brought to military service since then, the M1A1 and the M1A2.

Despite being a powerful tank, the Abrams tank is often criticized because of it's size and weight. The M1A2 weighs almost 70 tons, and is difficult to transport by air. The tank is so heavy, it can't even cross bridges! The newest model, the M1A3 is planned to be lighter and more maneuverable than tanks before it.

One of the ways the tank is going to she'd a few pounds, is by switching the Abrams internal computer system which uses metal cables, to a more modern computer system that uses fiber optics. This switch will cause the tank to lose 2 tons!

Learn more about the Abrams Tank by clicking the source!

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