For more than half a century, the 1,000-foot-diameter spherical reflector dish at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico was the largest radio telescope in the world. Completed in 1963, the dish was built in a natural sinkhole, with the telescope’s feed antenna suspended 500 feet above the dish on a 1.8-million-pound steel platform. Three concrete towers and more than 4 miles of steel cables supported the platform.
Wildfires are an ancient force shaping the environment, but they have grown in frequency, range and intensity in response to a changing climate. At ORNL, scientists are working on several fronts to better understand and predict these events and what they mean for the carbon cycle and biodiversity.
Yarom Polsky, director of the Manufacturing Science Division, or MSD, at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or ASME.
The Spallation Neutron Source at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory set a world record when its particle accelerator beam operating power reached 1.7 megawatts, substantially improving on the facility’s original design capability.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory were the first to use neutron reflectometry to peer inside a working solid-state battery and monitor its electrochemistry.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers recently demonstrated use of a laser-based analytical method to accelerate understanding of critical plant and soil properties that affect bioenergy plant growth and soil carbon storage.
Creating energy the way the sun and stars do — through nuclear fusion — is one of the grand challenges facing science and technology. What’s easy for the sun and its billions of relatives turns out to be particularly difficult on Earth.
Ken Herwig's scientific drive crystallized in his youth when he solved a tough algebra word problem in his head while tossing newspapers from his bicycle. He said the joy he felt in that moment as a teenager fueled his determination to conquer mathematical mysteries. And he did.
When opportunity meets talent, great things happen. The laser comb developed at ORNL serves as such an example.
In a discovery aimed at accelerating the development of process-advantaged crops for jet biofuels, scientists at ORNL developed a capability to insert multiple genes into plants in a single step.