The Chinese women were heavy favourites going into the match, while Singapore, whose silver is the city-state's first medal since 1960, were content just to have made it to the final on the sport's biggest stage.
The importance of table tennis in China was underscored just before the match when President Hu Jintao arrived alongside International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge.
"The president and many leaders came to watch, so entering the stadium, there certainly was pressure," China's world number one Zhang Yining said.
What they saw, in fact, was a China versus China affair. Singapore's three women and their coach were all born and trained in China, recruited to the city-state for their paddling skills.
China's Wang Nan faltered out of the starting blocks, dropping the first game to a determined Feng Tianwei. But Wang, the "big sister" of Chinese table tennis in her third Olympics, found her poise and rattled off three games to take the match, 9-11 11-3 11-8 and 11-6.
Nerves also momentarily tripped Zhang Yining. She lost her opening game -- her first game loss at these Olympics -- to Singapore's best player, Li Jia Wei.
"The opposition played tougher than expected. It was a bit tense," Zhang said.
Like Wang before her, Zhang quickly recovered, spraying low drives at every conceivable angle. Resistance was futile and Li knew it, chuckling to herself at her opponent's prowess. Zhang won 9-11 11-3 11-4 and 11-7.
In doubles play, Zhang paired up with the feisty Guo Yue. Accustomed at this point to the boisterous home crowd, the two were steady from the outset and beat the Singaporeans in straight games, 11-8 11-5 and 11-6, to clinch the contest and the gold.
China's women looked more relieved than ecstatic at winning. The losers in Singapore wore broad smiles.
"We're happy. The Chinese side is the strongest, so our task was completed by beating the other sides," Singapore's Li said.
In earlier play, South Korea smothered Japan with water-tight defensive play to win the bronze.
A new map of the halo of stars that surrounds our Milky Way Galaxy has revealed a complicated structure of crisscrossing stellar streams, many of which have never been detected before.
While the bulk of our galaxy's stars are concentrated in a fairly flat disk and a bulbous central region, the halo is the first thing an intergalactic traveler would encounter upon approaching our home galaxy. The halo begins at the edge of the disk around 65,000 light years from the galactic center and may extend out as far as 300,000 light years from the center of the galaxy. The halo comprises star clusters, clouds of gas, dark matter, and a few lone stars. Some of these pieces were grabbed up by the Milky Way from dwarf galaxies as they passed by.
The largest stellar streams in the halo have been mapped out over the last decade, but new data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) has found many previously unknown smaller streams, remnants of dwarf galaxies that strayed too close and a few surviving companions.
The streams are remnants of smaller galaxies that have been consumed.
The new findings are being presented today at an international symposium in Chicago.
Small streams, small fraction
The survey measured the motions of nearly a quarter million stars in selected areas of the sky, looking for groups traveling at the same velocity. The search turned up 14 distinct structures, 11 of which had never before been seen.
Because the survey has only looked at a small fraction of the Milky Way, the 14 streams found "implies a huge number when we extrapolate out to the rest of the Milky Way," said Kevin Schlaufman, a graduate student at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
There could be close to 1,000 streams in the inner 75,000 light years of the Milky Way, Schlaufman said, assuming each of the 14 structures they observed is a separate stream. There is the possibility that there are actually fewer stream that are simply seen many times in different places.
MANCHESTER UNITED NEWS
Michael Carrick will miss the next two weeks of the season after picking up an ankle injury in the 1-1 draw against Newcastle.
The midfielder, who will also sit out England's friendly with the Czech Republic on Wednesday, sustained the injury in the first half and was replaced by John O'Shea.
Ryan Giggs, one of United's most penetrative players on a frustrating opening day against the Magpies, was also forced off in the second half.
Boss Sir Alex Ferguson told Sky Sports: "Carrick has an ankle injury. It’s swollen up quite badly and he will be out for about two weeks.
"Ryan has a hamstring injury. It was disappointing to get those injuries on top of the injuries we had anyway."
United went into the game without Carlos Tevez, who is back in Argentina after a family bereavement, while Fraizer Campbell did not complete 90 minutes and Wayne Rooney looked less than 100% fit after his recent virus.
Ferguson added: "Tevez will be back next week and available for the Portsmouth match, and Rooney will be much sharper having played this game.
"I thought in the second half it started to go for him. Unfortunately Fraizer Campbell picked up a knock and he had to come off as well."
