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The world’s fastest supercomputer helped researchers simulate synthesizing a material harder and tougher than diamond — or any other substance on Earth. The study used Frontier to predict the likeliest strategy to synthesize such a material, thought to exist so far only within the interiors of giant exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system.

ORNL researchers Phani Marthi and Suman Debnath work on developing and scaling up new EMT simulation software to analyze how power electronics in the electric grid will respond to brief interruptions in power flow. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Power companies and electric grid developers turn to simulation tools as they attempt to understand how modern equipment will be affected by rapidly unfolding events in a complex grid. 

This photo is of a male scientist sitting at a desk working with materials, wearing protective glasses.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and partner institutions have launched a project to develop an innovative suite of tools that will employ machine learning algorithms for more effective cybersecurity analysis of the U.S. power grid. 

This is an image of a man sitting at a computer with three screens.

Researchers conduct largest, most accurate molecular dynamics simulations to date of two million correlated electrons using Frontier, the world’s fastest supercomputer. The simulation, which exceed an exaflop using full double precision, is 1,000 times greater in size and speed than any quantum chemistry simulation of it's kind.

Arial view of the Atchafalaya Basin

In the wet, muddy places where America’s rivers and lands meet the sea, scientists from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are unearthing clues to better understand how these vital landscapes are evolving under climate change.

Ariel view of Oak Ridge National Lab with mountains in the background and buildings and a pond in the foreground

Advanced materials research to enable energy-efficient, cost-competitive and environmentally friendly technologies for the United States and Japan is the goal of a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, between the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Japan’s National Institute of Materials Science.

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Researchers used quantum simulations to obtain new insights into the nature of neutrinos — the mysterious subatomic particles that abound throughout the universe — and their role in the deaths of massive stars.

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In May, the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge and Brookhaven national laboratories co-hosted the 15th annual International Particle Accelerator Conference, or IPAC, at the Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee. 

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Researchers at ORNL and the University of Maine have designed and 3D-printed a single-piece, recyclable natural-material floor panel tested to be strong enough to replace construction materials like steel. 

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John Lagergren, a staff scientist in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Plant Systems Biology group, is using his expertise in applied math and machine learning to develop neural networks to quickly analyze the vast amounts of data on plant traits amassed at ORNL’s Advanced Plant Phenotyping Laboratory.