Feature Stories

Why are scientists setting off small-scale explosions inside 1-foot cubes of plexiglass? They’re watching how fractures form and grow in a rock-like substance to see if explosives or propellants, similar to jet fuel, can connect geothermal wells in a predictable manner.

The first Safe Zone Project workshop at Argonne focuses on allyship with more vital topics to help increase communication, safety and bias-free inclusion in the workplace for LGBTQIA+ employees.

Materials Scientist Jim De Yoreo guides a team that develops novel materials and understands how they form through collaboration and mentorship.

At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Andreas Kemp studies the interaction of intense, extremely short laser pulses with matter. This new field of research studies extreme nuclear physics reactions at rates far higher than those of current accelerator experiments.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory discovered that certain bacteria increase the climate resilience of Sphagnum moss, the tiny plant responsible for storing a third of the world’s soil carbon in peat bogs. Heat tolerant microbes transfer that protection to the plants, helping them survive climate warming.

A Quantum Science Center-supported team has captured the first-ever appearance of a previously undetectable quantum excitation known as the axial Higgs mode.

Valhalla, a Python-based performance modeling framework developed at Sandia National Laboratories, uses high-performance computing to build preliminary satellite designs based on mission requirements and then runs those designs through thousands of simulations. The results of the simulations feed into an interactive multidimensional video-like view of satellites executing their mission and hundreds of plots that show the user the relationship between each of the outputs and inputs at a glance. This data enables the user to quickly find the solution that best executes the mission.

Program pairs PNNL experts with aspiring UW undergraduates who learn through doing on laboratory projects.