This pretty piece is was fashioned from old radio and camera parts, and submitted to the Make Magazine Flickr Pool. [Make on Flickr via Make]

This retractable roller ball pen features a "special 'gun sight'-shaped clip," a gun-barrel design and a stand that serves as the grip. It's even made by a company called ACME, which seems very appropriate. On the negative side, the pen does run $130, which makes me wonder how Wile E. Coyote could afford all that crap. [Acme via Sci-Fi Wire]

“Any kind of exposure you could give to someone that wouldn’t burn them to a crisp would produce a sound too weak to have any effect,” said Kenneth Foster, a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Foster knows what he's talking about, too. In 1974 he published the first research on the microwave auditory effect.

Fellow scientist and microwave research author Bill Guy agrees, citing some hard facts to support his conclusions:

Guy says that experiments have demonstrated that radiation at 40 microjoules per pulse per square centimeter produces sound at zero decibels, which is just barely in hearing range. To produce sound at 60 decibels, or the sound of normal conversation, requires 40 watts per square centimeter of radiation. “That would kill you pretty fast,” Guy says. Producing an unpleasant sound, at about 120 decibels, would take 40 million W/cm2 of energy. One milliwatt per square centimeter is considered to be the safety threshold.

Both scientists were in agreement about one other thing too: the MEDUSA just morphed from a crowd-control device into a monstrous weapon. We need more of those, right? [IEEE Spectrum Online]

And if you're thinking ear plugs are this thing's Kryptonite, think again. Lee Sadovnik of Sierra Nevada Corp. said normal audio safety limits are off the table since the sound bypasses the eardrums and emanates from within the skull. "The repel effect is a combination of loudness and the irritation factor," he said. "You can’t block it out."

Wet blanket James Lin of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago wants more testing done, however, because of the perceived health ramifications of such a device. Lin said lower, whisper-level intensities work fine, but the higher incapacitating levels expected by the military could fry more than a few brains out on the battlefield. "I would worry about what other health effects it is having," Lin said. "You might see neural damage."

And those "other uses" hinted at above? Try subliminal advertising; or suggestive subconscious comments that you don't really "hear" but can influence decision-making anyway. Or, alternatively, the beam can be ramped up to 11 and just kill you outright. WIN!

Fun Gizmodo Fact: The MEDUSA is useless against a raging pack of schizophrenics. [New Scientist via Danger Room]

Prototypes of the ray, dart and squirt guns made their debut at the A Weekend of Heroes Action Figure symposium in Glendale, California this weekend. No idea when these will be available or what they'll be priced, but they should appear on UniToyZone soon. And when that day comes, the inevitable epic battle between my Empire of Stuffed Animals and my Alliance of Action Figures won't be too far behind. [Tomopop]

When you can magically combine two of those positronium suckers, you get a molecule that sounds like it's made by Sony, called PS2. When PS2 decays, that's when super-powerful bursts of those awesome gamma rays are released, capable of smacking down anything in sight. So this must be that all-powerful and dangerous ray gun running through science fiction stories for the past 100 years. Or is it more like a phaser? Either way, yeah, it's all working with positronium. We're not making this up. [NewScientistTech]

– Jason Chen

Steampunk Rayguns [Wired]

Great! That'll be $621. –Adam Frucci

Product Page [via Uncrate]

Military Shows Off New Ray Gun
[AP/Newsday]

Not to be outdone, Northrop is aiming to build the world's first 100kW solid-state laser, with 100kW being the threshold where these things start getting dangerous enough to be called weapons. Supposedly if you focus these laser beams in a certain way, you got yourself a battlefield-strength ray gun. But don't worry, this is all done To Serve Man. – Charlie White

Electric Lasers Shoot Mortars, Gain Strength [DefenseTech]

Raygun Replicas [Boingboing]