Search For The "Dino-Killer"

We have all heard the prevailing theory that the dinosaurs were killed off by the impact of a colossal meteor slamming into Earth.

It is widely believed that the Chicxulub crater near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is the impact site of that meteor hit 65 million years ago.

It is also widely believed that another colossal meteor strike on our planet is a matter of “when” and not “if”.

Scientists have been running computer models to try to determine where this colossal meteorite came from to see if there might be a way to at least predict when or where the next strike will come from.

Their computer models have developed an interesting theory. They say the models show that 160 million years ago, two “mega-asteroids” in the asteroid belt collided, strewing debris across the solar system.

They believe that a fragment from one of these “mega-asteroids” eventually made its way to Earth 95 million years later, creating the impact on the Yucatan peninsula.

The models also show that debris from the same impact created the Tycho crater on our moon.

Scientists said that they worked backwards to reach this conclusion, looking at the masses of asteroids that they believe to have originated when the two “mega-asteroids”, one 37-miles wide and one 106-miles wide, slammed into each other and broke apart.

They applied a more modern theory that sunlight traveling through space can actually effect a small amount of force on an object over time.

With nothing but time, the asteroid debris was moved little by little until it finally came into the path of Earth’s orbit and gravitational pull.

Hackers Targeting By Name...

We are all aware that there is an entire underground army of hackers and phisers that are trying to scam us every time we even look at a computer, but we must also be very aware that they are continually becoming more brazen and crafty with each passing day.

MessageLabs, a security vendor that offers email filtering services to catch spam and malicious attachments reports that in May 2007, people in senior management positions received 10 emails per day, up from just 1 a year before.

10 emails might not seem like much, but it is the content of those emails that is alarming.

Many of the emails contained the name and title of the executive in the subject line, as well as a malicious Microsoft WORD document containing executable code.

The hackers are trying to trick the victim into thinking the email is from one of the top-level executives in the company, creating a false sense of security and an eagerness to quickly open the attachment before realizing that the email did not come from within the company.

The malicious code is most likely software the records and reports key-strokes, allowing hackers to obtain user names, passwords, and even top-secret company information.

Though MessageLabs would not divulge which large companies had been attacked in this manner, they did contact the individual executives involved and were told by those executives that their family members had also received emails with their name on it at their family members’ personal home email addresses.