I think we’ve all seen a land test for a nuclear weapon. What happens when a nuclear weapon is exploded underwater though? Does it cause a tsunami or something worse? The U.S. military hired a cameraman to film the two underwater nuclear tests. The tests were codenamed Wahoo and Umbrella and were exploded only month apart from each other.

Check out the explosion below. It’s actually pretty awe inspiring. It’s like a god just did a cannonball into the ocean:

The most impressive part about the test is that the waves caused by the test completely covered a nearby island. The typical underwater nuclear explosion causes a spray dome with a height of 900 ft. The waves caused by these explosions can still be pretty dangerous up to 1,000 ft away. The cameramen filming the above explosion had to climb into trees due to the high waves that hit the island.

All nuclear tests today are performed underground for obvious reasons. Performing these kind of tests in the ocean are especially harmful as unexpected consequences can arise. The most famous of which happened at Bikini Atoll where a group of Japanese fishermen were subjected to the nuclear fallout from one of the tests. The event inspired the film Gojira, one of the strongest pieces of anti-nuclear fiction ever created.

Anonymous has posted a video in support of Romania’s protests. There is no mention of the database leak, instead focusing on the fight to replace their government. They throw their support behind the citizens and claim that they are going to fight for them.

You must acknowledge the fact that bringing down one man, and choosing another will not solve your problems. This will only perpetuate the political circus that has been unfolding in front of your eyes for 22 years. You must acknowledge the fact that your entire political class is corrupt and does not serve the interest of the people, as it should.

Many of you know that the world is changing, many of you feel that inside. Do not loose hope, for anonymous is by your side. We must stand united against our governments and make our voices heard, for we are the people of the world who want to put an end to the economic and monetary enslavement.

We’ve not been able to contact the Romanian branch of Anonymous to get a statement, but we’ve asked a few other branches of Anonymous for their take on it. Anonymous Sweden speculated that the leak was to “show disclosure on safety issues.”

Various Anonymous twitter feeds have been linking to the database, but we won’t as the database does contain sensitive information with a decryption tool that allows people to easily access the information.

Anonymous has also reportedly attacked a Romanian government Web site for not providing support to the children of Romania. A hacker group going by the name of “lulzcart” sealed the Web site and put an image on the index detailing the take down.

Anonymous has thrown their weight behind pretty much every protest that has happened in the past year from Egypt to Occupy Wall Street. This might be, however, the most controversial data dump yet. People, myself included, tend to become uneasy when national nuclear research is made available for everybody to see.

We’ll keep you updated on everything Anonymous as they happen.

Save me. Save me from tomorrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools.
-- World Party's song Ship Of Fools is very appropriate

At the Los Alamos Nuclear Labs, a company called Los Alamos National Security manages the efforts to keep sensitive information out of the hands of the bad guys.

The most recent episode involving data loss makes it look more like we’ll see a mushroom cloud hanging over the crater that used to be Manhattan before they get their act together in the New Mexico deserts.

Only a few weeks after announcing "extensive security improvements" at the Labs, news of another data leak has emerged. Techworld said an errant email contained classified data made its way to members of the Los Alamos National Security board:

In January Harold P. Smith, a LANS board consultant and former Pentagon atomic weapons adviser, sent a message containing classified data to at least two other board members. He used the ordinary Internet instead of a secure Defense department network. The message was relayed to at least three more board members.

The incident has been described as comprising “the most serious breach of US national security,” and has been rated as Impact Measurement Index-1 (IMI-1), the most serious level of security violation.

Those board members received security sensitivity training, something they evidently did not have previously, according to the report.

Techworld’s article also recounted a couple of other entertaining yet horrifying incidents over the past year. One Labs staff member took a laptop to Ireland, where it was promptly stolen. The Labs claim information on the laptop was of a low sensitive nature.

Then there was the case of the drug dealer being busted with a USB stick in his possession. The stick just happened to contain "classified as Secret Restricted" data about nuclear weapons on it.

Before we ask why the terrorists hate us, maybe we should ask Los Alamos the same question. An outfit from Coolibar and Hawaiian Tropic Ozone 70 SPF sunscreen aren’t going to help against a nuclear blast.

The weather report regarding Google’s latest quarterly infrastructure update for many sites likely read this way: mostly clear and warm, with some patchy clouds. A handful of sites briefly had a much grimmer forecast: nuclear detonation with thermal pulse, neutrons, x- and gamma-rays, radiation, electromagnetic pulse, and ionization of the upper atmosphere.

To put it more briefly, that disaster can be summed up as PageRank 0 in Google’s index.

Vanishing from Google can virtually be equated with dropping off the Internet in general. Such is life when one search engine dominates the environment and the habits of millions of Web surfers around the world.

‘The Fear’ doesn’t even begin to describe watching one’s site get unranked for reasons unknown. Fortunately Google has a couple of great people who communicate this kind of information. Adam Lasnik is one, and may be seen on Google’s webmaster help group.

The other is Matt Cutts, and he recently updated his infrastructure status post to clear up the dread PR 0 some sites observed:

In general, Cutts commented that this latest update should not cause any “major infrastructure-related upheavals to our rankings.” He also discussed supplemental results in some depth in his blog post.

“There were some situations where site: would show supplemental results ahead of regular results,” he wrote. “I believe we’ve changed that so that regular results will usually show ahead of supplemental results for site: queries.”

—
Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

After this week, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google became the second most recognized word in the world, in any language.

What’s the most recognized word? Coca-cola.

The company responded to Monday’s revelation of new North Korean nuclear testing with a Tuesday announcement outlining plans to open a new research and development facility on Korean soil.

I was told by a Google spokesperson that, “News of the recent nuclear tests do not have any impact on our decision nor our timetable for the new R&D center.”

The same source went on to add, “Google views Korea as one of the most technologically advanced markets in the world, and we would like to recruit the best Korean technical talent possible to develop innovative technologies to better serve our users locally and globally. ”

“The Korea R&D center is the latest addition to a growing number of global engineering offices, which include the UK, Israel, Norway, Japan, Switzerland, India, Russia, Australia, and the Americas.”

“At Google, we feel that there are great software engineers worldwide, and we want them to join us in delivering the best search experience for users. Continuous innovative R&D is an important underpinning in developing high quality search products.”

“Our primary goal is to recruit the highest quality technical talent in Korea, and this will be an ongoing investment as we grow our operations in Korea. ”

I have to admit, the company’s apparent lack of fear in the face of North Korean aggression inspires visions of a potential Eric Schmidt vs. Kim Jong-il steel cage deathmatch with Singapore cane rules.

With any luck, it’s being written into Master Plan 2.0 as we speak.

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

Warning: this is a Friday article. Search engines companies and tech luminaries have failed to do anything interesting or felonious over the past several hours. Thus we interrupt your regularly scheduled WebProNews reading for this special article.

Have you ever wondered where the trains are running in Dublin? Or what the urinals look like in the Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tokyo? Maybe you’re wondering about the nuclear development taking place in Iran that’s been making news.

The Mashup Feed website provided by Programmable Web delivers those mashups, either by visiting the site or by subscribing to its RSS feed. Mashup Feed provides sections on the most recent and most popular mashups, APIs most used in mashups, and the most common tags for them. API and tag clouds can be viewed below the sections.

The RSS feed went live this week. “Who needs a blog that talks about mashups when you can get mashups directly?” Programmable Web posted on its blog. The original Mashups site can still be found online, too.

Google Maps figures in the most mashups, by a significant margin; “mapping” likewise is the most popular tag. Clicking on a specific popular or recent mashup takes the visitor to that site, while selecting an API or tag pulls up a profile of that item along with its mashups.

—
Email the author here.

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo My Web

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

A concerned soldier stationed in Iraq demonstrated for the camera how easy it was to get detailed imagery of static military bases. With mouse in hand showing how an enemy could, with little effort, determine distances, latitude and longitude, where certain types of weaponry and military vehicles were located.

He asserted that an especially tech-savvy enemy could use the information to program coordinates into guided missiles and hit targets with pinpoint accuracy. Admittedly, like the two-year-old imagery of the Australian nuclear reactor, the aerial photos of the base were a year old. But the soldier said that didn’t matter as the base is unchanged since the satellite photo was taken.

And he’s right, it certainly wasn’t difficult to find Camp Anaconda. It will be interesting to see how security-sensitive photos are handled by Google and imagery suppliers.

Aerial photos of the White House and surrounding buildings are already censored, and one might imagine that sensitive military establishments will be soon as well.

Regarding the Australian nuclear plant, a Google spokeswoman said the images were to old reveal any sensitive information.

“The same information is available to anyone who flies over or drives by a piece of property,” she said.

But of course, Iraq is a war-zone with restricted air space. So this may be a different matter altogether.

Dr. Smith, executive director of Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organization believes that the imagery could provide information and aid to terrorist or other organizations wishing to attack the facility.

“The question comes down to, if you put it on the Internet, does it go to Pakistan or Afghanistan and make it easy for them?” asked Dr. Smith.
Just 25 miles southwest of Sidney, the satellite imagery shows very clearly the layout of the facility’s buildings and parking areas.

“We’re going to ask Google to take it off,” Dr Smith said. “It doesn’t stop somebody who’s determined to get the information getting it, but having it on the Internet just makes it so much more readily available. We don’t want to provide any easy assistance to anyone who wants to interfere with the site.”

Dr. Smith didn’t quite seem to catch the irony of announcing the nuclear site’s vulnerabilities in the following statements, however.

“There’s a small area near the middle of the site which is quite secure, but the bulk of our site isn’t all that secure,” he said. “We don’t have the guarding or the hardware to stop someone from getting in to the site if they really wanted to.”

Someone may have kicked Smith in the shin after that one.

The paper reports the deportation of Frenchman Willie Brigitte in 2003 after an alleged bombing attempt at the Lucas Heights reactor.

Google Earth already blocks certain views, such as aerial shots of the White House and office buildings nearby. News.com reports in addition to the reactor photos there are also images of the Parliament House in Canberra as well as the “secret” US spy base at Pine Gap.

A Google spokeswoman said the images were too old to reveal any recently sensitive information.

“The same information is available to anyone who flies over or drives by a piece of property,” she said.

Chuck Herring of DigitalGlobe, the company that provided the aerial photos of the Lucas Heights facility said the company was under no obligation to censor its images.

“Although we are very sensitive to the concerns voiced, we are not required to seek permission to image areas around the world,” spokesman Chuck Herring said.

However and with thanks to BoingBoing.net for pointing it out, there’s a new API-developed Google Maps hack called HYDESim who delivers query returns can be quite staggering. A hint as to why this particular Google Maps hack is capable of producing such stark reaction lies in the tool’s name (HYDESim), which stands for High-Yield Detonation Effects Simulator.

As the title implies, HYDESim shows the area effects of a nuclear detonation by using a radii to simulate the areas that would be affected if a particular area had a ground-level explosion of this type occur. According to the site’s description, HYDESim details the following:

… these radii are an indicator of structural damage to buildings. No other effects, such as thermal damage or fallout levels, are included in this tool. Note that the displayed rings are “idealized”; that is, no account is taken of terrain, urban density, ground type, weather conditions, and so on.

The data used in HYDESim are based on information found in “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons”, 3rd Edition, by Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan.

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

The event came as a shock to many around the world as President Bush called India’s nuclear behavior “responsible” and that India “should acquire the same benefits and advantages” as other nations with “advanced nuclear technology.”

A number of other items were discussed but the “full civil nuclear energy cooperation” is certainly the most intriguing for a couple of reasons. First, India needs power. As India continues to realize its potential and the standards of living continue to increase, power will be needed to take care of that.

Right now, India gets very little power from nuclear sources, less than 55. Most of their power comes from coal and oil. With over one billion people, power is becoming an absolute necessity, particularly as fossil fuel costs continue to climb. This will allow India a cheaper source of energy, particularly as they progress further and further into the electronic age.

The other major issue is security. The U.S. and China are incredibly intertwined to be so diverse politically, economically and culturally. As China continues to develop militarily and economically, they begin to exude pressure on the U.S. Many hear stories every day about ongoing economic troubles with China, whether it’s CNOOC trying to purchase Unocal or WTO disagreements over textile pricing. Many experts think India will provide an excellent foil for China.

The announcement shocked members of both parties in Congress but in retrospect, the move seems prudent. Most feel this battle won’t be along partisan lines either, it will be proliferation versus non-proliferation and one must keep Iran in the picture too as they argue to be allowed to use nuclear power for their power purpose.

John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.