News Archive | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Clarice Phelps: Dedicated Service to Science and Community

More than 70 years ago, United States Navy Captain Hyman Rickover learned the ins and outs of nuclear science and reactor technology at the Clinton Training School at what would eventually become the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Rickover applied his knowledge towards the creation of the US Navy’s nuclear-powered ships and submarines, earning him the moniker of “father of the nuclear navy.” Decades later, ORNL researchers like Clarice Phelps carry on the Navy Nuke legacy and use their nuclear expertise to solve some of the grand challenges of science.

Physicists Ahmed Diallo, front, and Julien Dominski.

Fiery Sighting: A New Physics of Eruptions That Damage Fusion Experiments

Working together, physicists Ahmed Diallo, an experimentalist, and Julien Dominski, a theorist, pieced together data from the DIII-D National Fusion Facility that General Atomics operates for the DOE in San Diego, to uncover a trigger for a particular type of ELM that does not fit into present models of ELM plasma destabilization.

A cross section of the model of colliding neutron stars shows the dense regions of the accretion disk in red around the black hole at the very center. The astrophysical jet is the funnel above and below the black hole, a less dense region of blue, which gave rise to a gamma-ray burst. (Credit: Rodrigo Fernández)

When Stars Collide: 3D Computer Simulation Captures Cosmic Event

Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars, mostly made of elementary particles called neutrons. In August 2017, scientists detected the collision of two neutron stars for the first time by using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. When two of these stars collide, they merge in a flash of light and debris known as a kilonova, as material explodes outward.

Egemen Kolemen, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton, discusses the flowmeter.

PPPL Inventions Take the Spotlight at Technology Showcase

A day-long Technology Showcase spotlighting the unique research, technical expertise, and inventions that the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory offers to collaborators and funders attracted a wide range of potential partners.

Funding: Department of Energy to Provide $45 Million for Chemical and Materials Research in Quantum Information Science

A wide-ranging multidisciplinary area of research, QIS is expected to lay the foundation for the next generation of computing and information processing, as well as an array of other innovative technologies in sensing and related applications.

Science Up-Close: Developing a Cookbook for Efficient Fusion Energy

To design future fusion reactors, scientists needed to go back to the very basic principles of physics.

Commensal bacteria (red) reside amongst the mucus (green) and epithelial cells (blue) of a mouse small intestine. (Image courtesy of UChicago.)

Intestinal Bacteria from Healthy Infants Prevent Food Allergy

Researchers from the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Naples Federico II in Italy found that when gut microbes from healthy human infants were transplanted into germ-free mice, the animals were protected from an allergic reaction when exposed to cow’s milk.

Found: A Precise Method for Determining How Waves and Particles Affect Fusion Reactions

Like surfers catching ocean waves, particles within the hot, electrically charged state of matter known as plasma can ride waves that oscillate through the plasma during experiments to investigate the production of fusion energy.

At SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source, the researchers blasted an iron sample with laser pulses to demagnetize it, then grazed the sample with X-rays, using the patterns formed when the X-rays scattered to uncover details of the process. (Gregory Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

An Effect that Einstein Helped Discover 100 Years Ago Offers New Insight Into a Puzzling Magnetic Phenomenon

More than 100 years ago, Albert Einstein and Wander Johannes de Haas discovered that when they used a magnetic field to flip the magnetic state of an iron bar dangling from a thread, the bar began to rotate. Now experiments at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have seen for the first time what happens when magnetic materials are demagnetized at ultrafast speeds of millionths of a billionth of a second: The atoms on the surface of the material move, much like the iron bar did. The work, done at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser, was published in Nature earlier this month.

Lund University professor Frederik Ossler (left) and ORNL researcher Charles Finney are using ORNL’s CG-1D instrument to study biomass fuels as they pyrolyze using neutron scattering. Their research could lead to more efficient energy production from biomass. (Image credit: ORNL/Genevieve Martin)

Researching Cleaner, More Efficient Bioenergy Production Using Neutrons

Nordic countries such as Sweden rely heavily on biomass-derived fuels to power their homes and businesses. However, in the process of burning biomass like wood or straw, gases are released that can pollute the air, damage the environment, and harm public health. To mitigate these negative effects, Frederik Ossler, an associate professor at Lund University, Sweden, and Charles Finney from the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are studying approaches to cleaner energy conversion of biomass.

Catherine Trewhella at the Submicron Resolution X-ray Spectroscopy (SRX) beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) at Brookhaven Lab.

Meet Catherine Trewhella: Mapping Terrestrial Analogs for Martian Samples

Catherine Trewhella, a recent graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and current intern at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, is taking a microscopic look at rocks at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a DOE Office of Science user facility. Her research will help prepare scientists for analyzing samples brought back from outer space, specifically Mars.

This image shows two membrane-bound protein complexes that work together with a synthetic catalyst to produce hydrogen from water. (Image by Olivia Johnson and Lisa Utschig.)

Discovery Adapts Natural Membrane to Make Hydrogen Fuel from Water

In a recent study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, scientists have combined two membrane-bound protein complexes to perform a complete conversion of water molecules to hydrogen and oxygen.