The speed of fast is defined by the fastest animal’s or machines of any given period. In the 1800’s fast was a pack of horses, 1900’s saw the jet redefine fast and now hypersonic missiles are just about to redefine fast for us all. This won’t just be a slight adjustment to the definition either, this will be a complete re-write of the definition.
The Russian MoD (Ministry of Defence) have been talking up the capabilities of their next generation hypersonic missiles for the last 2 years. The Zircon, Avanguard and the ABM system. Of the three it is the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Interceptor system that really grabs attention and redefines fast. It is unnaturally fast, instantly fast, the kind of fast that requires expletives to describe properly.
The cat wars are entering a new phase as the animal arms
race accelerates to the next level, the cat army is going to have to seriously lift
its game. Not only are fish now able to drive a fish tank but now Rats are
driving mobile armoured vehicles.
Lotus don’t just produce some of the most spectacular sports cars in the world, no they produce the cars that dreams are made of. They are a dream factory and the latest four wheeled dream machine to emerge from the mists of Lotus’ imagination is the purely electric Evija. With 1972 horsepower this is the eclectic hypercar that will represent Lotus in the looming electric hypercar wars due to begin in 2020.
Dreams are at their most powerful when they are chased, when
we do our best to convert them from imagination to reality. The Queen of Shitty
Robots Simone Giertz had a dream, a crazy whacky dream to own the world’s first
Tesla pickup truck, and the pursuit of this dream is cool on so many levels that
it just has to be seen.
Optical illusions are candy for curious minds and artist Sean
Augustine March has crafted a full candy store of illusions. His latest piece
of brain candy is the mind-bending lamp Fresnel Major. One of the slickest
examples of Infinity Cube available it seems to bend the very properties of physics
to create an infinity of space within a handy little glass box.
At their very core every infinity mirror is based on the
power of pointing a mirror at another mirror, bouncing light between the two.
Adding Dichroic glass to the equation adds an interesting twist that changes
the colour of the light as it bounces between the reflective surfaces.
Ken Block, the master of sideways madness has gathered his
team of spanner wielding maniacs for Gymkhana Ten. To celebrate the release of
this tenth Gymkhana the ‘The Hoonigans’ have assembled 10 extreme tyre slaying
street racing machines. With so much horsepower assembled it should be no
surprise that this epic Gymkhana video is also the longest so far at 19 minutes.
Due for release in 2020 Elon Musk’s second-generation
Roadster is still a couple of years away from hitting the road but it already
has chins wagging. The king of the funny wagging chins Jay Leno recently
experienced the insane acceleration that 10,000-foot pounds of torque can produce,
and his reaction was priceless. Suffice
as to say he went from curious to wanting one in under 1.9 seconds.
When I was a child I remember seeing advertisements for antigravity and UFO kits available via mail order. Advertised in the back of magazines these kits captured the imagination of many people for years. A simple search of YouTube will turn up dozens of examples of these types of devices in spooky action. With nothing more than the application of some electricity they will leap from the ground and sail through the air.
To celebrate the GT-R’s 50th birthday Nissan and Italdesign have spared no expense in producing an extreme GT-R, this is the GT-R50, Godzilla adorned in a spectacular Italian suit. With only 50 of the GT-R50’s to be produced and starting at $1.4 million dollars this is the fantasy GT-R brought to life.
The birth of the GT-R legend began in 1969 with the first Skyline GT-R, a car that quickly became a racing legend. Not only was the GT-R a legend on the track but it was a supercar that you could live with, a daily driver that combined Japanese reliability, comfort and affordability with levels of performance that could take on any challenger.
Imagine the surprise on the faces of researches as they worked away in the middle of northern Russia’s frozen wilderness when a giant Ice Breaker cruises by, only meters away. Getting this up close and personal with a 490-foot-long ship while on seemingly solid ice was not on the researcher’s schedule that’s for sure.
Travelling along the Yenisei River in minus 50-degree Celsius temperatures you might not expect to see another living soul, but for this team of adventurers a very large surprise was on the cards. The Taymyr nuclear powered ice breaker is one of the largest in the world with the shallow draft vessel designed to open up frozen rivers exactly as it was on the day. Driver Evgeny Shatalov even got close enough to touch the vessel as it cruised by. Let’s just hope they were on the right side of the ice breaker as there was now a very long, cold and wet hole in the ice behind it.
