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Comment: Miramar and Oceana, similar hazards (Score 5, Interesting) 295

I used to live in Poway (1969-1982), under the approach pattern for Miramar Marine Corps, formerly Naval, Air Station. I also went to university at [[UCSD]] on the west end of the station. There were accidents over the years, this one especially bad as a single-engine [[F-8 Crusader]] lost power on approach, hit a hangar full of aircraft caught fire. I bet this tragedy and others figured into all subsequent Navy/Marines fighters having two engines. More recently, a [[2008 San Diego F/A-18 crash]] caused four civilian fatalities, following a (relatively rare) double-engine flameout. Most crashes were far less spectacular (ejections over open water or empty fields). Both Miramar and Oceana have more development now, adding to the danger.

Google API Allowed Attacker to Impersonate Google->

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes "Details about a recently discovered and exploited vulnerability that allowed a 21-year-old Armenian hacker to harvest Gmail addresses and send to their owners a message coming from a legitimate Google e-mail address are still unknown, but the vulnerability has been patched. The attack has been perpetrated during the weekend, but it wasn't malicious in nature. The hacker just wanted to bring the vulnerability to the public's attention, because he says that he has tried to contact Google and disclose all the details, but they won't answer his e-mails."
Link to Original Source
Space

US Launches Largest Satellite in the World

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Space.com reports that over the weekend a giant booster – a Delta 4 Heavy rocket — carrying a secret new spy satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office roared into space to deliver what one reconnaissance official has touted as "the largest satellite in the world" into orbit. The Delta 4 Heavy rocket is the biggest unmanned rocket currently in service and has 2 million pounds of thrust, capable of launching payloads of up to 24 tons to low-Earth orbit and 11 tons toward the geosynchronous orbits used by communications satellites. The mammoth vehicle is created by taking three Common Booster Cores — the liquid hydrogen-fueled motor that forms a Delta 4-Medium's first stage — and strapping them together to form a triple-barrel rocket, and then adding an upper stage. The exact purpose of the new spy satellite NROL-32 is secret but is widely believed to be an essential eavesdropping spacecraft that requires the powerful lift provided by the Delta 4-Heavy to reach its listening post. "I believe the payload is the fifth in the series of what we call Mentor spacecraft, a.k.a. Advanced Orion, which gather signals intelligence from inclined geosynchronous orbits," says Ted Molczan, a respected sky-watcher who keeps tabs on orbiting spacecraft. Earlier models of the series included an unfurling dish structure about 255 feet in diameter with a total spacecraft mass of about 5,953.5 pounds costing about $750 million and designed to monitor specific points or objects of interest such as ballistic missile flight test telemetry."
Hardware

Self-Building Chips — As Easy As Microwave Meals 51

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the only-blinks-12:00 dept.
nk497 writes "Canadian researchers have found a way to speed up self-assembling chips — by using microwaves instead of traditional ovens. Self-assembly is seen as key to enabling nanotechnology, but until now the block co-polymer method, which directs nanomaterials to create moulds and then fills them in with a target material, was too slow to be useful. 'By using microwaves, we have dramatically decreased the cooking time for a specific molecular self-assembly process used to assemble block co-polymers, and have now made it a viable alternative to the conventional lithography process for use in patterning semi-conductors,' the researchers said. The technique could make the technology a viable alternative to conventional lithography for chip production. 'We've got the process — the next step is to exploit it to make something useful.'"
Moon

NASA Strikes Gold and Water On the Moon 421

Posted by timothy
from the moon-is-a-moist-mistress dept.
tcd004 writes "The PBS NewsHour reports: there is water on the moon — along with a long list of other compounds, including mercury, gold and silver. That's according to a more detailed analysis of the cold lunar soil near the moon's South Pole. The results were released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday. [Note: Nature's papers are behind a paywall; for a few more details, reader coondoggie points out a a story at Network World.] The data comes from the October 2009 mission, when NASA slammed a booster rocket traveling nearly 6,000 miles per hour into the moon and blasted out a hole. Trailing close behind it was a second spacecraft, rigged with a spectrometer to study the lunar plume released by the blast. The mission is called LCROSS, for Lunar Crater Observer and Sensing Satellite."
Math

Fermilab To Test Holographic Universe Theory 166

Posted by samzenpus
from the getting-some-answers dept.
eldavojohn writes "Scientists at Fermilab have decided that it's high time they build a 'holometer' to test the smoothness of space-time. Theoretical physicists like Stephen Hawking have proposed that space-time is not smooth but it's been a lot of math and no actual data. The Fermilab team plans to build two relatively small devices that act as 'holographic interferometers' to measure the shaking or vibration in split beams of light traveling through a vacuum. If the team finds the shaking in their measurements and records them, the theory of a holographic universe will have some evidence of non-smoothness in space-time and perhaps a foothold in bringing light to the heavily debated theoretical physics."

I had pancake makeup for brunch!