Plasmas - The Greatest Show on EarthProducts and ContentPublished on Jun 24, 2013
Auroras are triggered by geomagnetic storms when gusts of solar plasma wind strike the Earth’s magnetic field; charged particles rain down over the north and south magnetic poles, lighting up the atmosphere and causing the air to glow. Read more... |
Out of the past and into the futureProducts and ContentPublished on May 17, 2013 If you look closely, you can find fossilized material on the banks of the Norris Lake shoreline in Anderson County, Tennessee when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) lowers the water level. If you are really lucky, you will find traces of sea creatures or beautiful flora or fauna impressions encased between the freshly exposed layers of rock. These are ancient treasures from our country’s rich geological history. A paleogeography reconstruction of the Earth took place some 56 to 34 million years ago during the Eocene geologic period of time . Read more... |
OSTI’s Amazing Dr. WatsonProducts and ContentPublished on Apr 17, 2013 During the past year, Dr. William N. Watson, physicist, of DOE/OSTI’s staff has posted quite a few very interesting white papers in OSTI’s monthly Science Showcase on OSTI’s Home Page. This quiet, unassuming man crafts prolific papers on popular science topics of interest to the Department of Energy (DOE). He investigates and assimilates this information from OSTI’s extensive R&D Collections and takes us on a layman’s journey through the technical details and scientific research that make it all possible. William’s papers have helped us to understand key technologies developed at DOE Laboratories for the Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity and how chemical analysis of rocks and soil is determined millions of miles away. We know what is happening with new heat pump technology and how DOE researchers are working to improve designs and efficiency. Read more... |
And the winner is . . . . you!Products and ContentPublished on Apr 01, 2013 Did you ever stop to think what makes it possible for you to have immediate, free access to Department of Energy (DOE) scientific findings from billions of dollars of annual research? A lot of behind-the-scenes work and dedication of an entire community make it all possible. The heart and soul of this endeavor is the DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP), a collaboration to ensure your access to DOE research and development results. Read more... |
Free-Electron Lasers move discovery into warp speedProducts and ContentPublished on Mar 26, 2013 Scientific research being performed today using free-electron lasers could be fodder for the next James Bond or Star Wars movie but it is way better than science fiction and it is real. Almost everything we know about the laws of nature and how and why we react to the world around us took many centuries to develop. However, recent free-electron laser research breakthroughs are shedding light on these fundamental processes of life and moving scientific discovery into warp speed. Read more... |
A Roadmap to Geothermal Heat Pump FeasibilityTechnologyPublished on Feb 28, 2013 Planning a trip is exciting. I can’t tell you how long my family planned our trip out west. For so many years we wanted to do this. When we finally hit the road our adventure was more than we could have possibly imagined. The landscape was always changing, always beautiful. Cattle ranches stretched out to infinity. Mountain peaks formed by ancient volcanos lined up in rows, one after another. Rivers of black jagged lava flowed over the landscape. We came across rainbow colors of the painted desert, a petrified forest of long ago, and the jaw-dropping expanse of the Grand Canyon. A winding road down from Flagstaff led us into the red cliffs of Sedona and on the cacti-spotted landscape of the Sonoran desert. The further we went, the more we appreciated vast mother earth. Read more... |
The Unbelievable Accuracy of the Monte Carlo MethodScience CommunicationsPublished on Jan 18, 2013 The year was 1945, the year I was born. That in itself is of great significance to me. However, it was a momentous year in history. World War II came to its merciful end and the development of the first electronic computer – the ENIAC—was nearing completion. At a post-war Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), mathematician Stanislaw Ulam envisioned the possibilities of reviving statistical techniques that would have a huge impact on science and technology research today. (Read the history of Stanislaw Ulam in the special edition of Los Alamos Science No. 15, 1987.) Read more... |
Science and a MovieScience CommunicationsPublished on Sep 18, 2012 DOE’s ScienceCinema is now showing “A LANL Scientist’s Dream Takes Off to Zap Rocks on Mars” starring Roger Wiens. At age 9, Roger Wiens and his brother built rockets, a whole fleet of rockets. They also built a telescope that allowed them to draw craters they saw on Mars when it neared close to earth. Little did Roger know that he would be putting a camera on Mars 40 years later. Roger Wiens is now a LANL planetary scientist and the principal investigator of the Mars Science Laboratory mission’s ChemCam team. The ChemCam instrument fires a laser at Martian rocks and looks at the resultant flash to determine the composition. Data obtained from Chemcam is helping to answer the question of about life on Mars. Visit DOE’s ScienceCinema to catch Roger’s excitement along with a team of 40 people at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the collabortaion of the French Space Agency IRAP as the Curiosity rover reaches... Read more... |
University of Tennessee Knoxville in DOE’s .EDUconnections SpotlightScience CommunicationsPublished on Sep 04, 2012 Science is always in the spotlight at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, a land-grant institution and the state's flagship research campus. Recent research might include searching for potential habitats for life on Mars, developing an autotaxin inhibitor to fight cancer, designing a car for the DOE EcoCAR 2 competition, determining the boundaries of the nuclear chart or developing “Living Light”, a net-zero energy home for DOE’s Solar Decathlon. UTK is situated in an ideal environment for research. Read more... |
Wind Turbines and Wear and TearProducts and ContentPublished on Aug 20, 2012 A modern wind turbine has more than 8,000 component parts that must withstand the wear and tear of wind stresses. DOE researchers and stakeholders have been working hard to predict and eliminate wind stress related barriers and extend the lifespan of wind turbines. Working on a paper on this subject? OSTI can save you wear and tear by providing web tools that eliminate the need to search through database after database to find the research you need. For example, if you use DOE’s Science Accelerator, you could search through 11 DOE databases, and in about 10 seconds or less, retrieve hundreds of documents about the use of simulations to understand wind turbine shear stress. Read more... |
Accelerating Science Discovery - Join the Discussion
