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Physical and Life Sciences
PLS postdocs to compete in the 2022 Bay Area Research Slam
On September 20, LLNL hosted its annual Postdoc Research Slam. This Lab-wide competition encourages postdocs to showcase their research in a three-minute presentation that answers the question, “Why is my research important?” The event gives postdocs the opportunity to improve their communication and speaking skills and challenges them to articulate their research in an…
Meet Training Specialist Bryni Soto
Brytni Soto joined LLNL in 2009 as a recruiting intern for a contract company. Today, she serves as the Training Specialist for Physical and Life Sciences – a role that she describes as being in direct alignment with her passion to support people in their pursuit of career growth.
Former Lab physicist earns Nobel Prize in Physics
John Clauser, an experimental physicist who spent a decade at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with French scientist Alain Aspect and Austrian scientist Anton Zeilinger. The Nobel Committee, made up of members from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, cited the trio for “experiments with entangled…
Earth System Grid Federation launches effort to upgrade global climate data system
The Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF), an international multi-institutional initiative that gathers and distributes data for top-tier computer simulations of the Earth’s climate, is preparing a series of upgrades that will make using the data easier and faster while improving how the information is curated. A new project called ESGF2, encapsulates the primary U.S…
Sheltering Science Saves Lives
Lawrence Livermore researchers have worked for more than a decade to provide insights for a multifaceted emergency response, and in the process, they have advanced the science of sheltering and developed computer models to identify potentially life-saving strategies.
Small Things Considered
Of the four forces, the weak nuclear force is the least understood and most difficult to detect. A Lawrence Livermore team headed by physicist Nick Scielzo partnered with scientists from Argonne National Laboratory, Louisiana State University, and other universities to better characterize the weak force’s foundations. Thanks to significant advances in experimental design…
Joining the Fight to Cure Neurodegenerative Disease
The Laboratory’s cutting-edge capabilities and expertise offer new tools to study ALS disease mechanisms and fuel hope for a cure.
Meet experimental scientist Gaby Davila Ordonez
Gaby Davila Ordonez has always had a knack in learning new things, contributing to make a difference and helping others succeed. Originally from Venezuela, Davila Ordonez, grew up with three sisters in a family who cultivated coffee in a small town in the state of Mérida called La Azulita.
It’s a metal, not a gas: flerovium chemical properties unveiled
It could be called better understanding through chemistry. An international research team including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists has succeeded in gaining new insights into the chemical properties of the superheavy element flerovium — element 114. The measurements, taken at the at the accelerator facilities of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für…
The people of stockpile stewardship are the key to LLNL’s success
The last nuclear test, code-named Divider, took place 30 years ago, on Sept. 23, 1992. That year, President Bush declared a temporary moratorium on nuclear testing, which became permanent during the Clinton administration. This ending of the era of nuclear testing was also the beginning of stockpile stewardship. Leaders from the Department of Energy (DOE), and Lawrence…
Scientific discovery for stockpile stewardship
Scientific discovery during the Stockpile Stewardship Program maintains confidence in the nuclear deterrent without testing, brings other benefits The last nuclear test, code-named Divider, took place 30 years ago, on September 23, 1992. That year, President Bush declared a temporary moratorium on nuclear testing, which became permanent during the Clinton administration…
Developing technology to keep the nuclear stockpile safe, secure and reliable
The last nuclear test, code-named Divider, took place 30 years ago, on Sept. 23, 1992. That year, President Bush declared a temporary moratorium on nuclear testing, which became permanent in 1995, during the Clinton administration. This ending of the era of nuclear testing coincided with a Presidential announcement of the beginning of stockpile stewardship. As the decision…
LLNL leads new DART Mission paper on inferring asteroid material properties from deflection test
Today at 4:14 p.m. (PDT), NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission will execute the first-ever asteroid-deflection test by crashing into asteroid Dimorphos. Traveling at ~6 km/s with a mass of ~600 kg, the DART spacecraft will transfer enough momentum for the imparted change in velocity to be detectable from Earth-based telescopes. However, there is…
Team identifies parent body materials in Ryugu asteroid
An international team including a researcher from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has determined that one specific particle on the asteroid Ryugu can shed light on the unaltered initial materials from its parent body. In December 2014, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the spacecraft Hayabusa2 to the asteroid 162173 Ryugu. In December 2020,…
LLNL-led paper reveals spacecraft geometry effects on impact simulations for NASA’s DART Mission
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft will crash into asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, executing the first asteroid deflection test that has been years in the planning. Dimorphos, at 150 meters across, is the “moonlet” of a binary asteroid system, orbiting the larger companion asteroid, Didymos (800 meters). The momentum of the ~600 kg spacecraft,…
Under pressure: solid matter takes on new behavior
Investigating how solid matter behaves at enormous pressures, such as those found in the deep interiors of giant planets, is a great experimental challenge. To help address that challenge, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers and collaborators took a deep dive in understanding these extreme pressures. The work was just published in Nature Physics with…
LLNL’s new diffraction gratings will enable the world’s most powerful laser
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers and their collaborators have developed new high-energy pulse compression gratings that will be used in the world’s highest-power laser system, designed to deliver up to 10 petawatts (quadrillion watts) of peak power. A petawatt is about 1,000 times the capacity of the entire U.S. electric grid. The high-energy, low…
Lab scientist wins outstanding doctoral thesis award from American Physical Society
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist Alison Ruth Christopherson has earned the American Physical Society’s (APS) Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis award. The award recognizes exceptional early-career scientists who have performed original thesis work of outstanding scientific quality and achievement in the area of plasma physics…
Burning Plasma Team receives honor from American Physical Society
The Burning Plasma Team has been awarded the 2022 John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research by the American Physical Society. The team consists of members from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and from other institutions. The team was cited “for the first laboratory demonstration of a burning deuterium-tritium plasma where alpha heating…
A deep dive into the interior of red dwarfs
Red dwarfs are the most abundant stars in the Milky Way, making up 70% of all stars. But the physics of their interiors is not well understood. Heat is generated in the core and travels outward to the surface, but it is not clear whether that process occurs via radiation, convection or a combination of the two. The key factor determining whether red dwarfs are radiation-…
