For nearly six years, the Majorana Demonstrator quietly listened to the universe. Nearly a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility, or SURF, in Lead, South Dakota, the experiment collected data that could answer one of the most perplexing questions in physics: Why is the universe filled with something instead of nothing?
Critical Materials Institute researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Arizona State University studied the mineral monazite, an important source of rare-earth elements, to enhance methods of recovering critical materials for energy, defense and manufacturing applications.