los alamos national laboratory

Spy fears lead nuke lab to dump gear from HP unit, not Huawei

Los Alamos National Laboratory is reportedly removing network switches made by a partnership that once included controversial Chinese telecommunication gear maker Huawei because of national security concerns.

But Huawei, which was rebuked last fall by the House Intelligence Committee for posing a national threat because of potential ties to the Chinese government, hasn't been part of H3C Technologies, the partnership that makes the switches, since 2006, Reuters reported.

Huawei created H3C as a joint venture with 3Com in 2003. Three years later, 3Com bought Huawei's stake in the venture. And in 2010, Hewlett-Packard bought 3Com.

All of which … Read more

Crave visits the Cray-1, a true museum piece

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- Many great masterpieces reside in museums. There's the "Mona Lisa" at the Louvre. "Nighthawks at the Diner" graces the wall at the Art Institute of Chicago. And the Cray-1 sits at the Bradbury Science Museum here in Los Alamos.

The first Cray-1 was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 at a cost of $8.8 million. It set a new world record speed of 160 million floating-point operations per second and boasted 8MB of main memory. According to the museum, it was the first computer to break the megaflop barrier.

By today's hardware standards, the Cray-1 is a great lumbering beast. The dramatic lighting shining on it at the Bradbury exhibit shows off its curves and hulking size. But by 1976 standards, it was a svelte creation whose circular shape kept the complex wiring compact. … Read more

Watching a wildfire hit home--from 5,000 miles away

I'm watching my hometown of Los Alamos, N.M., grapple with yet another massive wildfire, and even though I'm 5,000 miles away, the Internet has given me front-row seats.

It's not pleasant to see--but it's better than the alternative.

I'm not a member of the ignorance-is-bliss camp, particularly when friends and my parents still live there. The Las Conchas wildfire blew up to a size larger than Washington D.C. when it started on Sunday, and on Tuesday morning it reached 60,740 acres; Los Alamos National Laboratory is closed to all but essential … Read more

Los Alamos wildfire reaches lab, forces evacuation

The Las Conchas wildfire has spread to part of Los Alamos National Laboratory property and triggered an evacuation of most of the the Los Alamos town residents nearby.

The fire started yesterday in the mountains southwest of Los Alamos and spread rapidly, stoked by winds, dry conditions, and high temperatures. Today, it grew to 49,000 acres and reached LANL's Technical Area 49, a site on the southern border of the lab's 28,000-acre (43 square mile) property.

"Air crews dumped water at the site within the Lab's Technical Area 49 and brought the blaze under … Read more

Wildfire closes Los Alamos National Laboratory

Update at 7 a.m. PT: The fire now covers more than 40,000 acres. The threat level to Los Alamos National Laboratory remains the same.

A large, fast-moving wildfire threatens one of the most important and well-known national laboratories in the United States.

Los Alamos National Laboratory will be closed for all nonessential personnel on Monday in the wake of a raging blaze called the Las Conchas fire that started about 12 miles southwest of the town of Los Alamos and quickly swelled to more than 3,500 acres, or more than 5.4 square miles.

Flames and huge plumes of thick, black smoke shot into the sky Sunday from New Mexico's Jemez Mountains, where the famous lab was originally located atop arid mesas west of Santa Fe to better hide the top-secret Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic bomb.

On Sunday afternoon, the fire started in the nearby forest and spread quickly. High winds and weeks without moisture in the Southwest have sparked a number of massive fires throughout Arizona and New Mexico.

The fire can be seen from the Pajarito Mountain ski area Webcam. … Read more