Inside the largest simulation of the universe ever created
“Dark energy is confusing because the universe isn’t just expanding -- we knew that already -- but that expansion is also accelerating, which is very unexpected,” says Salman Habib, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the principal investigator for the Multi-Petaflop Sky Simulation at Argonne. “The cause of this acceleration is what people call ‘dark energy,’ but that’s just a technical shorthand for saying ‘we have no idea what’s going on.’” (Full Story)
Cancer data in the ‘cloud’ could lead to more effective treatment
The goal is to help doctors make better predictions about how a patient's illness will progress and what type of treatment will be most effective. (Full Story)
LANL team comes up with Japan cleanup idea
The cleanup at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may take years, but researchers from Los AlamosNational Laboratory think they’ve found a way to speed up the process.
Konstantin Borozdin of Los Alamos’ Subatomic Physics Group said in a press release that, in the weeks following the disaster, the muonradiography team began investigating the use of a muon scattering method developed at LANL to gather images of nuclear material within the reactor cores. Additional study has confirmed the method would work and could be applied at Fukushima Daiichi. (Full Story)
Curiosity’s CheMin X-Ray instrument first results
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has completed initial experiments with its CheMin instrument showing the mineralogy of Martian soil is similar to weathered basaltic soils on the edge of Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii.
In this video from Los Alamos National Laboratory, co-investigator David Vaniman explains how CheMin works, what kinds of minerals scientists are looking for on Mars andwhy, and talks about how the Laboratory's collaborative culture made CheMin possible. (Watch the Video)
Laboratory to demolish excavation enclosures at Material Disposal Area B near DP Road
Los Alamos National Laboratory is about to begin demolishing the metal enclosures used to cover the excavation and cleanup of a decades-old waste disposal site at the historic Technical Area 21.
Pre-demolition activities are beginning this week and the work should be completed by the end of March 2013. The project brings the Laboratory closer to transferring the six-acre tract of land to Los Alamos County. (Full Story)
Los Alamos Lab awards grants
Northern New Mexicans wanting to return to college for a certificate or two-year program are eligible for $1,000 awards from the Los Alamos Employees Scholarship Fund.
The awards go to students from Santa Fe, Rio Arriba, Los Alamos, San Miguel, Taos, Mora or Sandoval counties who are returning to a formal education after a break, such as business, the military or personal reasons. (Full Story)
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