Talking of #Dambusters 70th anniversary, a German bomber is to be salvaged from the English Channel – an annotated graphic

As today we salute the Dambusters on the 70th anniversary of their historic World War II mission, now also seems like a good time to share this infographic about the salvage mission planned for the only known surviving example of a German bomber, a Dornier Do 17 currently lying 30 metres below the surface of the water in the English Channel.

This example of the “flying pencil”, as the Luftwaffe bomber was known, was intercepted and shot down by RAF fighter aircraft during the Battle of Britain in 1940. She crash-landed in the Strait of Dover and is now lying on her back in the Goodwin Sands sandbanks, six kilometres from the English coast.

Click on the graphic for an expanded view.

World War II German bomber salvage

#Dambusters 70th anniversary of the May 1943 raid – an annotated graphic

The legend of the Dambusters – the 19 Lancaster bombers of the RAF’s 617 Squadron – was enshrined in war-time history 70 years ago, when the planes flew to Germany on the night of 16/17 May to drop their Barnes Wallis-designed bouncing bombs on the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams in the industrial heartland of the Ruhr region.

Codenamed Operation Chastise, 56 of the airmen who set out on the mission did not return. Eight bombers were shot down, 53 men were killed and three men were captured. Today’s infographic salutes the incredible bravery of all those who dared to fly that night.

For the full story of the secret mission, check out the dedicated Dambusters website. The Telegraph also has a nice graphic and a timeline detailing the events of that night in May 1943.

Click on the graphic for an expanded view.

Dambusters 70th anniversary

#Skylab space station launched 40 years ago – an annotated graphic

May 14, 1973: America launched its first space station, Skylab. June 29, 1979: James Bond’s first space adventure Moonraker opened in cinemas. This is not a coincidence.

July 11, 1979: NASA plans to boost Skylab to a higher orbit using the snazzy new Space Shuttle, but that project gets delayed and Skylab ultimately disintegrates on re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere, raining debris down on the peculiarly Scottish-sounding Balladonia region of Western Australia. More Skyfall than Skylab, one might say.

Space fans can enjoy our infographic today about the history of Skylab, below.

We’ve also included the tremendously exciting movie poster for Moonraker, just for fun. “Outer space now belongs to 007″ – in your face, NASA! James Bond fans might also enjoy this entertaining essay rating Skyfall vs Moonraker, to determine which is actually the more exciting James Bond film.

Click on the graphic for an expanded view.

Skylab celebrates 40th anniversary

Moonraker movie poster

Saudi Kingdom Tower to be the world’s tallest skyscraper – an annotated graphic

Here at E&T Towers, we always like to end the week on a high (sorry, couldn’t resist it), so herewith an infographic depicting the planned world’s tallest skyscraper.

Engineers in the Saudi city of Jeddah have begun laying the foundations for the Kingdom Tower, which when finished will be over 1km tall. Marvellous.

We can’t help feeling all this “world’s tallest building” one-up-manship is the architectural expression of national penis envy, but ours is not to reason why. And is it just us, or are these world’s tallest buildings all starting to look the same? Slender and pointy, with a disturbing similarity to those it inspired, like Keira Knightley in a Klan hood.

Click on the graphic for an expanded view.

Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Tower

 

#Hacking top 10 by country, as #cybercrime sweeps the globe – an annotated graphic

It is with little fanfare or surprise that China should come out on top of a list of most-active computer hacking countries. Maybe the margin of its superiority will raise an intrigued eyebrow or two, however – 41 per cent of the total, compared to the lowly 10 per cent of its nearest rival, the USA. They’re very busy in the peoples’ Republic. Meanwhile, old-school hacking legend Russia has slumped to fourth place, bested by Turkey of all countries. Gobble that nugget down, comrades!

Hacking, cybercrime and cyber-security are naturally big news on account of all this activity and E&T is keeping pace. Check out this little lot, all from the last month or so alone: £7.5m for cyber security training centres; China dismisses US cyber-espionage claims; UK security skills gap aiding cyber crime; Evasion techniques slipping through IT defences; Self-proclaimed LulzSec leader arrested in Australia; Cyber-attacks on businesses soar in past year; Basics key for businesses to beat the hackers; Controversial US cyber-security bill passes first stage; Obama shifts military focus to cyber-security; Chinese cyber-attacks eroding nation’s credibility; Everyday hackers’ are on the rise. 

Click on the graphic for an expanded view.

Top ten hacking countries

#Apple App Store set to tick over to 50 billion downloads – an annotated graphic

It may seem like pointless timewasting to many of us, but fans of Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Fruit Ninja and such like have pushed Apple’s App Store to the brink of its 50 billionth download. Whichever way you (fruit) slice it, that is one heck of a lot of downloads.

There’s a nify countdown on Apple’s homepage, as that golden figure draws ever nearer (and it’s going at quite a pace), so we present today this infographic detailing download history, market share and revenue generated to date. Who would have imagined this five years ago?

Click on the graphic for an expanded view.

Apple to hit 50 billion app downloads

#StarTrek #IntoDarkness – what are the chances of that happening?

So, anyone fancy a go on a real-life holodeck? What are the real-world possibilities of us enjoying the kind of technology tantalisingly dangled before us in Star Trek?

As the latest Trek adventure Into Darkness hits cinema screens the world over, E&T magazine offers an intriguing analysis of the engineering potential available to us today, what the immediate future holds – and what currently holds us back.

This story is about how the building blocks already at our disposal could ultimately deliver extraordinarily immersive augmented reality environments. They will need to undergo a huge amount of refinement and expansion before we see the mooted innovation, if at all.

However, the idea is a pathfinder. As communicators gave us flip-phones and medical tricorders are reflected by wireless monitoring for e-health, this speculative corporate science project aims to tell us in a more immediate sense about where computing is going in the short term and what we should aim for in terms of both software and hardware architectures.

Enough caveats for yer? Great. Let’s reveal the target: it is the holodeck from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

For those of you unfamiliar with the show, the holodeck is a space on the USS Enterprise capable of faithfully reproducing just about any environment, and allowing any crew member to enter it, walk around it, and interact with it as though it were ‘real’. Think of it as cosplay to the nth degree. Want to relive a classic 40s detective novel? Done. Or captain an 18th Century ship-of-the-line. Made so.

The technological driver is the shift from homogeneous to heterogeneous processing.

Read the rest of this article online now.

#SolarImpulse coast-to-coast flight across the US – an annotated graphic

She’s already up, up, up in the air, as the Solar Impulse plane starts her coast-to-coast journey across the USA, so we thought this was – quite literally – “high” time to share this annotated graphic about her journey.

Her design form, necessitated by solar-panel function, may look a bit bonkers (part Playmobil glider, part dragonfly), but her ambition is real. God speed you, solar empress!

Click on the graphic for an expanded view.

Solar Impulse plane to cross U.S.

Russia’s new generation of nuclear weapons and armed submarines – an annotated graphic

For those who hanker for the heady days of the Cold War and the tension of the 1980s nuclear arms race – ah, whither Ronnie and Maggie now, eh? – we bring you this infographic detailing Russia’s latest nuclear weaponry.

The first of a new fleet of eight Russian ballistic missile submarines entered service recently, with each sub boasting (yes, actually boasting) 16 Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles – ICBMs to their friends – which we assume means they can be launched from one continent to destroy something on another continent. Excellent.

We still wonder what the point of all this is, but who are we to question the wisdom of nations arming themselves for mass global destruction?

Click on the graphic for an expanded view.

Russia’s new nuclear arsenal

US Navy plans to install high-power laser weapons on its boats – an annotated graphic

The U.S. Navy has announced that it will deploy a laser weapon for the first time on one of its ships. The laser could be capable of shooting down drones and disabling vessels. Clearly excited at the prospect, Peter Morrison at the Office of Naval Research’s Solid-State Laser Technology Maturation Program, is reported as saying, “The future is here”.

Technically, the future is never here, of course, as what is here now is the present. Grammatical time-slips aside, this development means the potential transformation of warfare – not least the cost of conducting it. Since the laser runs on electricity, it can fire as long as there is power, at an estimated cost of less than $1 dollar per shot. With parallel advances in solar panel technology, a boat out at sea might conceivably never run out of laser-firing power.

E&T covered this laser weapons story in more detail last week. There’s also a link to a video at the end of that news story, which shows an airborne drone being shot down by a boat-based laser. Ka-chow!

U.S. Navy to deploy sea-based laser weapon