Tiny earthquakes happen every few minutes in Southern California

The 1994 Northridge earthquake in Southern California, photo from NPR.

Detecting very small earthquakes is notoriously difficult. The rumbling of the ocean, a passing car or even the wind can feel a lot like a minor quake to the sensors that blanket seismically active parts of the U.S.

"They have a robust seismic network in Southern California," explains Daniel Trugman, a seismologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and an author of the study. But while 180,000 might seem like a large number of quakes, there were many, many more hiding undetected in the data.

When Trugman and his collaborators re-analyzed the data using a powerful array of computer processors, they found evidence of 10 times as many earthquakes — 1.81 million temblors in a decade, or roughly one tiny earthquake every 3 minutes or so. (Full Story)

Scientists uncover California’s hidden earthquakes

The new study, published this week in Science, adds nearly two million earthquakes to the catalogue of total seismic events in Southern California over the past decade. Although the newly known quakes were imperceptible to humans, the findings help fill gaps in the earthquake record, shedding light on the geophysical processes that lead to the dreaded “Big Ones.”

Although Daniel Trugman at the Los Alamos National Lab notes that the hints the study gleaned on how foreshocks work are far from definitive, he is confident the new data set will allow scientists to better understand what precisely kicks an earthquake into high gear. And that may one day help scientists forecast earthquakes. “If we could really predict when the next big earthquake will occur, we’re in business—that’s the Holy Grail in seismic hazard analysis,” Trugman says. “I definitely wouldn't say we're there yet, but it's this type of work that's going to hopefully push us forward.” (Full Story)

Also from Scientific American this week:

How Long Do Neutrons Live?

Illustration from SciAm.

Physicist Zhaowen Tang of the Los Alamos lab described how researchers could put a particle detector inside a bottle neutron trap and count neutrons using both methods [beam and bottle]. His team has acquired funding to start building the device.

Another possibility is that the beam and bottle approaches have been measuring the neutron lifetime correctly, but that some unseen factor accounts for the discrepancy between the two. A leading idea is that neutrons might occasionally decay into not just protons but also dark matter, the mysterious unseen material that makes up much of the Universe’s matter. (Full Story)

Stopping an Earth-bound asteroid in its tracks

 
Kathy Plesko and a Bennu impact computer model, LANL image.

As a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I study what happens to the atmosphere and crust of a planet when an asteroid or comet hits and possible ways to stop that from happening. I use the supercomputers at Los Alamos, some of the fastest in the world, to run high-fidelity simulations to accurately model the physics of an impact. These simulations are constantly updated with cutting-edge data from NASA missions and Earth-bound laboratory experiments.

Our first what-if case study focused on asteroid Bennu, the target of the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission. Bennu is about as wide as the Empire State Building is tall, and weighs as much as 800 aircraft carriers. (Full Story)

Unlocking secrets about the origin of the universe

Scientists and engineers from more than 70 organizations have come together to develop the tools to unravel the microscopic secrets hidden within quark-gluon plasma.

Los Alamos researchers are contributing to the project by designing an advanced tracking detector based on a new type of sensor system called MAPS, short for Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor. When the collider produces quark-gluon plasma in the sPHENIX experiment in several years, a new tracking detector will be there to capture the first measurements of the plasma’s internal structure using heavy quarks. (Full Story)

Microbes living in different parts of the human body can still swap genes

Microbes that live in the human gut. From Tech Times.

The research revealed that the most common transfer of genes happened between microbes that are most closely related to each other regardless of whether they are in the same sites or not.

"Some of these could be very old gene transfer events that happened before the microbes colonized the human body," explained Arshan Nasir, a distinguished fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "It also could be that some bacteria colonize different human body sites at different time points in an individual's lifespan. The others could be the result of the transfer of bacterial DNA from one site to another, perhaps through the blood." (Full Story)

Q&A: Creating ‘smart’ microbial bionsensors

 
The implications of this smart microbial cell concept are to offer an advanced platform for high throughput screening for enzyme discovery, design, and evolution. The approach, which comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory, can be translated to screening of metagenomic samples, rational enzyme design, or directed evolution of known enzymes. The technology is adaptable to a single enzyme, or a pathway, or global optimization of an industrial strain. To discover more, Digital Journal spoke with researcher Ramesh Jha. (Full Story)

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Predicting space weather could save satellites

A new space weather model under development at Los Alamos National Laboratory could help give a 24-hour warning before a storm of charged particles from the sun bombards crucial satellites, potentially knocking them out of service.

These "killer electrons" move more erratically during solar storms — a type of space weather where particles from the sun smack into Earth's magnetic field — so being able to predict that variability is key for spacecraft operators (Full story).

Also in Universe Today

What's actually going on in that cryptic black hole photo?

Event Horizon Telescope, NSF Image.

From our far-off view of this great black hole, it might look like a bright, flat ring. But that's not exactly the case. We're largely seeing the "face" of the event horizon, like the face of a coin, as opposed to the side or edge, explained Chris Fryer, an astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who had no role in the collaboration. 

So when the light (emitted in radio wave form) from the event horizon finally reached us, it had been distorted. Consequently the image, even with correction and sophisticated computer modeling, isn't perfect. But it's pretty darn good.  "I was surprised how good it looked knowing there were all these additional paths it had to travel," said Fryer (Full Story).

New open-source software predicts impacts of extreme events on grids

Carleton Coffrin, LANL photo.

A new, free, open-source software reliably predicts how damage from hurricanes, ice storms, earthquakes and other extreme events will restrict power delivery from utility grids. The Severe Contingency Solver for Electric Power Transmission is the only software available—commercially or open-source—that reliably supports analysis of extreme events that cause widespread damage.

“The software was designed specifically to address extreme events where damage to the power grid and the resulting outages are significant,” said Carleton Coffrin (Full story)

Also from R&D this week:

Scientific computing in the cloud gets down to Earth

In a groundbreaking effort, seismology researchers have conducted a continent-scale survey for seismic signatures of industrial activity in the Amazon Web Services commercial cloud (AWS), then rapidly downloaded the results without storing raw data or needing a local supercomputer.

"Using a traditional workflow, to download-store-calculate on a desktop, this work would've taken more than 40 days to do. Using the cloud service, it took just under 7 hours," said Jonathan MacCarthy of the Earth and Environmental Sciences division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "To our knowledge, this is the first application of streaming cloud-based research in seismology," (Full story).

Also in PhysOrg

Thom Mason takes the helm at Los Alamos

Thom Mason, LANL photo.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that Thom Mason, who was director at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for 10 years, is now the director at Los Alamos. “I grew up in a science family,” he explains. “My dad worked at a Canadian national lab, so it was sort of the family business, and it never really occurred to me to do anything else.”

He pauses, reconsidering. “I did think about doing an English degree,” he says. “And I decided that if I did physics, I could still read books. But if I took English, I probably couldn’t have physics as a hobby," (full story).

Lab director predicts bright, challenging future

Thom Mason, LANL photo.

Thom Mason, the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s new director, isn’t so new anymore, and he’s fine with that. He’s been busy. “I’m having a lot of fun, and Los Alamos is an amazing place… I’ve been getting to know the community’s stakeholders and the community’s challenges,” Mason said.

After accepting the position as Los Alamos National Laboratory director three months ago, the former Battelle Memorial Institute executive just completed guiding the lab through a three-month transition period to a new management and operations contractor. (Full Story)

We shouldn’t be scared of nuclear rockets in space

 
Kiwi-B4A reactor awaits testing at the Nevada Test Site in 1962, LANL photo.          

At the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, the output was Project Rover, a program that was eventually folded into NASA and saw three development phases: Kiwi (from 1955 to 1964), Phoebus (from 1964 to 1969), and Pewee (from 1969 to 1972 when the project was ended).

In 1961, NASA and the AEC created a joint office called the Space Nuclear Propulsion Office. SNPO oversaw another nuclear propulsion program that would build off the lessons learned in Los Alamos. With Westinghouse Electric Corporation and Aerojet-General Corporation as the main contractors, the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application, or NERVA, was born. (Full Story)

The day the dinosaurs died

 
Chicxulub asteroid impact model, LANL image.           

A few years ago, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory used what was then one of the world’s most powerful computers, the so-called Q Machine, to model the effects of the impact. The result was a slow-motion, second-by-second false-color video of the event.

The result was a slow-motion, second-by-second false-color video of the event. Within two minutes of slamming into Earth, the asteroid, which was at least six miles wide, had gouged a crater about eighteen miles deep and lofted twenty-five trillion metric tons of debris into the atmosphere. Picture the splash of a pebble falling into pond water, but on a planetary scale. (Full Story)

New tungsten alloy defies radiation

 

Osman El Atwani (left) and Enrique Martinez at the transmission electron microscope, LANL photo.

Material engineers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a tungsten-based alloy that can withstand unprecedented amounts of radiation without damage. This would make it an ideal choice for the interiors of magnetic fusion reactors. Materials previously explored for this purpose fracture too easily under similar conditions, but this new alloy seems to defeat that problem as well. Still, the team continues to investigate the material’s mechanical properties under different stress levels and responses to plasma exposure. (Full Story)

Also from Machine Design this week:

Handling trillions of supercomputer files just got simpler

A new distributed file system for high-performance computing, Delta FS, was developed by computer scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Carnegie Mellon University and will be distributed via Git Hub, a software collaboration site. It is predicted Delta FS will vastly improve the tasks of creating, updating, and managing extreme numbers of files. (Full Story)

The job benefit that can help lower your rising health insurance payroll deduction

 

Los Alamos National Laboratory has focused on employee wellness in recent years, LANL photo.

In 2014, Los Alamos had implemented a new employee wellness program. In fact, as its health-care costs went down — in the first year after the wellness program, the total cost declined from $141 million to $138 million — Los Alamos had an unexpected problem: what to do with the extra money.

“We started having so much money in reserve, we had to do something with it or the government was going to take it back,” said Jamie Aslin, team leader of institutional employee well-being. Overall, Los Alamos saved $21 million in three years, and while the health insurance premium trend could not stay negative forever, it has stabilized at an annual rate of 2.5 percent, much lower than the national average of more than 7 percent. (Full Story)

Two LANL researchers win women in tech awards

 
Laura Monroe, left, and Janette Frigo, LANL photos.  

Two researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory were recognized with 2019 Women in Technology Awards by the New Mexico Technology Council. Janette Frigo, an electrical engineer with the Laboratory’s Intelligence and Space Research division, and Laura Monroe, a mathematician with the Laboratory’s High-Performance Computing division, were recognized for their exceptional work in the STEM fields, their commitment to community, and mentoring other women. (Full Story)

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How big data can help save the world

Sara Del Valle, LANL photo.

As a data scientist for Los Alamos National Laboratory, I study data from wide-ranging, public sources to identify patterns in hopes of being able to predict trends that could be a threat to global security. Multiple data streams are critical because the ground-truth data (such as surveys) that we collect is often delayed, biased, sparse, incorrect or, sometimes, nonexistent.

For example, knowing mosquito incidence in communities would help us predict the risk of mosquito-transmitted disease such as dengue, the leading cause of illness and death in the tropics. However, mosquito data at a global (and even national) scale are not available. (Full story)

 

New system to check for dangerous natural gas leaks

Manvendra Dubey with the gas detection

system mounted on a drone, LANL photo.

A team from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Aeris Technology and Rice University has developed the Autonomous, Low- cost, Fast Leak Detection System (ALFaLDS) to detect, locate and quantify leaks quickly, safely and inexpensively.

Three subsystems make up the overall system: a small methane and ethane sensor, an anemometer that measures wind, and a trained neural network (which some would call artificial intelligence) that ingests and analyzes all the data to find leaks rapidly – almost in real time. (Full story)

“Ice V11” — Strange form of water found in otherworldly alien environments

“Any icy satellite or planetary interior is intimately connected to the object’s surface,” said Arianna Gleason-Holbrook, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and a visiting scientist in Stanford University’s Extreme Environments Laboratory. “Learning about these icy interiors will help us understand how the worlds in our solar system formed and how at least one of them, so far as we know, came to have all the necessary characteristics for life.”

“These experiments with water are the first of their kind, allowing us to witness a fundamental disorder-to-order transition in one of the most abundant molecules in the universe,” said Gleason, a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full story)

More trees dying in New Mexico

Forest mortality increased nearly 50 percent across New Mexico in 2018, the first jump in five years, according to an annual report on the health of the state’s forests.

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have said it is highly likely New Mexico will lose the vast majority of its forests by 2050.

The U.S. Forest Service said in a report issued in 2013 that the Santa Fe and Carson national forests were at risk of losing a combined total of nearly 900,000 acres of trees by 2027. (Full story)