All Los Alamos in the News

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  Science on the Hill: Protecting grid from cataclysmic solar storm

  Los Alamos has been studying space weather for more than 50 years as part of its national security mission to monitor nuclear testing around the globe, and part of that work includes studying how the radiation-saturated environment of near space can affect technology and people.

  - 2/12/17
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  EDGE bioinformatics brings genomics to everyone

  A new bioinformatics platform called Empowering the Development of Genomics Expertise (EDGE) will help democratize the genomics revolution by allowing users with limited bioinformatics expertise to quickly analyze and interpret genomic sequence data... - 11/29/16

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  Los Alamos honored for industry collaboration in 2016 HPCwire awards

  Los Alamos has been recognized with an HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Award for the Lab’s collaboration with Seagate on next-generation data storage technologies.. - 11/16/16

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  Using Wikipedia to forecast the flu

  Forecasting the impact of not just the flu, but other infectious—and preventable—diseases such as HIV and measles could allow public health workers to focus on mitigation strategies and potentially save millions of lives around the world... - 11/15/16

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  Exascale Computing Project announces $48 million to establish four exascale co-design centers

  The Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP)announced that it has selected four co-design centers as part of a 4 year, $48 million funding award... - 11/11/16

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  Fires set to clear African land are stoking climate change

  Each year in the dry season, flames sweep across a large swath of the African countryside, engulfing every kind of grass and woody plant in their way... - 11/13/16

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  Smoking causes extensive damage to DNA

  Study shows hundreds of mutations in every lung cell after one year - 11/3/16

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  LANL captures multiple R&D 100 Awards

  R&D 100, the national magazine of research and development, named the winners of its 2016 technology innovation awards... - 11/16

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  Fires set to clear African land are stoking climate change

  Each year in the dry season, flames sweep across a large swath of the African countryside, engulfing every kind of grass and woody plant in their way... - 11/16

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  Humans on Mars

  Nuclear reactor test in Nevada could make a Mars trip reality - 11/16

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  The Pope of Physics

  All about Fermi - 11/16

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  Outsmarting the art of camouflage

  It’s not just soldiers that use camouflage to blend into their surroundings. Facilities and the movement of people and equipment can be camouflaged. These can present significant challenges to the military. How can we see what doesn’t want to be seen? - 11/7/16

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  Curiosity rover finds weird 'egg rock' meteorite on Mars

  NASA's Mars rover Curiosity stumbled upon a dark grey, golf-ball-size object last week that looks nothing like the typical red-orange rocks that are normally seen on Mars. - 11/7/16

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  Quantum-dot solar windows evolve with 'doctor-blade' spreading

  Los Alamos scientists report on large LSC windows created using the "doctor-blade" technique for depositing thin layers of a dot/polymer composite on top of commercial large-area glass slab. - 11/4/16

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  Los Alamos disease-fighting technology showing promise

  A pathogen-carrying pest known as the glassy-winged sharpshooter has plagued grape vines in California for more than century, but a new technology from Los Alamos National Laboratory could change that. - 11/4/16

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  CubeSats could soon be zooming around space under their own power

  Los Alamos researchers have created and tested a safe and innovative rocket motor concept that could soon see CubeSats zooming around space and even steering themselves back to Earth when they're finished their mission. - 11/4/16

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  On track for a clean, hydrogen-powered future 

  Los Alamos, within the ElectroCat consortium, is investigating less expensive, more abundant materials based on carbon compounds to reduce the cost of ownership of a fuel-cell powered car so this clean power can compete in the marketplace. - 10/13/16

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  Feeling the burn: Understanding how biomass burning changes climate

  When black carbon from fires is released into the atmosphere, it can mean bad news for the climate. At least half of the black carbon in the atmosphere is a result of biomass burning. - 9/27/16

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  Arctic river flood plains are home to hidden carbon

  In the race to account for how carbon moves through Arctic ecosystems, especially as they warm, scientists may be overlooking one major component: river flood plains. - 9/27/16

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  Trinity ushers in new age of supercomputing < 

  As the Lab begins testing the second half of its new supercomputer, Trinity, the occasion highlights how intertwined scientific breakthroughs and computer innovations have become — and what a seminal and central role Los Alamos has played in that synergy. - 9/12/16

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  Lab Director McMillan testifies before Congress

  Watch the video below. - 9/8/16

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  Los Alamos to investigate solar dangers to the power grid

  The Lab launches a new investigation of how solar events could affect a grid like a long string of Christmas lights—increasingly long and susceptible to a cascade of problems. - 8/22/16

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  Tiny satellites: latest innovation hedge funds are using

  The latest technological innovation for data-hungry hedge funds is a fleet of five dozen shoebox-sized satellites. - 8/22/16

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  Isotope research opens new possibilities for cancer treatment

  A new study at LANL and in collaboration with Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource greatly improves scientists’ understanding of the element actinium whose short offers opportunity for new alpha-emitting drugs to treat cancer. - 8/22/16

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  Turning windows into solar generators 

  A simple filtration process helped Rice University researchers create flexible, wafer-scale films of highly aligned and closely packed carbon nanotubes. - 8/8/16

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  Rover on Mars now picks its own laser targets

  If you find yourself on Mars anytime soon, beware: there’s a rover exploring its surface, and it now has the ability to choose its own targets for its onboard laser—and even fire it autonomously. - 8/1/16

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  How a weird Mars rock may be solid proof of an ancient oxygen atmosphere

  When researchers found a compound that shouldn't have been there, it revealed a missing piece of Mars' history. - 8/1/16

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  How a pinch of dirt can tell you everything about a nuclear test

  Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have just discovered a fascinating new way to reconstruct past nuclear tests even decades after detonation. All they need is a pinch of dirt. - 7/18/16

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  Burning questions in study of wildfire

  Understanding what drives big fires and predicting their behavior helps the fire community prepare for the next blaze through appropriate land management, emergency plans and firefighting strategies. - 7/12/16

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  A fusion-powered rocket to deflect deadly comets 

  Glen Wurden, a plasma physicist at Los Alamos has conceived a comet-buster that would work like this: Harnessing the tremendous energy of fusion, the process in which two atomic nuclei collide to form a new nucleus, could propel a rocket to more than 100 kilometers per second. - 6/27/16

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  The neutrino turns 60

  Although neutrinos are extremely abundant, it took 26 years for scientists to confirm their existence. In the 60 years since the neutrino’s discovery, we’ve slowly learned about this intriguing particle. - 6/20/16

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  Science on the Hill: Fragile life underfoot has big impact on desert

  Anyone who spends time in the high-desert landscape of Northern New Mexico has come across biological soil crusts, or biocrusts. This fragile crust fills a pivotal ecosystem niche. However, its survival is being challenged by threats from climate change and man-made disturbance. - 6/13/16

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  Hunt for high-energy photons takes place from a mountaintop in Mexico

  A new telescope built from water tanks might help answer some of the biggest questions in astronomy. - 6/12/16

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  New tech fights fires before they start

  One spark, and like a monster with an unquenchable appetite, a wildfire can burn forests, homes and towns. That's reason enough for the invention of the brand new Simtable, which is being used at Los Alamos National Lab. - 6/12/16

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  Space technology can help sustain Earth 

  Satellite imagery and communication are powerful aids in confronting humanitarian and environmental issues - 6/12/16

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  Los Alamos staff help improve U.S. capability to detect underground nuclear explosions

  Team demonstrates advanced capability to help identify whether state or non-state actors are hiding low-yield nuclear testing to develop or improve nuclear weapons. - 6/5/16

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  Revealing the nature of magnetic interactions in manganese oxide

  Revealing the mechanism of 'superexchange' - 5/24/16

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  Rare-earth-free magnet made from cheap materials

  Researchers create a powerful permanent magnet out of iron and nitrogen as part of a program to cut the need for rare-earth metals - 5/17/16

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  Cooling, time in the dark preserve perovskite solar power

  Build-up of unwanted charge found to sap photocurrent - 5/17/16

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  New design strategy reduces time and cost of material discovery

  Iteratively guiding experiments toward finding materials with the desired target properties - 5/17/16

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  First burst buffer use at scale bolsters application performance

  Bolstering I/O capabilities began with Trinity at Los Alamos - 5/16/16

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  New Mexico scientists develop tiny, artificial lung

  New Mexico researchers are creating an artificial lung, known as PuLMo for Pulmonary Lung Model. - 5/12/16

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  Gravitational waves open new window on universe

  Viewing the very large and very small workings of what's out there. - 5/8/16

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  What would happen if GPS failed?

  Fourteen years ago, a team at Los Alamos built a spoofer by modifying a GPS signal simulator - 5/6/16

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  Water telescope’s first sky map shows flickering black holes

  The High Altitude Water Cherenkov observatory has released its first map of the sky, including the first measurements of how often black holes flicker on and off. It has also caught pulsars, supernova remnants, and other bizarre cosmic beasts. - 4/24/16

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  Nanotubes “line-up” to form films for flexible electronics

  A simple filtration process helped Rice University researchers create flexible, wafer-scale films of highly aligned and closely packed carbon nanotubes. - 4/10/16

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  Why space weather matters

  Many people think of space as a silent, empty void and the sun as a distant source of light and heat. Not true. The sun and the Earth are connected in complex, intimate and sometimes dangerous ways. - 4/10/16

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  Melting of ice wedges adds to arctic warming

  New ways of looking at seismic information and innovative laboratory experiments are offering tantalizing clues to what triggers earthquakes—and when. - 3/14/16

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  Can we someday predict earthquakes?

  New ways of looking at seismic information and innovative laboratory experiments are offering tantalizing clues to what triggers earthquakes — and when. - 3/14/16

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  Los Alamos ‘Cube Sat’ team wins Secretary's Award

  More than 60 Los Alamos National Laboratory staff instrumental in the success of the Prometheus project were honored Monday with the Secretary of Energy Achievement Award at a special ceremony in Los Alamos. - 3/6/16

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  Fossil gorilla and Africa: Humans likely evolved earlier than thought, researchers say

  Scientists recently unearthed 8 million-year-old gorilla fossils from the Chorora Formation in Ethiopia, which indicate the human evolutionary split took place 10 million years ago. - 2/19/16

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  Better Greenland, Antarctica sheet modeling helps predict sea-level rise

  The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will make a dominant contribution to twenty-first century sea-level rise if current climate trends continue, studied in a five-year project called Predicting Ice Sheet and Climate Evolution at Extreme Scales (PISCEES) - 2/19/16

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  Any company can study user behavior with a data lake

  The darling of Big Data, Hadoop, having its 10th birthday on January 28th, 2016. - 2/15/16

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  Turning windows into solar panels

  Working with quantum dots, researchers achieve a breakthrough in solar-concentrating technology that can turn windows into electric generators. - 2/7/16

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  Isotopes for cancer and cardiac care

  Eva Birnbaum is interviewed on KSFR radio on the Lab's Isotope Program - 2/4/16

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  Confessions of a meteorite hunter

  Picking meteorites up off of the Antarctic ice - 1/29/16

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  The quest to predict severe weather sooner

  MPAS aims to be next-generation global weather model - 1/29/16

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  NASA's Van Allen probes revolutionize view of radiation belts

  A study conducted by Los Alamos and the New Mexico Consortium reveals that the shape of the Van Allen Belts is actually quite different than previously believed. - 1/21/16

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  Superluminous supernova is the brightest ever seen

  Machine-learning technology developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory helps power ASAS-SN, providing the software that picks out these events from the images the project spots. - 1/15/16

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  Hunting space rocks on blue ice

  Nina Lanza is studying the solar system by spending six weeks on an ice sheet in Antarctica. The 36-year-old staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is on a treasure hunt of sorts. - 1/15/16

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  The forecast calls for flu

  Using mathematics, computer programs, statistics and information about how disease develops and spreads, a research team at Los Alamos National Laboratory found a way to forecast the flu season and even next week’s sickness trends. - 1/15/16

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  Mars Rover finds changing rocks, surprising scientists

  As NASA’s Curiosity rover treks up a three-mile-high mountain on Mars, the rocks are changing. Back on Earth, scientists analyzing the data realized this was something different: It turned out to be the first of the high-silica rocks. - 12/24/15

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  Scientists say climate change could cause a ‘massive’ tree die-off in the U.S. Southwest

  In a troubling new study says a warming climate could trigger a “massive” dieoff of coniferous trees in the U.S. southwest sometime this century. - 12/24/15

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  Our view: Vaccinate now, prevent flu later

  Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists are predicting that this winter’s flu season is most likely to peak in February across much of the United States. The scientists can say this because of the model they have constructed. - 12/24/15

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  Driving toward an algae-powered future

  A new research project led by Los Alamos National Laboratory seeks to drive algal biofuels to marketability, decreasing our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels and putting the brakes on global warming. - 12/24/15

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  Los Alamos turns its nuclear weapons power to war on cancer

  Los Alamos Physicist Eva Birnbaum shows how the laboratory is manufacturing a radioactive treatment that targets tumors, without killing the surrounding healthy tissue. - 12/20/15

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  Lanza describes meteorite hunt in Antarctica

  Los Alamos National Laboratory has unveiled a video where they challenged staff scientist Nina Lanza of LANL’s Space and Remote Sensing group describe her upcoming trip to Antarctica to hunt for meteorites in just 60 seconds. - 12/11/15

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  Satellite imaging startup takes step forward

  A Los Alamos startup that uses satellite images to decipher changes on the Earth's surface has received a new round of venture capital. - 12/6/15

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  Quenching New Mexico's thirst with brackish water

  Whether today turns out damp or dry, drought is a fact of life in New Mexico. So where can we get more water? - 11/15/15

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  Capping methane leaks a win-win

  As special correspondent Kathleen McCleery explains, that’s why both environmentalists and the energy industry are trying to find ways to capture leaks from oil and gas facilities. - 11/13/15

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  What do you get when two neutron stars merge?

  Led by Chris Fryer of the University of Arizona and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a group of researchers undertook a highly collaborative study to better understand the fates of NS–NS mergers. - 11/8/15

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  Tiny magnets could work in sensors, information encoding   

  Scientists have realized a nanoscale, artificial magnet by arranging an array of magnetic nano-islands along a geometry that is not found in natural magnets. - 11/1/15

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  Decision Sciences’ multi-mode Passive Detection System: Rapid scanning for radiological threats 

  The ability to identify distinct material density enables the Multi-Mode Passive Detection System (MMPDS)to quickly detect unshielded to heavily shielded nuclear threats, as well as gamma rays, with near-zero false alarms. - 11/1/15

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  Jumpstarting the carbon capture industry 

  Carbon capture, utilization, and storage can provide a crucial bridge between our current global energy economy and a cleaner, more diversified energy future. Researchers demonstrate that this approach is technically feasible and poised for full-scale roll-out. - 10/16/15

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  New Mexico scientist says 'The Martian' mostly accurate 

  “What’s so impressive is so much of it is really accurate,” Lanza said. “All of my Mars nerd friends you know we just — we love this because it uses real science from today… not future magic science.” - 10/11/15

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  Weird quantum fluctuations of empty space—maybe

  Empty space is anything but, according to quantum mechanics: Instead, it roils with quantum particles flitting in and out of existence. Now, a team of physicists claims it has measured those fluctuations directly, without disturbing or amplifying them. - 10/11/15

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  For cybersecurity, in quantum encryption we trust

  Los Alamos physicists developed a quantum random number generator and communication system that exploits quantum physics to improve cybersecurity. - 9/13/15

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  Corn crop conditions seen worsening in satellite images

  U.S. corn production is 2.8 percent smaller than government estimates, according to a daily analysis of infrared satellite images taken of more than 1 million corn fields. - 9/13/15

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  Entrepreneurs, Los Alamos scientist seek fusion of another sort

  With help from a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, three young Santa Fe entrepreneurs are trying to brew a better beer – one that combines the professed health effects of kombucha fermented tea with the enjoyment derived from drinking an ice-cold adult beverage. - 9/13/15

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  Windows into solar power sources with quantum dots 

  A luminescent solar concentrator is an emerging sunlight harvesting technology that has the potential to disrupt the way we think about energy: It could turn any window into a daytime power source. - 8/30/15

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  Particles From the edge of space shine a light on Fukushima

  It's one of the greatest, and most disturbing, questions of the Fukushima disaster: What happened to the nuclear fuel inside the plant? Now physicists are trying to shed some light on the problem using particles from the edge of space. - 8/30/15

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  Portable MRI might make the world a better place

  Los Alamos' Battlefield MRI uses ultra-low-field magnetic resonance imaging to create images of the brain that can be used in field hospitals or in remote villages. - 8/9/15

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  Just your typical New Mexico image recognition startup spun off from a government lab

  Far from Silicon Valley, Descartes Labs aims to turn a national research facility's AI research into new ways of understanding the world. - 7/30/15

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  Methane cloud hunting

  Los Alamos researchers go hunting for methane gas over the Four Corners area of northwest New Mexico and find a strange daily pattern. - 7/12/15

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  Agencies, hoping to deflect comets and asteroids, step up Earth defense

  In grappling with the threat of doomsday rocks from outer space, Hollywood has always been far ahead of the federal government, cranking out thrillers full of swashbuckling heroes, rockets and nuclear blasts that save the planet. - 6/26/15

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  Earth plus Mars: Los Alamos National Lab partners with Spain and France

  New Mexico’s role in the next mission to Mars will also be part of a tri-national Earthly collaboration, officials say. - 6/26/15

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  Tall trees sucked dry by global warming

  Climate change will challenge tall trees like California's redwoods. - 6/7/15

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  Rapid diagnosis a new weapon against re-emerging TB

  Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed an innovative tool set for the early and accurate diagnosis of tuberculosis. - 6/7/15

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  National labs race to stop Iran

  Given the stakes in the sensitive negotiations [with Iran], the labs would check and recheck one another, making sure the answers held up. - 5/15/15

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  Landscapes we don't want to lose

  Nate McDowell, a tree physiologist in New Mexico, explains how a warming climate is irreversibly altering an ancient ecosystem. - 5/15/15

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  New technique may make solar panel production less expensive

  Scientists have developed a more efficient method of creating the material that makes solar panels work, according to a report published this week, which researchers say could be key to creating clean global energy in the future. - 4/24/15

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  The fate of trees: How climate change may alter forests worldwide

  By the end of the century, the woodlands of the Southwest will likely be reduced to weeds and shrubs. And scientists worry that the rest of the planet may see similar effects. - 3/26/15