Science Headlines | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Narrowing in on the W Boson Mass

Scientists working on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—the world’s largest particle collider, hosted at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory—have precisely measured the mass of the W boson, a particle that plays a weighty role in a delicate balancing act of the quantum universe.

Particle Interactions Calculated on Titan Support the Search for New Physics Discoveries

Nuclear physicists are using the nation’s most powerful supercomputer, Titan, at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to study particle interactions important to energy production in the Sun and stars and to propel the search for new physics discoveries.

Researchers Run First Tests of Unique System for Welding Highly Irradiated Metal Alloys

Scientists of the Department of Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program (LWRS) and partners from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) have conducted the first weld tests to repair highly irradiated materials at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

GM Revs Up Diesel Combustion Modeling on Titan Supercomputer

Researchers at General Motors (GM) are using the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to improve combustion models for diesel passenger car engines with an ultimate goal of accelerating innovative engine designs while meeting strict emissions standards.

For Clouds and Aerosols, a Renewed Three-year Look at Small-scale Processes

Modelers and experimentalists from Brookhaven National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are collaborating in a three-year science focus area to improve weather and climate models by better understanding the evolution of light-absorbing aerosol particles, and how they interact with incoming solar radiation.

Fermilab's Muon g-2 Experiment Officially Starts Up

The Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab, which has been six years in the making, is officially up and running after reaching its final construction milestone. The U.S. Department of Energy on Jan. 16 granted the last of five approval stages to the project, Critical Decision 4 (CD-4), formally allowing its transition into operations.

Berkeley Lab Researchers Contribute to Making Blockchains Even More Robust

Blockchain—a technology used for verifying and recording digital transactions—blasted into public consciousness with the rise of Bitcoin. But this tool could also transform the way governments, global industries and even science research operate.

Atomic Flaws Create Surprising, High-Efficiency UV LED Materials

A team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University has discovered that subtle imperfections can dramatically increase the efficiency and ultraviolet (UV) light output of certain LED materials.

Lithium — It’s Not Just For Batteries: The Powdered Metal Can Reduce Instabilities in Fusion Plasmas

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and collaborators on China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) found that lithium powder can eliminate instabilities known as edge-localized modes (ELMs) when used to coat a tungsten plasma-facing component called the “divertor” — the unit that exhausts waste heat and particles from plasma that fuels fusion reactions.

Tracking Microbial Diversity Through the Terrestrial Subsurface

In collaboration with a team led by longtime collaborator Jill Banfield of the University of California, Berkeley and Cathy Ryan of the University of Calgary in Canada, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, investigated samples collected at Crystal Geyser over one of the Utah geyser’s complex, five-day eruption cycles.

Magnetic Trick Triples the Power of SLAC’s X-Ray Laser

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a way to triple the amount of power generated by the world’s most powerful X-ray laser. The new technique, developed at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), will enable researchers to observe the atomic structure of molecules and ultrafast chemical processes that were previously undetectable at the atomic scale.

Scientists Discover ‘Chiral Phonons’ – Atomic Rotations in a 2-D Semiconductor Crystal

A research team from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has found the first evidence that a shaking motion in the structure of an atomically thin (2-D) material possesses a naturally occurring circular rotation.