Approximately 100 trillion neutrinos bombard your body every second—but you don’t notice these ghostly subatomic particles. Because they are electrically neutral and interact with other matter via the weak force, their detection is difficult—and the subject of challenging experimen...
When Diana Hun left her home in Panama City, Panama, to attend school at the University of Texas in Austin, she knew she wanted to be an engineer. Exactly which branch of engineering to pursue was not quite as straight-forward. Hun studied both mechanical and electrical engin...
Theory and experiment push each other to expand the frontiers of physics. Now, the Neutron Sciences Directorate at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has both.
Cristian Batista, a theoretical condensed matter physicist with a joint appointment at ORNL and th...
Designing a 3-D printed structure is hard enough when the product is inches or feet in size. Imagine shrinking it smaller than a drop of water, smaller even than a human hair, until it is dwarfed by a common bacterium.
This impossibly small structure can be made a reality with fo...
Susan Hogle has spent the last several years working to improve the production of radioisotopes, particularly californium-252. But not long ago, the native of Napanee, Canada, was working on the opposite task—researching how to dispose of nuclear material.
“At Chalk River Laborat...
Summer break for a group of science educators and students means hands-on research in high-heat plasmas, supercomputer construction, biofuels and more, thanks to the annual Math-Science-Technology Institute held at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The program, a partnership among OR...
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory will add its computational know-how to the battle against cancer through several new projects recently announced at the White House Cancer Moonshot Summit.
While trying to fatten the atom in 1938, German chemist Otto Hahn accidentally split it instead. This surprising discovery put modern science on the fast track to the atomic age and to the realization of technologies with profound potential for great harm or great help. Altho...
Sitting in the driver’s seat comes naturally to Ron Graves, the recently retired head of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s sustainable transportation program. Graves has logged more than 100 days on national racetracks like Daytona, Road Atlanta, and Pocono where he routinely reache...
Using today’s advanced microscopes, scientists are able to capture exponentially more information about the materials they study compared to a decade ago—in greater detail and in less time. While these new capabilities are a boon for researchers, helping to answer key quest...