News

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.

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. 

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed free data sets to estimate how much energy any building in the contiguous U.S. will use in 2100. These data sets provide planners a way to anticipate future energy needs as the climate changes.

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. 

When Oak Ridge National Laboratory's science mission takes staff off-campus, the lab’s safety principles follow. That’s true even in the high mountain passes of Washington and Oregon, where ORNL scientists are tracking a tree species — and where wildfires have become more frequent and widespread.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists ingeniously created a sustainable, soft material by combining rubber with woody reinforcements and incorporating “smart” linkages between the components that unlock on demand.

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.

Researchers set a new benchmark for future experiments making materials in space rather than for space. They discovered that many kinds of glass have similar atomic structure and arrangements and can successfully be made in space. Scientists from nine institutions in government, academia and industry participated in this 5-year study. 

ORNL researchers have teamed up with other national labs to develop a free platform called Open Energy Data Initiative Solar Systems Integration Data and Modeling to better analyze the behavior of electric grids incorporating many solar projects. 

When scientists pushed the world’s fastest supercomputer to its limits, they found those limits stretched beyond even their biggest expectations. In the latest milestone, a team of engineers and scientists used Frontier to simulate a system of nearly half a trillion atoms — the largest system ever modeled and more than 400 times the size of the closest competition.