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

A Boon for Physicists: New Insights Into Neutrino Interactions

Physicists on the MicroBooNE collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab have produced their first collection of science results. Roxanne Guenette of Harvard University presented the results on behalf of the collaboration at the international Neutrino 2018 conference in Germany.

Non-Crystal Clarity: Scientists Find Ordered Magnetic Patterns in Disordered Magnetic Material

Study led by Berkeley Lab scientists relies on high-resolution microscopy techniques to confirm nanoscale magnetic features.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Launches America’s New Top Supercomputer for Science

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) unveils Summit as the world’s most powerful and smartest scientific supercomputer.

New Model Sheds Light on Key Physics of Magnetic Islands that Halt Fusion Reactions

Magnetic islands, bubble-like structures that form in fusion plasmas, can grow and disrupt the plasmas and damage the doughnut-shaped tokamak facilities that house fusion reactions. Recent research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has used large-scale computer simulations to produce a new model that could be key to understanding how the islands interact with the surrounding plasma as they grow and lead to disruptions.

Big Boost for Fermilab’s Short-Baseline Neutrino Experiments

Data from the MiniBooNE and the Los Alamos Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector experiments presented this week at the Neutrino 2018 conference suggest that something unusual is going on when low-energy muon neutrinos travel a short distance, pointing to a possible type of neutrinos or “sterile” neutrinos——with different properties from the three known types.

Exploring Greener Approaches to Nitrogen Fixation

A fundamental understanding of nitrogen chemistry could lead to more sustainable routes for producing nitrogen-containing commodities such as fertilizers and nitric acid.

Faces of Summit: Leading a Systems Expedition

Matt Ezell, one of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s high-performance computing systems administrators for Summit, is currently undertaking some of the most important tasks necessary for standing up the machine, the newest supercomputer at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Celebrating 50 Years of Evaluated Nuclear Data

Using recent experimental data and improvements in theory and simulation, a group of national labs, universities, and companies recently published the eighth major update to a library of nuclear reaction information first published in 1968 that is used in simulations for energy, medicine, national security, and other applications.

Detector Improvements Upgrade Science Capabilities of SNS and HFIR Instruments

Detectors at SNS and HFIR help researchers study scattered neutrons to better understand the nature of materials. An ORNL team designs detectors tailored to meet the specifications of each instrument, such as the WLS detectors installed at the recently upgraded POWGEN, SNS beamline 11A, and the Anger cameras installed at MaNDi, SNS beamline 11B.

DUNE Collaboration Grows to 32 Countries, Prepares for Operations of Prototype Detectors

The international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment collaboration, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab, continues to grow. During the collaboration meeting at Fermilab from May 14-18, the DUNE Institutional Board admitted two new institutions to the collaboration: the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics, which is the first institution from Portugal to join DUNE, and the University of Bucharest, the second institution from Romania.

Scientists From Around the World Come to New Jersey to Discuss How to Control Plasma-Surface Interactions for Fusion

The 23rd International Conference on Plasma Surface Interactions in Controlled Fusion Devices – the preeminent biennial research conference in this field – begins on June 17 and continues for six days.

The Perfect Couple: Higgs and Top Quark Spotted Together

Two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced a discovery that finally links the two heaviest known particles: the top quark and the Higgs boson.