News

Wildfires have shaped the environment for millennia, but they are increasing in frequency, range and intensity in response to a hotter climate. The phenomenon is being incorporated into high-resolution simulations of the Earth’s climate by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with a mission to better understand and predict environmental change.

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.

To support the development of a revolutionary new open fan engine architecture for the future of flight, GE Aerospace has run simulations using the world’s fastest supercomputer capable of crunching data in excess of exascale speed, or more than a quintillion calculations per second.

ORNL will team up with six of eight companies that are advancing designs and research and development for fusion power plants with the mission to achieve a pilot-scale demonstration of fusion within a decade.

A study led by researchers at ORNL could uncover new ways to produce more powerful, longer-lasting batteries and memory devices.

Computing pioneer Jack Dongarra has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Environmental scientists at ORNL have recently expanded collaborations with minority-serving institutions and historically Black colleges and universities across the nation to broaden the experiences and skills of student scientists while bringing fresh insights to the national lab’s missions.

A study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers has demonstrated how satellites could enable more efficient, secure quantum networks.

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.

Laboratory Director Thomas Zacharia presented five Director’s Awards during Saturday night's annual Awards Night event hosted by UT-Battelle, which manages ORNL for the Department of Energy.