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

Simulations By PPPL Physicists Suggest That External Magnetic Fields Can Calm Plasma Instabilities

Physicists led by Gerrit Kramer at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have conducted simulations that suggest that applying magnetic fields to fusion plasmas can control instabilities known as Alfvén waves that can reduce the efficiency of fusion reactions.

New Material Discovery Allows Study of Elusive Weyl Fermion

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have discovered a new type of Weyl semimetal, a material that opens the way for further study of Weyl fermions, a type of massless elementary particle hypothesized by high-energy particle theory and potentially useful for creating high-speed electronic circuits and quantum computers.

3-D Galaxy-Mapping Project Enters Construction Phase

The latest DOE approval step, known as Critical Decision 3, triggers spending for major components of the project, including the remainder of the 5,000 finger-width, 10-inch-long cylindrical robots that will precisely point the fiber-optic cables to gather the light from a chosen set of galaxies, stars, and brilliant objects called quasars.

NOvA Shines New Light on How Neutrinos Behave

NOvA scientists have seen evidence that one of the three neutrino mass states might not include equal parts of muon and tau flavor, as previously thought. Scientists refer to this as “nonmaximal mixing,” and NOvA’s preliminary result is the first hint that this may be the case for the third mass state.

New Results on the Higgs Boson and the Building Blocks of Matter Presented at ICHEP

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) performance surpasses expectations; results confirm the Higgs particle, show "bump" appears to be a statistical fluctuation, and offer insight into quark-gluon plasma at high energies complementary to those explored at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).

Researchers Combine Simulation, Experiment for Nanoscale 3-D Printing

A team at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in collaboration with the University of Tennessee and the Graz University of Technology, has developed a powerful simulation-guided drafting process to improve FEBID and introduce new possibilities in nanomanufacturing.

Argonne Discovery Yields Self-Healing Diamond-Like Carbon

The tribologists — scientists who study friction, wear, and lubrication — and computational materials scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Argonne National Laboratory discovered a revolutionary diamond-like film of their own that is generated by the heat and pressure of an automotive engine.

ORNL Optimizes Formula For Cadmium-Tellurium Solar Cells

Solar cells based on cadmium and tellurium could move closer to theoretical levels of efficiency because of some sleuthing by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Susan Hogle: Coming Full Circle, From Nuclear Waste to Isotope Production

Susan Hogle has spent the last several years working to improve the production of radioisotopes, particularly californium-252. But not long ago, the native of Napanee, Canada, was working on the opposite task—researching how to dispose of nuclear material.

Physicist Trio Amplifies SLAC Research on Mysterious Forms of Matter

SLAC scientists develop methods to study neutrinos from star explosions and search for unknown particles and forces with possible ties to dark matter.

Scientists Model the "Flicker" of Gluons in Subatomic Smashups

Scientists exploring the dynamic behavior of particles emerging from subatomic smashups at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility for nuclear physics research at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory—are increasingly interested in the role of gluons.

PPPL Researchers Combine Quantum Mechanics and Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity to Clear Up Puzzles in Plasma Physics

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have developed a theory of plasma waves that can infer these properties in greater detail than in standard approaches.