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Media Contacts
![NASA scientist Andrew Needham used the MARS neutron imaging instrument at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to study moon rock samples brought back from the Apollo missions. Credit: Jeremy Rumsey/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2023-04/Needham%204%20crop.jpg?h=af6b00fd&itok=fNceymad)
How did we get from stardust to where we are today? That’s the question NASA scientist Andrew Needham has pondered his entire career.
![Frances Pleasonton seals a vacuum chamber in 1951.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2023-03/Pleasonton20616_16x9_1678989753589_0.jpg?h=d1cb525d&itok=s-itGaqM)
The old photos show her casually writing data in a logbook with stacks of lead bricks nearby, or sealing a vacuum chamber with a wrench. ORNL researcher Frances Pleasonton was instrumental in some of the earliest explorations of the properties of the neutron as the X-10 Site was finding its postwar footing as a research lab.
![Vincente Guiseppe, co-spokesperson of the Majorana Collaboration and a research staff member at ORNL, in front of the Majorana Demonstrator shield on the 4850 Level of SURF. Credit: Nick Hubbard/Sanford Underground Research Facility](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2023-03/2-MJD-Guiseppe%20in%20front%20of%20shield_4.jpeg?h=a141e9ea&itok=URbl8Trd)
For nearly six years, the Majorana Demonstrator quietly listened to the universe. Nearly a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility, or SURF, in Lead, South Dakota, the experiment collected data that could answer one of the most perplexing questions in physics: Why is the universe filled with something instead of nothing?
![ORNL physicist Libby Johnson demonstrated a new control panel at ORNL’s Bulk Shielding Facility in 1957. Among the first females to operate a nuclear reactor, Johnson blazed trails for women. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2022-09/Johnson_1.jpg?h=06ac0d8c&itok=JUg5qoxV)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory physicist Elizabeth “Libby” Johnson (1921-1996), one of the world’s first nuclear reactor operators, standardized the field of criticality safety with peers from ORNL and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
![Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Mitch Allmond works with the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams Decay Station initiator, which combined diverse detectors for FRIB’s first experiment. Credit: Robert Grzywacz/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2022-06/FRIB1.jpg?h=429981e8&itok=sFq0uTlk)
Two decades in the making, a new flagship facility for nuclear physics opened on May 2, and scientists from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have a hand in 10 of its first 34 experiments.
![Nesaraja split her effort between nuclear data evaluation and experimentation at ORNL’s now-closed Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-03/2021-P00917_0.jpg?h=8f9cfe54&itok=8oV5bH2S)
Nuclear physicist Caroline Nesaraja of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory evaluates nuclear data vital to applied and basic sciences.
![The Perseverance rover](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-07/pia23492_0.jpg?h=d1cb525d&itok=A5U6cgBE)
On Feb. 18, the world will be watching as NASA’s Perseverance rover makes its final descent into Jezero Crater on the surface of Mars. Mars 2020 is the first NASA mission that uses plutonium-238 produced at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
![The researchers embedded a programmable model into a D-Wave quantum computer chip. Credit: D-Wave](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2021-02/P5-o5czF_0.jpg?h=b69e0e0e&itok=wCU6WIp_)
Since the 1930s, scientists have been using particle accelerators to gain insights into the structure of matter and the laws of physics that govern our world.
![ORNL’s Marcel Demarteau inspects experiments along Neutrino Alley at the Spallation Neutron Source, which makes neutrinos as a byproduct. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-12/2020-P15166_0.jpg?h=c6980913&itok=GkpktZzV)
Marcel Demarteau is director of the Physics Division at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For topics from nuclear structure to astrophysics, he shapes ORNL’s physics research agenda.
![Oak Ridge National Laboratory entrance sign](/themes/custom/ornl/images/default-thumbnail.jpg)