How did we get from stardust to where we are today? That’s the question NASA scientist Andrew Needham has pondered his entire career.
A team of scientists led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed a molecule that disrupts the infection mechanism of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and could be used to develop new treatments for COVID-19 and other viral diseases.
A chemist from Oak Ridge National Laboratory attracted national attention when her advocacy for science education made People magazine’s annual “Women Changing the World” issue.
Nine engineers from ORNL visited 10 elementary and middle school classrooms in three school districts during National Engineers Week, Feb. 21 to 24, 2023, describing and demonstrating the excitement of the engineering profession to more than 300 Tennessee students.
Scientists have long sought to better understand the “local structure” of materials, meaning the arrangement and activities of the neighboring particles around each atom. In crystals, which are used in electronics and many other applications, most of the atoms form highly ordered lattice patterns that repeat. But not all atoms conform to the pattern.
ORNL has entered a strategic research partnership with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, or UKAEA, to investigate how different types of materials behave under the influence of high-energy neutron sources. The $4 million project is part of UKAEA's roadmap program, which aims to produce electricity from fusion.
A scientific instrument at ORNL could help create a noninvasive cancer treatment derived from a common tropical plant.
Warming a crystal of the mineral fresnoite, ORNL scientists discovered that excitations called phasons carried heat three times farther and faster than phonons, the excitations that usually carry heat through a material.
ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source set a world record when its linear accelerator reached an operating power of 1.55 megawatts, which improves on the facility’s original design capability.
ORNL staff members played prominent roles in reports that won one Distinction award and two Excellence awards in the 2022 Alliance Competition of the Society for Technical Communication. PSD's Karren More and Bruce Moyer participated.