Back
Physical and Life Sciences
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-…
LLNL hosts HBCU students, faculty in week-long outreach program
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) hosted a group of students and faculty from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) for a week in June to promote internships, job opportunities and career paths at LLNL. Judging from the group’s reaction and feedback, the inaugural week-long HBCU tour was a clear success and made a positive impression on the…
Livermore researchers collect three awards among the top 100 industrial inventions
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and engineers have garnered three awards among the top 100 industrial inventions worldwide. The trade journal R&D World Magazine recently announced the winners of the awards, often called the “Oscars of invention,” recognizing new commercial products, technologies and materials that are available for sale or…
Going big: Unlocking the study of some of the rarest and most toxic elements on Earth
The synthesis and study of radioactive compounds are naturally difficult due to the extreme toxicity of the materials involved, but also because of the cost and scarcity of research isotopes. Now, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and their collaborators at Oregon State University (OSU) have developed a new method to isolate and study in great detail…
Manufacturing Day webinar to highlight HPC’s impact on climate change, energy efficiency
The High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) initiative will hold a special webinar on Oct. 7 to celebrate Manufacturing Day and provide a forum for industry experts and Department of Energy (DOE) scientists to discuss how HPC can help combat climate change and improve energy efficiency. The virtual event begins at 8 a.m. PDT and brings together panelists…
Asteroid sample lands on LLNL
No need to worry, it is just a very small piece for scientific study. In December 2014, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the spacecraft Hayabusa2 to the asteroid 162173 Ryugu. In December 2020, when the sample-return capsule successfully landed safely back on Earth with pristine pieces of Ryugu that it had collected, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory…
LLNL and Korea Institute of Science and Technology to collaborate
Leaders at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Monday to collaborate on basic science and technology in the renewable energy, climate science, data science and characterizations arenas. Under the MOU, KIST will have office space in the Livermore Open Campus…
LLNL and Case Western Reserve University to continue collaboration
The leaders of Case Western Reserve University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to accelerate their efforts in shared areas of excellence. After three years of growing institutional collaboration in such areas as energy, materials science and polymer processing, Case Western Reserve President Eric W. Kaler…
Understanding how radionuclides move
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) intern Jordan Stanberry is spending his summer examining pond sediments to better understand groundwater contamination from decades-old nuclear tests. A chemistry graduate student from the University of Central Florida (UCF), Stanberry is participating in an eight-week Glenn T. Seaborg Institute (GTSI) internship program. The…
White House visit underscores a national need for diversity in STEM
This week, President Biden signed into law the bipartisan bill known as the CHIPS and Science Act (CSC ACT). The bill aims to strengthen U.S. competition by encouraging U.S. companies to manufacture semiconductors and by revitalizing “America’s scientific research and technological leadership." Under Title V: Broadening Participation in Science of the bill, the White House…
Going deep: New ground motion model more accurately simulates earthquakes, explosions
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have created a new adjoint waveform tomography model that more accurately simulates earthquake and explosion ground motions. The paper, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, was selected for an Editor’s Highlight. Seismic tomography is a method to estimate the inaccessible three-dimensional (3D) seismic…
Lab’s technology on board James Webb Space Telescope
Last month, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a partnership with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, revealed unprecedented and detailed views of the universe, with the release of its first full-color images and spectroscopic data. The cosmic objects that Webb targeted for these first observations were released July 12 and are available on the…
Three peer-reviewed papers highlight scientific results of National Ignition Facility record yield shot
After decades of inertial confinement fusion research, a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ) was achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) for the first time on Aug. 8, 2021, putting researchers at the threshold of fusion gain and achieving scientific ignition. On the one-year anniversary of this historic achievement,…
Graphite changes to hexagonal diamond in picoseconds
The graphite-diamond phase transition is of particular interest for fundamental reasons and a wide range of applications. On very fast compression time scales, material kinetics hinder the transition from graphite to the equilibrium cubic diamond crystal structure that we commonly know as diamond. Shock wave compression of graphite typically requires pressures above 50 GPa…
