Nuclear technology may help bring early mammal evolution into focus
A jaw of an Eoconodon coryphaeus—a house
cat-sized omnivore that lived between about
66 and 63 million years ago, Tom Williamson photo.
The team has formed a unique partnership with the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico to generate high-resolution imagery using a state-of-the-art neutron scanner. Tom Williamson, a paleontologist at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in Albuquerque is the first paleontologist to collaborate in this way with the lab, which has roots in nuclear defense. The partnership demonstrates how nuclear technology that could ultimately wipe us out as a species has also generated innovations, like this neutron scanner, that may help us understand our own origin as a species.
The lab operates some of the highest-energy X-ray and neutron scanners in the world that can generate some of the highest-resolution imagery possible, says Ron Nelson, an instrument scientist at the lab’s Neutron Science Center. (Full story)
“Lighthouse Detector” can distinguish between many sources of radiation
The Lighthouse Detector, Quaesta photo.
A lighthouse is built to shed light on rocky waters, the light turning at the top of a tower to illuminate sections of a dark shoreline that might harm incoming boats. Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and a company called Quaesta Instruments have drawn from that age-old design and assembled a sort of reverse-lighthouse to detect radiation in an area. Instead of sending light out, a Lighthouse Detector senses when radiation is coming in.
Although most radiation detectors like Geiger counters are omni-directional, the Lighthouse Detector uses a blocking material to allow gamma rays or neutrons to hit a sensor on only one side of the detector. (Full story)
Cosmic chain reaction: How supermassive black holes emerged from X-rays in the early universe
Halo during the beginning of the supernovae burst
phase, integral of density-weighted mean density and
density-weighted mean temperature, LANL image.
In a study published by Nature, Kirk Barrow, from Stanford University, and colleagues from Georgia Institute of Technology and Los Alamos National Laboratory, have now found that direct collapse black holes can account for supermassive black holes—and what’s more, they should be able to test their theory in the very near future.
In the study, the researchers ran a simulation of a direct collapse black hole. They looked at the black hole and its surrounding galaxy, along with the radiation from the galaxy and how it might appear through a telescope. (Full story)
The double-hinged door between astrophysics and the military
Los Alamos Lab operates under the auspices of the National Nuclear Security Administration, whose mission is to maintain and protect America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons while simultaneously working to undercut the proliferation of such stockpiles elsewhere in the world. And the lab’s astrophysicists use the same supercomputer and similar software to calculate the yield from hydrogen fusion within the heart of a star that physicists use to calculate the yield of a hydrogen bomb. You’d have to look far and wide to find a clearer example of dual use. (Full story)
LANL shoots for the moon in search for life on Europa
Artist’s rendering of a robotic probe on the
surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. NASA image.
Los Alamos scientists have plenty of history helping NASA explore another world for evidence of habitability and ultimately of life. In the early 2000s the first neutron spectrometer — developed by the laboratory — orbited Mars, discovering and mapping its vast water resources. More recently they designed ChemCam, a combination of lasers, spectrometers, a telescope, and a camera that piggybacked on the Mars Curiosity rover to study Martian rocks and helped find evidence for a habitable Mars in the past.
The Los Alamos team is now testing SuperCam, a souped-up version of ChemCam set to join the Mars 2020 mission with a camera, laser, spectrometers, and microphone to identify chemicals and minerals on the red planet. (Full story)
Cuprates: High-temp superconductors that defy a scientific explanation
Illustration from Power Electronics.
For their research on one specific cuprate, lanthanum strontium copper oxide (LSCO), a team led by MagLab physicist Arkady Shekhter focused on its normal, metallic state—the state from which superconductivity eventually emerges when the temperature dips low enough. This normal state of cuprates is known as a “strange” or “bad” metal, in part because the electrons don’t conduct electricity particularly well.
But does quasiparticle flow also explain how electric current travels in the cuprates? At the National MagLab’s Pulsed Field Facility in Los Alamos, N.M., Shekhter and his team investigated the question. They put LSCO in a very high magnetic field, applied a current to it, then measured the resistance. (Full story)
