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

Physicists Win Supercomputing Time to Study Fusion and the Cosmos

More than 210 million core hours on two of the most powerful supercomputers in the nation have been won by two teams led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).

Making Fuel Out of Thick Air

In a new study, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Tufts University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory helped develop a new way of converting methane to methanol using rhodium-based catalysts.

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Superior Hydrogen Catalyst Just Grows That Way

Research led by Sandia National Laboratories and the University of California, Merced aimed at bringing down the cost of hydrogen fuel cells used a dirt-cheap compound to create an uneven surface that resembles a plant’s leaves.

Breaking Electron Waves Provide New Clues to High-Temperature Superconductivity

A collaboration led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory has tracked elusive waves of charge and spin that precede and follow the mysterious emergence of superconductivity.

FAST Electron Beam Achieves Milestone Energy for Future Accelerator R&D

The linear accelerator at the Fermilab Accelerator Science and Technology facility recently ramped up a beam of electrons to 300 MeV, surpassing the threshold needed to launch a new accelerator physics program at Fermilab.

Heavy Metal: How First Supernovae Altered Early Star Formation

Ken Chen, an astrophysicist at the East Asian Core Observatories Association (EACOA), and colleagues from Portsmouth University and Universität Heidelberg ran simulations on the Edison supercomputer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) to illustrate how heavy metals expelled from exploding supernovae helped the first stars in the universe regulate subsequent star formation.

CEBAF Begins Operations following Upgrade Completion

The world's most advanced particle accelerator for investigating the quark structure of matter is gearing up to begin its first experiments following official completion of an upgrade to triple its original design energy. The Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility is now back online and ramping up for the start of experiments.

Research Zooms in on Enzyme That Repairs DNA Damage from UV Rays

A research team at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is using the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) to study an enzyme found in plants, bacteria and some animals that repairs DNA damage caused by the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) light rays.

How to Map the Phases of the Hottest Substance in the Universe

Scientists are searching for the critical point of quark-gluon plasma, the substance that formed just after the Big Bang. Finding where quark-gluon plasma abruptly changes into ordinary matter can reveal new insights.

Welcome Back, GRETINA

GRETINA, a world-class gamma ray spectrometer scientists are installing at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, will soon be contributing to our knowledge of the physics of unusual atomic nuclei.

Genes Found in Drought-Resistant Plants Could Accelerate Evolution of Water-Use Efficient Crops

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have identified a common set of genes that enable different drought-resistant plants to survive in semi-arid conditions, which could play a significant role in bioengineering and creating energy crops that are tolerant to water deficits.

Nanoscientists Develop New Material with Controllable Pores

Scientists from the University of Buffalo working at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials have made a new material from bottlebrush copolymers, creating a framework for strong materials with nanoscale-sized, controllable pores.