OK, so even though there's still some secrecy surrounding the F-22 Raptor, it's safe to say that contrary to what we see in the new movie Transformers, it can't turn into a giant anthropomorphic robot capable of swinging between city buildings like a monkey, then switching back in mid-air into an advanced fighter jet. For the estimated $300 million-plus the U.S. Air Force is paying for the first round of Raptors, though, we sort of think it should. Clearly the moviemakers think highly of the Raptor: According to the Transformers Web site, the alien robot Starscream chooses to resemble the F-22 because it's the pinnacle of human technical achievement. And, you know, morphing into an iPhone wouldnt really be all that intimidating.—Gregory Mone

Three years ago, I was shot by the U.S. Air Force. It hurt like hell,
but it didn't kill me. Nor were there any residual effects. In fact,
five seconds after they shot me, I could barely tell that anything had
happened at all. The weapon they hit me with was the Active Denial
System—a microwave pain beam. I volunteered as a test subject
for a story on nonlethal weapons, and the Air Force saw no reason not to shoot a journalist with the thing. You can
read about my superhuman pain-endurance capabilities here.
(Actually, I sprang into the air like a ballerina the second they
turned it on.)

After several years of further development and
miniaturization, it looks like the Air Force is about to deploy the
pain beam to Iraq as a crowd-control device. It remains controversial,
because the implications of its strategic use are still unknown, and
some think the long-term residual effects on victims have yet to be
fully assessed. I can tell you from experience, though, that apart from
my newfound ability to heat up cups of tea simply by staring intensely
at them for 15 seconds, I've suffered no ill effects. [Side note: In the Wired article below, the writer's being a bit dramatic. The truth is, you don't actually feel like
you've been dipped in molten lava, and you don't almost faint from
shock and pain. Your body acts faster than you can think, so you don't
stick around long enough to get even close to fainting. Deployed
versions would have built-in cutoffs to prevent the beam from lingering
long enough on an individual to have such effects.] Also, watch for our
February feature on nonlethal weapons being adopted by the Los Angeles
Sheriff's Department. —Eric Adams

Link via Wired

Dot-com thrillionaire Elon Musk and his company SpaceX of California suffered a painful setback today when their low-cost rocket Falcon I was lost somewhere over the Pacific Ocean just seconds after its maiden launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Musk, the founder and former owner of PayPal, aspires to build a new generation of affordable transportation to space. "We want to be the Southwest Airlines of space launches," he told PopSci in 2004.

The $6.7 million launch vehicle, which was carrying a U.S. Air Force FalconSat-2 satellite, cost roughly two-thirds less than satellite-launching rockets made by big-name competitors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

SpaceX has not yet reported the cause of the failure; check out their website for the latest updates. —Nicole Dyer

G-FORCE—WHAT IS IT?
You’ve seen us mention g-forces in articles about new jet aircraft and cars?many times with reference to their being a very serious obstacle to overcome when developing ever faster technology. But what are they? Gravitational force is the force of gravity pulling you toward the Earth. When you undergo a change in speed and direction, that force increases in proportion to the rate of change. To calculate the magnitude of the force you feel as g’s increase, multiply your weight by the number of g’s.