Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have designed a new class of 3D-printed lattice structures that combine light weight and high stiffness, despite breaking a rule previously thought to be required to exhibit such properties. One of the new structures additionally displays perfectly uniform response to forces in all directions.
When the world’s newest telescope starts imaging the Southern sky in 2023, it will take photos using optical assemblies designed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers and built by Lab industrial partners. A key feature of the camera’s optical assemblies for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, under construction in northern Chile, will be its three lenses.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists going to the microscale to study the diverse characteristics of nuclear fuel pellets that could improve nuclear forensic analysis by determining more effectively where the material came from and how it was made.
There’s a reason why Jupiter’s stripes are only skin deep. It turns out that the planet’s zonal winds -- the alternating east-west jet streams seen in photographs as colorful stripes -- only descend to 3,000 kilometers in the atmosphere.
Linton Brooks, ambassador for arms control, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and a nuclear submarine officer, has been named the fifth recipient of the John S. Foster Medal for his life’s work in advancing U.S. national security and international cooperation for a more secure world.
An international team of researchers has developed a new algorithm for solving equations using a type of quantum computer called a “quantum annealer.” The team systematically examined how this method scales when facing increasingly difficult mathematical equations, with promising results.
In the decade since Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility began operations, NIF has routinely heated and compressed matter to some of the most extreme temperatures and pressures ever obtained on Earth – temperatures of 100 million degrees and pressures 100 billion times that of the Earth’s atmosphere. More than 2,700 experiments have helped to ensure the current and future nuclear stockpile is safe, secure and effective; made significant progress toward fusion ignition; and yielded new insights about the stars and the universe while revealing phenomena like the metallization of hydrogen and the interiors of distant planets.
The Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) today announced the signing of contracts with Cray Inc. to build the NNSA’s first exascale supercomputer, “El Capitan.” When delivered in late 2022, El Capitan will have a peak performance of more than 1.5 exaflops (1.5 quintillion calculations per second), about 10 times faster than LLNL’s current most powerful supercomputer, Sierra. The total contract award is valued at $600 million.
Gold is an extremely important material for high-pressure experiments and is considered the ‘gold standard’ for calculating pressure in static diamond anvil cell experiments. When compressed slowly at room temperature (on the order of seconds to minutes), gold prefers to be the face-centered cubic (fcc) structure at pressures up to three times the center of the Earth. However, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Carnegie Institution of Washington have found that when gold is compressed rapidly over nanoseconds (1 billionth of a second), the increase in pressure and temperature changes the crystalline structure to a new phase of gold. This well-known body centered cubic (bcc) structure morphs to a more open crystal structure than the fcc structure.
Four scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have been selected for the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on scientists and engineers who are early in their careers and have distinguished themselves in their respective fields.
The High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation program (HPC4EI) today announced the nine public/private projects awarded more than $2 million in Department of Energy funding, with aims of improving energy production, enhancing or developing new material properties and reducing energy usage in manufacturing.
Leadership from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Nuclear Security Administration broke ground Wednesday on a new Applied Materials and Engineering campus that will come on line just in time to support a pair of major stockpile stewardship programs.
Any single hair from anywhere on the human body can be used to identify a person. This conclusion is one of the key findings from a study by a team of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Michigan State University.
Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used giant lasers to flash-freeze water into its exotic superionic phase and record X-ray diffraction patterns to identify its atomic structure for the very first time – all in just a few billionths of a second.
Observations and climate reconstructions using data from tree rings confirm that human activity was affecting the worldwide drought risk as far back as the early 20th century.
Combining high performance computer simulations with X-ray imaging of the laser powder bed fusion (LBPF) metal additive manufacturing process obtained with SLAC’s synchrotron, researchers have found a way to negate the formation of pores — tiny holes under the surface of a build that can initiate cracking in the finished part under stress.
Americans used more energy in 2018 than in any other year, according to the most recent energy flow charts released by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Overall total energy consumption rose to 101.2 quadrillion BTU (or “quads”). The prior record, set in 2007, was 101.0 quads. Energy use went up by 3.6 percent from 2017, which also is the largest annual increase since 2010.
An accident had occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant on March 28, 1979 that led to a release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. This is how the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) was born.
The Department of Energy (DOE) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) today announced the spring 2019 call for proposals for the High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) Program, including three of its pillar programs.
Climate scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) announced today the release of new data sets that will provide fresh insights into past and future climate change.
As part of a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory bioenergy study, project scientist Jennifer Pett-Ridge and collaborators have learned how the digestive system of a wood-eating beetle serves as a natural mini-reactor for biofuel production.
The High Performance Computing for Manufacturing Program (HPC4Mfg) today announced the recipients of $1.2 million in federal funding for four public/private projects aimed at solving key manufacturing challenges in steelmaking and aluminum production through supercomputing.
Veterinarians and agricultural inspectors who seek to detect and contain the spread of animal diseases can now turn to a newer, faster and less expensive biological detection system.
Not by meteorite alone did the dinosaurs die off. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory research scientist Kyle Samperton and colleagues present the most compelling evidence yet that massive volcanic eruptions in the Deccan Traps region of India contributed to the fall of the dinosaurs – also known as the end-Cretaceous mass extinction – approximately 66 million years ago.
Taking a page from the past, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists are combining mechanical computing with 3D printing as part of an effort to create “sentient” materials that can respond to changes in their surroundings, even in extreme environments that would destroy electronic components such as high radiation, heat or pressure.
New research by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and collaborators at the University of California, Irvine shows that synthetic solid-state nanopores can have finely tuned transport behaviors much like the biological channels that allow a neuron to fire.
Scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) have developed a brand-new high-speed 3D printing method that uses projected images called Computed Axial Lithography (CAL).
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have introduced a new class of metamaterials that can nearly instantly respond and stiffen 3D-printed structures when exposed to a magnetic field, a development that could be applied to next-generation helmets, wearable armor and a host of other innovations.
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) Initiative today issued its first joint solicitation for the High Performance Computing for Manufacturing Program (HPC4Mfg) and the High Performance Computing for Materials Program (HPC4Mtls).
The high performance computing publication HPCwire handed Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (LLNL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) their Editors’ Choice and Readers’ Choice Awards for the Top Supercomputing Achievement of 2018, recognizing the launch of the world’s two fastest computing systems, Sierra and Summit.
Sierra, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s newest supercomputer, rose to second place on the list of the world’s fastest computing systems, TOP500 List representatives announced Monday at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis conference (SC18) in Dallas.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in partnership with Penguin Computing, AMD, and Mellanox Technologies, will accept delivery of Corona, a new unclassified high performance computing (HPC) cluster that will provide unique capabilities for Lab researchers and industry partners to explore data science, machine learning and big data analytics.
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and its industry partners today officially unveiled Sierra, one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, at a dedication ceremony to celebrate the system’s completion.
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) Initiative has announced it will issue its first joint solicitation in November for two of its pillar initiatives, the High Performance Computing for Manufacturing Program (HPC4Mfg) and the High Performance Computing for Materials Program (HPC4Mtls).
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have shown that the structure of microscopic pores in high explosive materials can significantly impact performance and safety. These findings open the door to the possibility of tuning high explosives by engineering their microstructure.
The Department of Energy today announced the first round of awardees for the new HPC4Materials (HPC4Mtls) Program, a public-private effort aimed at using high-performance computing to advance U.S. industry’s discovery, design and development of materials for severe environments.
In a study published today in the journal Science Advances, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers, along with their counterparts at Harvard University, report on the hierarchical 3D printing of nanoporous gold, a proof of concept that researchers say could revolutionize the design of chemical reactors.
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry recognized LLNL chemist Bill McLean with a prestigious Secretary’s Achievement Award yesterday in recognition of “pioneering technical contributions that have led to significant advancements in science-based stockpile stewardship.”
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has issued a special High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) call for proposals for projects aimed at addressing key challenges in U.S. steel and aluminum manufacturing. The solicitation officially opened on Aug. 23.
Swirling dense metallic hydrogen dominates the interiors of Jupiter, Saturn and many extra-solar planets. Building precise models of these giant planets requires an accurate description of the transition of pressurized hydrogen into this metallic substance – a long-standing scientific challenge. In a paper published by Science, a research team led by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory describes optical measurements of the insulator-to-metal transition in fluid hydrogen, resolving discrepancies in previous experiments and establishing new benchmarks for calculations used to construct planetary models. The multi-institution team included researchers from the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, University of Edinburgh, University of Rochester, Carnegie Institution of Washington, University of California, Berkeley and The George Washington University.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which manages the High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) Program to use supercomputers to advance U.S. manufacturing, today announced the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded nearly $3.8 million for 13 industry projects under the program.
Magnetic fields around a planet or a star can overpower the zonal jets that affect atmospheric circulation. New research by a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist and a collaborator from the Australian National University (ANU) provides a theoretical explanation for why self-organized fluid flows called zonal jets or “zonal flows” can be suppressed by the presence of a magnetic field.
Former LLNL director John Nuckolls has been named the fourth recipient of the John S. Foster Jr. Medal for his outstanding leadership in support of national security.
For the first time, scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and five other organizations have shown that human influences significantly impact the size of the seasonal cycle of temperature in the lowest layer of the atmosphere.
A new study in which Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists compared drug responses in the brains of rodents to drug responses of brain cells cultured in Lab-developed “brain-on-a-chip” devices may be a critical first step to validating chip-based brain platforms, LLNL researchers said.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser system has set a new record, firing 2.15 megajoules (MJ) of energy to its target chamber – a 15 percent improvement over NIF’s design specification of 1.8 MJ, and more than 10 percent higher than the previous 1.9 MJ energy record set in March 2012. Increasing NIF’s energy limit will expand the parameter space for stockpile stewardship experiments and provide a significant boost to the pursuit of ignition.
Through a new multi-year project involving the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Livermore (LLNL), Lawrence Berkeley (LBNL) and Argonne (ANL) national laboratories, in collaboration with the Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury (TRACK-TBI) consortium led by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), scientists and engineers plan to simultaneously challenge DOE’s supercomputing resources, advance artificial intelligence capabilities and enable a precision medicine approach for traumatic brain injury (TBI).
The program to extend the life of the W80 nuclear warhead recently passed a significant milestone when the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) gave passing grades to the plans to refurbish certain components and the proposed approach to developing component cost estimates.
After evaluation by an international peer review group, the L3-HAPLS advanced petawatt laser system has been declared fully integrated and operational at the ELI Beamlines Research Center in Dolní Břežany, Czech Republic. The group assessed the laser performance, determined that all performance parameters have been successfully met – capable of reaching the 1 petawatt, 10 hertz (Hz) design specification – and that the system is ready for integration with the experimental systems and first experiments.