U.S. Navy Propellers To Be Replaced With Shocking New Tech

A report reveals that US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a 42-month initiative to create a marine propellant framework, a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) drive, that employs no moving components to quietly move ships and boats using magnets and an electric current.

Military, Academic, and commercial researchers have been looking into ways to use magnetic forces to allow high-efficiency pumps to replace a propeller and drive shaft since the 1960s, and their work feeds the PUMP (Principles of Undersea Magnetohydrodynamic Pumps) program.

The report explains the difficulty of growing MHD drive technology up to an extensive system has been overcome because of recent advances in creating strong magnetic fields.

However, the PUMP program must combat erosion and corrosion, which will occur naturally to the system’s electrodes over time. When magnetism, electricity, and saltwater interact, gas bubbles may develop on the electrode surfaces, which may break down and damage electrode surfaces.

DARPA’s PUMP program aims to create novel electrode materials suitable for a high-grade MHD drive in order to address the materials problem. To develop an electrode material system and prototype a scalable MHD drive, PUMP will examine several methods for reducing the effects of hydrolysis and erosion.

According to a report, not everything the agency has created has been a weapon in the conventional sense. DARPA has been credited with helping to build the internet and global positioning systems.

Since unveiling its BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) project in 2013, which consists of numerous initiatives devoted to producing “revolutionary” improvements in neuroscience, DARPA has spent extensively on brain technologies. 

These technologies have promise for rehabilitation but also run the danger of being employed unethically. 

Reports reveal neuroscientists have voiced concerns about the ethical implications of these kinds of advances. Scientists announced in 2013 that they had effectively implanted fake memories in a mouse’s brain, the same year BRAIN was launched.