In an effort to learn how social networking sites can aid the military, Department of Defense researchers sponsored a contest to see who could accurately locate 10 large red balloons released across the United States. First prize ($40,000) went to a team from the MIT Media Laboratory Human Dynamics Group that managed to provide the latitude and longitude of all the balloons to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in just 8 hours 56 minutes. The MIT group, which beat out about 500 other groups, enlisted help from people throughout the country by offering to share the prize money with those who sent in the coordinates of each balloon. A DARPA official told CNN that the agency hopes the balloon contest—which was launched on the 40th anniversary of ARPANET—will help them better understand how the Internet can be used to address different situations ranging from natural disasters to military conflicts.