Word: sandia
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...Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque is a sprawling research establishment best known for its work on highly secret defense projects, including nuclear weaponry. Last week Sandia exploded a different sort of bombshell. Its mathematicians announced that they had factored a 69-digit number, the largest ever to be subjected to such numerical dissection. Their triumph is more than an intellectual exercise. It could have far-flung repercussions for national security. As anyone who has ever passed through intermediate algebra knows (or once knew), factoring means breaking a number into its smallest whole-number multiplicands greater than 1. For example...
Unlike ordinary computers, the Cray can sample whole clusters of numbers simultaneously, like a sieve sifting through sand for coins. At Sandia, Simmons joined with his colleagues Mathematicians James Davis and Diane Holdridge to teach their own Cray how to factor. That involved developing an algorithm, or set of algebraic instructions, that would break the problem down into small steps. They succeeded admirably. In rapid succession they factored numbers of 58, 60, 63 and 67 digits. At this point, however, even the power of their Cray seemed to have reached its limit. But the Sandia team made one more...
...secrets and keep them secure. These include electronic funds transfers and military messages. By factoring the numbers, the codes can be broken. When RSA was first proposed, its inventors suggested using 80-digit numbers on the assumption that they were too big to be factored. Obviously, with researchers at Sandia closing in on ever larger numbers, even RSA could eventually fall to the code breakers...
...poor, many destitute. At least 50 of the 167 reservation tribes, from the 8,000 Cherokees in North Carolina to the 1,200 Yaquis in Arizona, are trying to cash in on the quirky boom. In two weeks a new 1,600-seat hall will open on the Sandia Pueblo reservation in New Mexico, and the Baronas plan to build a $2.5 million arena with room for 2,000. "Bingo is benefiting our people," says Arthur Welmas, the Cabazons' tribal chairman. "It's giving us pride." The tribe's business manager, John Paul Nichols, is blunt. Says...
Researchers at Savannah River and Sandia also conduct extensive work for non-military purposes. Sandia, for example, oversees a large solar energy program, and its nuclear programs have civilian as well as defense applications, says Rod Geer, a spokesman for the labs. Du Pont uses nuclear materials at Savannah River for testing cancer therapy...