By Allison Kubo More cold war science in case you enjoyed our last cold war science article: the atomic-powered-nuclear-weapon-silo-ice-sculpture. In 1958, the Central Intelligence Agency started project Corona, a top-secret mission to perform photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union. Of course, this is before digital cameras. Current digital cameras use charge-coupled devices (CCD) which an array of capacitors transfer the photons that hit them into electrical signals. Although the development of the CCD began only a year after Project Corona, it wasn’t until the 1970s that it was employed by the military for imaging. However, before digital cameras film, photographic emulsions were used. These work in a similar way, except the light, hits a crystal in the film and changes its orientation. After the film is exposed to light, it must be developed in various chemical baths to “fix” the film so that it can be examined. The Corona Project consisted of a series of eight s
By: Hannah Pell Image credit: Wikimedia Commons. In early May 2021, a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline caused massive disruption to the East Coast’s fuel supply. Pictures of cars lined up at gas stations and warnings not to “panic buy” gasoline evoked memories of the 1973 oil crisis . Colonial Pipeline Co. paid a $4.4 million ransom demanded by the hackers — which the Federal Bureau of Investigations has since recovered — and chose to shut down the pipeline for the first time in its 57-year history, avoiding the possibility of the hackers gaining direct control over infrastructure transporting 2.5 million barrels of gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and jet fuel per day. “We were in a harrowing situation and had to make difficult choices that no company ever wants to face, but I am proud of the fact that our people reacted quickly to get the pipeline back up and running safely,” Colonial Pipeline Co. CEO Joseph Blount said in his testimony to the Senate Committee on Home