The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced the achievement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) — a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power. On Dec. 5, a team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted […]
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Posted inSci/Tech
Lost In Space: Rocky Planets Formed From Missing Solar System Material
By looking at the range of isotopic variations in terrestrial and meteoritic samples, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist and collaborators have figured out that Earth and Mars formed by collisions of planetary embryos originating from the inner solar system. Rocky planets may have formed by two fundamentally different processes, but it is unclear which one […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Come on in, the water is superionic
The interiors of Uranus and Neptune each contain about 50,000 times the amount of water in Earth’s oceans, and a form of water known as superionic water is believed to be stable at depths greater than approximately one-third of the radius of these ice giants. Superionic water is a phase of H2O where hydrogen atoms become liquid-like […]
Posted inEnviro
Paying for Emissions We’ve Already Released
January 4, 2021 – The planet is committed to global warming in excess of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) just from greenhouse gases that have already been added to the atmosphere. This is the conclusion of new research by scientists from Nanjing University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Texas A&M University, which appears in the latest […]
Posted inSci/Tech
More than half of the world’s oceans already impacted by climate change
August 19, 2020 – More than 50 percent of the world’s oceans already could be impacted by climate change, with this figure rising to 80 percent over the coming decades, a research team including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) oceanographer Paul Durack has found using global ocean salinity, temperature observations and a large suite of […]
Posted inCalifornia
Climate Scientists Partner with San Francisco to be Ready for Future Storms
April 10, 2019 – The San Francisco Bay Area has been pummeled this winter by storms packed with moisture from atmospheric rivers. Formed when atmospheric water vapor is pushed across the Pacific Ocean by strong winds, atmospheric rivers deliver much of the Bay Area’s precipitation. The City and County of San Francisco (CCSF) is partnering […]
Posted inRegional
Sierra snowpack melt is steady, but not for long – Lawrence Livermore Lab
Jan. 25, 2019 – Snowpack loss in the northern Sierra Nevada will likely accelerate in the coming decades. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL),
Posted inSci/Tech
Scientists design conceptual asteroid deflector and evaluate it against massive potential threat
March 15, 2018 – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists are part of a national planetary defense team that designed a conceptual spacecraft to deflect Earth-bound asteroids and evaluated whether it would be able to nudge a massive asteroid – which has a remote chance to hitting Earth in 2135 – off course. The design […]
Posted inCalifornia
Future Arctic Sea Ice Loss Could Dry Out California
Dec. 5, 2017 – Arctic sea ice loss of the magnitude expected in the next few decades could impact California’s rainfall and exacerbate future droughts, according to new research led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists. The dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice cover observed over the satellite era is expected to continue throughout […]
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Study on Impact of Climate Change on Snowpack Loss in Western U.S.
April 18, 2017 – An international team of scientists, including one from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), has found that up to 20 percent loss in the annual maximum amount of water contained in the Western United States’ mountain snowpack in the last three decades is due to human influence. Peak runoff in streams and […]
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Weapon physicist declassifies rescued U.S. nuclear test films; initial set published on YouTube
March 20, 2017 – The U.S. conducted 210 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1945 and 1962, with multiple cameras capturing each event at around 2,400 frames per second. But in the decades since, around 10,000 of these films sat idle, scattered across the country in high-security vaults. Not only were they gathering dust, the film material […]
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How this Martian moon became the ‘Death Star’
October 12, 2016 – Mars’ largest moon Phobos has captured public imagination and been shrouded in mystery for decades. But numerical simulations recently conducted at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have shed some light on the enigmatic satellite. The dominant feature on the surface of Phobos (22-kilometers across) is Stickney crater (9-km across), a mega […]