News

Lab’s Center for Global Security Research Center director receives high honor from the Government of Japan

Brad Roberts has received one of the highest honors bestowed by the Government of Japan. The director of the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Roberts has been given the Order of the Rising Sun, an honor awarded by the prime minister of Japan to people who have rendered distinguished service to the nation. The honor is rarely...

Watch: DOE press conference on NIF

Watch the DOE press conference on NIF, which took place on Tuesday, Dec. 13.

Watch: LLNL Panel Q&A on NIF

Watch: LLNL Panel Q&A on NIF, which took place Tuesday, Dec. 13.

National Ignition Facility achieves fusion ignition

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today (Dec. 13) announced the achievement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) — a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power. On Dec. 5, a team at LLNL’s National...

A shot for the ages: Fusion ignition breakthrough hailed as ‘one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century’

Call it the shot heard ‘round the world. The monumental, first-ever demonstration of fusion ignition by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) marks a potentially world-changing breakthrough for fusion energy and a key initial step in a decades-long quest for limitless clean energy, U.S. government officials and LLNL scientists said Tuesday. A...

Sue Marlais selected as LLNL’s chief information officer

Sue Marlais has been named Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s chief information officer (CIO), Deputy Director Carolyn Zerkle announced today. Her appointment is effective immediately. In this role, Marlais will execute all institutional information technology (IT) efforts, including business application development and support, institutional data center management, networking...

Lawrence Livermore campaign again raises $3.6 million for non-profit organizations

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employees, along with Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS), LLC, donated more than $3.6 million to non-profit organizations via the annual employee charitable giving program, the Helping Others More Effectively (HOME) Campaign. Laboratory employees pledged more than $2.6 million through payroll deduction with 100% of the funds donated going...

Charging up with carbon nanotubes

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have created vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes on metal foils that could be a boon for energy storage and the electronics industry. Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) have exceptional mechanical, electrical and transport properties in addition to an aligned architecture, which is key for applications such as...

Environmental DNA uncovers a 2-million-year-old ecosystem in Greenland

Around 2 million years ago, climate in Greenland resembled the forecast of a future under global warming: with trees such as poplars and birch and animals like hare, lemmings, mastodons and reindeer. Paleoclimatic records show strong polar amplification with annual temperatures of 11–19 degrees Celsius above current values. The biological communities inhabiting the Arctic during this time...

Improving precision of pressure determination in nanosecond X-ray diffraction experiments

X-ray diffraction measurements under laser-driven dynamic compression allow researchers to investigate the atomic structure of matter at hundreds of thousands of atmospheres of pressure and temperatures of thousands of degrees, with broad implications for condensed matter physics, planetary science and astronomy. Pressure determination in these experiments often relies on velocimetry...

LLNL Forensic Science Center team develops new technique to analyze fentanyl in blood and urine

A team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists has developed a new technique to analyze fentanyl in human blood and urine samples that could aid work in the fields of medicine and chemical forensics. Led by Carlos Valdez, an LLNL synthetic chemist and lead author, the team discussed its new fentanyl analysis approach in a paper recently published in the San Francisco...

Machine-learning model instantly predicts polymer properties

Hundreds of millions of tons of polymer materials are produced globally for use in a vast and ever-growing application space with new material demands such as green chemistry polymers, consumer packaging, adhesives, automotive components, fabrics and solar cells. But discovering suitable polymer materials for use in these applications lies in accurately predicting the properties that a...

New method unearths improved understanding of soil microbial interactions

Linking the identity of wild microbes with their physiological traits and environmental functions is a key aim for environmental microbiologists. Of the techniques that strive for this goal, Stable Isotope Probing — SIP — is considered the most effective for studying active microorganisms in natural settings. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have developed a new...

Uranium takes an alternate pathway under extreme conditions

Under normal conditions, radioactive materials such as uranium work in a predictable manner. But take those same materials and put them under extreme conditions with high temperature in a short timescale and a rapid cooling process and their decomposition pathways change dramatically. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists built a unique process to synthesize...

LLNL staff returns to Texas-sized Supercomputing Conference

The 2022 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC22) returned to Dallas as a large contingent of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) staff participated in sessions, panels, paper presentations and workshops centered around high performance computing (HPC). The world’s largest conference of its kind celebrated its highest in...

New analysis helps reconcile differences between satellites and climate models

Satellite observations and computer simulations are important tools for understanding past changes in Earth’s climate and for projecting future changes. However, satellite observations consistently show less warming than climate model simulations from 1979 to the present, especially in the tropical troposphere (the lowest ~15km of Earth’s atmosphere). This difference has raised...

LLNL researchers win HPCwire award for applying cognitive simulation to inertial confinement fusion

The high performance computing publication HPCwire announced Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as the winner of its Editor’s Choice award for Best Use of HPC in Energy for applying cognitive simulation (CogSim) methods to inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research. The award was presented Tuesday at the largest supercomputing conference in the world: the 2022 International...

Scientists use carbon to detect a new nitrogen source in the open ocean

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and UC Santa Cruz scientists have detected a previously hypothesized class of nitrogen fixation in the surface ocean. Nitrogen scarcity limits the growth of ocean phytoplankton, a globally important carbon sink and the base of the marine food web. Nitrogen that can be used by phytoplankton generally has a very low concentration in the sunlit...

Conference celebrates 30 years of inspiring girls toward careers in STEM

The San Joaquin Expanding Your Horizons (SJEYH) conference celebrated its 30th anniversary with the theme "STEM: It's Like Magic, but Real," on Saturday, Nov. 5, bringing more than 250 girls (and some boys) to the University of the Pacific (UOP) campus in Stockton to learn more about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Co-sponsored by Lawrence Livermore National...

LLNL researchers observe that ions behave differently in fusion reactions

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have discovered that ions behave differently in fusion reactions than previously expected, thus providing important insights for the future design of a laser­–fusion energy source. The findings are featured in a new paper in the Nov. 14 issue of Nature Physics and is titled “Evidence for suprathermal ion distribution in...