Defending an oil tanker from pirates is a tricky business. On the one hand, you’ve got cargo worth upwards of 100 million in black gold; then again, you really don’t want bullets and RPGs whizzing around when your vessel is basically a floating bomb. Still, the capture of the Greek-owned Maran Centaurus , a 300,000-ton oil tanker and one of the largest prizes for the infamous Somali pirates, is a clear sign that something has to be done. An infographic from gCaptain.com and Oil and Gas News shows one solution: load a tanker up with all the high-tech goodies we can. It’s a kitchen sink approach, with everything from unmanned aerial drones and robotic boats, fire hoses, LRAD sonic cannons (which helped successfully defend the Maersk Alabama earlier this month) to crazier deterrents such as electric fences and dazzle guns . Well, all that and crossed fingers, of course. Click on through to see a larger graphic.

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Transforming oil tankers from floating goldmines into floating fortresses

Rocket-propelled grenades, probably best known for their supporting roles in various Michael Bay movies, are a real and ever-present danger to armored vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a tough problem: How do you stop an explosive that’s about to hit your Humvee in a tenth of a second? You don’t — you let DARPA’s Iron Curtain system do it for you. Mounted atop a vehicle, the Iron Curtain has three essential parts: a radar to detect the incoming RPG, an optical sensor that can scan the weapon and determine the best place to strike within half an inch, and an explosive countermeasure that destroys the RPG a fraction of second before it hits. The nature of the countermeasure prevents the RPG warhead from exploding properly; check out the video after the jump that shows a Iron Curtain-equipped Humvee being blasted five times with RPGs with virtually no damage. The U.S. Army just approved $8 million in funding for the system, and plans are underway to test Iron Curtain in the field in July 2010. We’re impressed with the potential efficacy of this system, but wonder if the same result could be achieved with something less sophisticated (and cheaper). Equipping every armored vehicle with a radar-driven search-and-destroy system just sounds a little pricey, and some say that special cloth shielding could also be an effective RPG stopper.

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New armored vehicles to destroy RPGs in midair

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider always had the chops to be the new proton accelerating sheriff in town, but this morning in Geneva the monstrous 17-mile-ring finally proved it. The LHC “accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV,” according to CERN, making it the “world’s highest energy particle accelerator.” 1.18 TeV is head and shoulders above the previous world record of 0.98 TeV, which was set in 2001 by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s Tevatron collider in Illinois. What’s even more impressive is that the LHC is still just warming up. It’s only been online for 10 days , and saw its first low energy collision a week ago. When the LHC starts getting serious in the first quarter of 2010, it will supposedly be causing collisions at 7 TeV — or 3.5 TeV per beam. CERN , via Scientific American

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Large Hadron Collider sets world record, now the most powerful collider in town

This seems a great illustration of why taking a positive, light-hearted tone makes the message. If there’d even been a hint of resentment or mean-spiritedness in this ad (for one of Murdoch’s papers!), it would just invite ridicule.

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Cute Apple parody from The Sun

Mike Arrington writes that the CrunchPad project has self-destructed over greed, jealously and miscommunication. Short version: the hardware partner tried to screw him and it is now lawsuit time. This is a real shame, because the low-end tablet had a great design, was open to hackers, and represented a valiant independent effort to break into a market dominated by enormous corporations.

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Arrington ends CrunchPad project

Hardly a couple of weeks have gone by since Google’s Chrome OS was rolled out in all its glory , when Dell jumps into the fray with an easy way to load the beta operating system on its nifty Mini 10v netbook . Dell gurus have slightly modified Google’s Chrome OS to work specifically on the company’s tiny, yet versatile Mini 10v. All you need to do is download the ChromiumOS image file, load it on an 8GB USB thumb drive, and then you’re off and installing it onto this little laptop with no hacking required. Of course, the Chrome OS isn’t going to be completely stable, since it’s not due to be completely finished until year from now, but this would be a magnificent way to get a feel for this upcoming juggernaut from Google. This Dell Mini 10v has a remarkable story itself, widely hacked to run the Mac Snow Leopard OS with ease, although Apple has been breaking that compatibility with the latest updates to Snow Leopard. Still, for $279, the Dell Mini 10v could be a fertile playground for OS pioneers. And, if you don’t have an 8GB USB drive, here’s a “diet” version that’ll fit on a 1GB drive . Direct 2 Dell , via Geeky Gadgets

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Dude, you’re getting Google Chrome OS on Dell

I love the electronics videos Collin Cunningham produces for Make: Online . Not only does he describe his projects in an entertaining way, he also scores the trippy music for them. After checking out a few projects involving IR heart monitors, I decided to have a go at the interface myself. Seen above are the results of my first experimentation with pulse oximetry. Getting the setup up and running satisfactorily required a bit more time and tinkering than I’d expected - especially after reversing a premature mod to my emitter/detector pair. The next version I try will either use a higher output emitter (see Charles Martin’s version ) or some amplification hardware (as used in Meng Li’s sensor ). Collin’s Lab: Infrared heart sensor

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Collin Cunningham of MAKE builds an infrared heart monitor

Just one look at this countdown traffic light and you know it’s a great idea. A progress bar on a stop light? We’re on board with that. Besides alleviating frustration, designer Damjan Stankovi? sees his idea saving energy — when motorists know there’s plenty of time until the light turns green, they’ll shut their engines off to conserve fuel. This design concept should be immediately implemented on every traffic signal in the world. Maybe the countdown feature could be used on the yellow and green lights, too. This can’t be difficult to make, either, since many traffic lights are already using LEDs that could be easily rearranged. Via Yanko Design

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Finally, the countdown traffic light

This design for a gun-shaped camera is unlikely to be mass-produced. It looks easy enough to make one with a 3D printer, though.

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Concept design for gun-shaped camera

Eager as we are to see wireless HDTV, progress is slow. Rocketfish just sped things up significantly with its wireless HD adapter, $600 worth of wireless HDMI that’ll let you move 1080p video 33 feet from source to screen with nary a wire between. This is just the beginning. This is the WirelessHD brand of cable-free 1080p magic, which only works within 33 feet — a better choice is the higher-quality and 100-foot-spanning WHDI , soon to be slipped into notebooks, projectors, TVs and receivers. The question is, can WHDI be had for less than $600? Not yet, but WHDI creator Amimon tells us that’ll happen soon. Let the competition begin! Via Best Buy

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WirelessHD adapter eliminates pesky wires, almost affordable