Los Alamos marks 70 years since Trinity test
The "gadget" at the Trinity Test site. LANL photo.
On July 16 Los Alamos National Laboratory will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the first successful test of an atomic bomb.
The anniversary of that explosion, which happened about 210 miles south of here at a site named Trinity, will be marked in a low-key fashion at the lab. There will be a roundtable discussion in an auditorium.
The participants will discuss, among other things, supercomputing. The lab doesn’t test nuclear weapons with actual explosions anymore; it’s done through computer simulations. The lab has a new supercomputer named Trinity, and a new slogan, “From Trinity to Trinity.” (Full Story)
70 years after Trinity
When a flash of light beamed from the arid New Mexico desert early on July 16, 1945, residents of the historic Hispanic village of Tularosa felt windows shake and heard dishes fall. Some in the largely Catholic town fell to their knees and prayed.
The end of the world is here, they thought.
What villagers didn’t know was that just before 5:30 a.m., scientists from the then-secret city of Los Alamos successfully exploded the first atomic bomb at the nearby Trinity Site. Left in its place was a crater that stretched a half-mile wide and several feet deep. (Full Story)
The first light of Trinity
The light of a nuclear explosion is unlike anything else on Earth. This is because the heat of a nuclear explosion is unlike anything else on Earth. Seventy years ago today, when the first atomic weapon was tested, they called its light cosmic. Where else, except in the interiors of stars, do the temperatures reach into the tens of millions of degrees? It is that blistering radiation, released in a reaction that takes about a millionth of a second to complete, that makes the light so unearthly, that gives it the strength to burn through photographic paper and wound human eyes. (Full Story)
Veteran recalls role in the A-bomb
Richard Johnson, 94, worked at Los Alamos during World War II. Times Union photo.Living on a quiet, tree-lined street that backs up to the Poesten Kill is one of the last surviving Americans who developed the first atomic weapon at Los Alamos, N.M., as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II.
Richard C. Johnson graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1942 and joined the Army to fight Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. As the United States raced to build the world's first atomic bomb, Army brass noticed Johnson in training and assigned him to the clandestine effort at the research laboratory in the mountains of New Mexico. (Full Story)
Nuclear security supercomputers continue evolution
The Trinity Supercomputer, LANL image.Seventy years to the date after the first nuclear tests were conducted in New Mexico, supercomputers have evolved to the point that realistic simulations of nuclear detonations and weapons degradation can be accurately modeled with far greater detail and far more data than physical tests could reveal.
Los Alamos National Laboratory has been at the center of much of this work and will soon be home to one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet to aid in far more extensive modeling of many scenarios that could have an impact on nuclear weapons stockpiles. (Full Story)
Powering New Horizons’ 3-billion-mile journey
Black, tubular structure at left is the spacecraft's RTG power module. NASA photo.For New Horizons, the energy answer lay in the power of plutonium. Specifically, in a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). This simple form of nuclear power, developed by the Energy Department, takes heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium-238 and converts it into electricity using devices called “thermocouples.”
The heat-producing ceramic “fuel pellets” of plutonium dioxide for the RTG — designed and safety-tested by Energy Department scientists — were manufactured at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full Story)
Martian crust more like Earth than thought
Martian crust, NASA JPL image.
Researchers have found evidence of a 'continental crust' on Mars. They say the findings are 'surprisingly similar' to the material found in continents on Earth. The ChemCam laser instrument on NASA's Curiosity rover was turned on some unusually light-coloured rocks on Mars.
It is the first discovery of a potential 'continental crust' on Mars. 'Along the rover's path we have seen some beautiful rocks with large, bright crystals, quite unexpected on Mars' said Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, lead scientist on the ChemCam instrument. (Full Story)
NASA’s Curiosity Rover finds rocks similar to Earth’s
Roger Weins on KRQE-TV's morning show, from KRQEThe ChemCam laser instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover has turned its beam onto some unusually light-colored rocks on Mars, and the results are surprisingly similar to Earth’s granitic continental crust rocks. This is the first discovery of a potential “continental crust” on Mars.
"Along the rover’s path we have seen some beautiful rocks with large, bright crystals, quite unexpected on Mars” said Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, lead scientist on the ChemCam instrument. (Full Story)
Science on the Hill: Methane cloud hunting
Manvendra Dubey, LANL photo.When our team from Los Alamos National Laboratory went hunting for methane gas in the atmosphere over the Four Corners area of northwest New Mexico, we found a strange daily pattern. The regional methane concentrations leapt higher every morning before tapering off. But the biggest surprise was how much methane emissions we found — two times more than estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency and three times greater than in international emissions inventories. (Full Story)
Also from the New Mexican this week:
LANL raises $356K for N.M. students
Los Alamos National Laboratory employees pledged a record $356,550 to the 2015 Los Alamos Employees’ Scholarship Fund drive. The drive encourages lab employees, retirees and subcontract personnel to donate to a fund that awards college scholarships to Northern New Mexico students. (Full Story)
Spotted owl chicks at Los Alamos lab
A spotted owl parent standing in front of one of its chicks, LANL photo.
Biologists located a record seven Mexican spotted owl chicks on Los Alamos National Laboratory property during nest surveys last month.
“We’ve never found this many chicks,” Chuck Hathcock, wildlife biologist with the Environmental Stewardship group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in a news release about the Mexican spotted owl, which the federal government lists as threatened. “It’s encouraging to see successful nests because it’s an indication that our efforts to protect these species are making an impact.” (Full Story)
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