Los Alamos National Laboratory News - SciTechDaily

NASA’s New Power Play: Plutonium-238 for Distant Space Journeys

NASA — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 18:18:49 +0000

The DOE’s shipment of 0.5 kilograms of plutonium-238 to Los Alamos National Laboratory marks a milestone in producing fuel for NASA’s radioisotope power systems, crucial...

Chi-Nu Experiment’s Final Insights: Pioneering Data for Nuclear Security & Reactor Design

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 07:17:05 +0000

Experiment measures the energy spectrum of neutrons emitted from neutron-induced fission. The results of the Chi-Nu physics experiment at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos...

Mars’ Muddy Mystery: Did the Red Planet Once Have Seasonal Weather?

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 04:25:01 +0000

NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover finds evidence of high-frequency wet-dry cycling in the Gale Crater. New observations of mud cracks made by NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover...

Nanowire Innovation: Revolutionizing Fuel Cells With Enhanced Durability

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 04:16:30 +0000

The Los Alamos National Laboratory introduced a corrosion-resistant fuel cell design featuring a coaxial nanowire electrode. This innovative approach holds promise for heavy-duty trucking, showing...

New Quantum Computing Paradigm: Game-Changing Hardware for Faster Computation

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 22:54:00 +0000

Using natural quantum interactions allows faster, more robust computation for Grover’s algorithm and many others. Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists have developed a groundbreaking quantum...

Quantum Illumination: Advanced Device Generates Single Photons and Encodes Information

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 20:50:22 +0000

New approach is a step toward using single photons in quantum communication and information processing. Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a...

A Leap in Performance – New Breakthrough Boosts Quantum AI

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 10:51:09 +0000

More is better — to a point — when using a large number of parameters to train machine-learning models on quantum computers. A groundbreaking theoretical...

Two-in-One: Quantum Dot Breakthrough Combines Laser and LED Capabilities

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Sat, 20 May 2023 04:49:14 +0000

Lab researchers drive colloidal quantum dot lasing technology closer to device-ready. Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have made significant progress in developing high-intensity light emitters...

Gone for Good? California’s Carbon-Storing Pine Forests May Not Come Back

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 10:28:24 +0000

Due to lower tree-stand density, it is unlikely that massive infestations fueled by climate change will reoccur. The Sierra Nevada’s Ponderosa pine forests, which were...

Previously Undetected Hybrid Neutron-Star Merger Event Revealed by Unusual Gamma-Ray Burst

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 16:00:46 +0000

Modeling calls into question supernova origin, forcing a reconsideration of the prevailing view of gamma-ray-burst events. The standard view of gamma-ray bursts as a signature...

Broad Implications – Harvard Scientists Have Discovered the First Ever Sea Level Fingerprint

Harvard University — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 22:27:18 +0000

The work validates almost a century of sea level science. Sea levels experience a bizarre and counterintuitive phenomenon as ice sheets melt. It functions much...

New Method Exposes How Artificial Intelligence Works

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Sat, 22 Oct 2022 14:14:31 +0000

The neural networks are harder to fool thanks to adversarial training. Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have developed a novel method for comparing neural networks...

Schrödinger Was Wrong: New Research Overturns 100-Year-Old Understanding of Color Perception

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 19:22:31 +0000

A paradigm shift away from the 3D mathematical description developed by Schrödinger and others to describe how we see color could result in more vibrant...

A Beginner’s Guide to Quantum Programming

DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 10:30:09 +0000

The guide covers the fundamentals, along with a summary of the main quantum algorithms and instructions on how to implement them on publicly available quantum...

Deep Underground Experiment Results Confirm Anomaly: Possible New Fundamental Physics

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Sat, 18 Jun 2022 23:33:51 +0000

Sterile neutrino, physics fundamentals among interpretations of anomalous results. New scientific results confirm an anomaly seen in previous experiments, which may point to an as-yet-unconfirmed...

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Reports Back on “Most Chemically Diverse Part” of Gale Crater on Mars

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 22:42:15 +0000

ChemCam played a key role in analyzing new data. The first study of the Glen Torridon region in Mars’ Gale crater reveals that groundwater altered...

NASA Mars Perseverance Rover: Making Fast Tracks to the Delta

Roger Wiens, Los Alamos National Lab — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 11:09:58 +0000

Perseverance is in a drive campaign going faster than any previous rover. How fast, you may ask? Its actual speed is just under a tenth...

Progress in Hybrid Algorithms Makes Small, Noisy Quantum Computers Viable

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 12:08:32 +0000

Hybrid algorithms can accommodate limited qubits, lack of error correction for real-world tasks. As reported in an article in Nature Reviews Physics, instead of waiting...

Atomic Armor for Next-Generation, Electron-Beam Accelerators

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 20:33:38 +0000

Advancement in single-atom layer graphene coatings improves accelerator electron source lifespans. Protective coatings are common for many things in daily life that see a lot...

Fast-Forwarding Quantum Evolution: Physical Features Boost the Efficiency of Quantum Simulations

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 23:21:17 +0000

Two recent papers settle long-standing questions about algorithms on future quantum computers. Recent theoretical breakthroughs have settled two long-standing questions about the viability of simulating...

Breakthrough Proof Clears Path for Quantum AI – Overcoming Threat of “Barren Plateaus”

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Sun, 12 Dec 2021 18:15:10 +0000

Novel theorem demonstrates convolutional neural networks can always be trained on quantum computers, overcoming threat of ‘barren plateaus’ in optimization problems. Convolutional neural networks running...

Physicists Have Made the World’s Most Precise Measurement of Neutron Lifetime

American Physical Society — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 02:52:04 +0000

An international team of researchers has made the world’s most precise measurement of the neutron’s lifetime, which may help answer questions about the early universe....

Supercomputers Reveal the Secrets of How X Chromosomes Fold and Deactivate

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 10:41:10 +0000

Combining lab data with supercomputing power reveals role of RNA and chromosome structure in regulating gene expression. Using supercomputer-driven dynamic modeling based on experimental data,...

Translation Software Enables Efficient Storage of Massive Amounts of Data in DNA Molecules

Los Alamos National Laboratory — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 18:23:54 +0000

ADS Codex translates binary data into nucleotides that can be sequenced in molecules as files for later retrieval, bringing potential cost savings and compact ‘cold...