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HPC, Simulation, and Data Science
Fentanyl or phony? Machine-learning algorithm learns to pick out opioid signatures
New forms of fentanyl are created every day. For law enforcement, that poses a challenge: how do you identify a chemical you’ve never seen before? Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) aim to answer that question with a machine-learning model that can distinguish opioids from other chemicals with an accuracy over 95% in a laboratory setting. The…
When lasers cross: LLNL finds a brighter way to measure plasma
Measuring conditions in volatile clouds of superheated gases known as plasmas are central to pursuing greater scientific understanding of how stars, nuclear detonations and fusion energy work. For decades, scientists have relied on a technique called Thomson scattering, which uses a single laser beam to scatter from plasma waves as a way to measure critical information…
Simulations and supercomputing calculate one million orbits in cislunar space
Satellites and spacecraft in the vast region between the earth and moon and just beyond — called cislunar space — are crucial for space exploration, scientific advancement and national security. But figuring out where exactly to put them into a stable orbit can be a huge, computationally expensive challenge. In an open-access database and with publicly available code,…
Nanotubes with lids mimic real biology
When water and ions move together through channels only a nanometer wide, they behave in unusual ways. In these tight spaces, water molecules line up in single file. This forces ions to shed some of the water molecules that normally surround them, leading to the unique physics of ion transport. Biological channels are especially adept at this behavior, often choreographing…
Light-based 3D printing lets scientists program plastic properties at the microscale
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have co-developed a new way to precisely control the internal structure of common plastics during 3D printing, allowing a single printed object to seamlessly shift from rigid to flexible using only light. In a paper published today in Science, the researchers describe a technique called crystallinity regulation…
LLNL’s energy scale-up brainstorming event focused on accelerating pilot-ready technologies
Solving tomorrow’s challenges in energy security requires scientists to develop new pathways to streamline innovation. To help achieve this goal, the Global Security Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recently hosted an “Energy Scale-up Brainstorming Day.” More than 60 researchers across a broad range of expertise gathered to engage in interactive…
LLNL releases Generalized Economics Model for fusion energy
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has released a new tool designed to help the fusion energy industry assess the economic impact of plant operation and design trade-offs for building an inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plant. The Generalized Economics Model (GEM) for Fusion Technology is now available to download. “GEM helps the fusion industry understand how…
Discover LLNL’s Autonomous Sensors program in the latest episode of the Big Ideas Lab podcast
When disaster strikes, every second counts, but sometimes the danger is too great for humans to go first. From mapping terrain to reaching deep underground to detect hidden threats and abandoned wells, unmanned systems equipped with advanced sensors are changing how we respond to crises. Across land, air and sea, drones can act as one coordinated force to increase the…
From fleeting to stable: scientists uncover recipe for new carbon dioxide-based energetic materials
When materials are compressed, their atoms are forced into unusual arrangements that do not normally exist under everyday conditions. These configurations are often fleeting: when the pressure is released, the atoms typically relax back to a stable low-pressure state. Only a few very specific materials, like diamond, retain their high-pressure structure after returning to…
New code connects microscopic insights to the macroscopic world
In inertial confinement fusion, a capsule of fuel begins at temperatures near zero and pressures close to vacuum. When lasers compress that fuel to trigger fusion, the material heats up to millions of degrees and reaches pressures similar to the core of the sun. That process happens within a miniscule amount of space and time. To understand this process, scientists need to…
LLNL’s Lindstrom honored with IEEE VIS Test of Time Award
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) computer scientist Peter Lindstrom recently received a 2025 IEEE VIS Test of Time Award for his 2014 paper on near-lossless data compression, recognizing its lasting influence on the field of scientific visualization and high-performance computing. Presented annually at the IEEE VIS Conference, the Test of Time Award honors…
Next-generation materials for additive manufacturing
Next-generation technology requires next-generation materials that can be tailored to exact mission requirements. Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, has already revolutionized industries like aerospace engineering by enabling previously unthinkable component designs. However, this technique has been largely limited to pre-existing metallic alloys. This is due to the…
LLNL, CFCE and Livermore Lab Foundation release AI primer for state lawmakers
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the California Foundation for Commerce and Education (CFCE) and the Livermore Lab Foundation (LLF) today released a new educational brief on the relationship between AI and California, designed to provide state lawmakers with science-based context as they consider AI policy decisions. The primer is intended to be a practical,…
What is dark matter? Explore the possibilities in the Big Ideas Lab podcast
Galaxies spin faster than they should. Clusters of those galaxies hold themselves intact against all expectations. By every visible measure, the universe should not look the way it does. Something is holding galaxies, stars and entire clusters together. Something we can’t see. And although it’s invisible to the naked eye, there are clues everywhere that allude to its…
Superconducting circuits: How LLNL is building on Nobel Prize-winning quantum technology
This fall, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.” At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), these award-winning discoveries underpin two fronts of ongoing innovation: fundamental research in quantum…
Satellite pierces through space to discover unexpected winds and sloshing intergalactic gas
The X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA collaboration with European Space Agency (ESA) participation, was built to study the most extreme environments in the cosmos. From space, the satellite collects X-rays to probe the universe’s hottest regions, largest structures and strongest gravity wells. In four…
LLNL and Energy I-Corps take science from big ideas to big market impact
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) pursues big ideas to solve the most important security challenges facing the U.S. and the world. In that pursuit, scientific breakthroughs with market potential are discovered, protected and licensed to (or collaborated on) with industry partners through a process called technology transfer. LLNL’s Innovation and Partnerships…
LLNL caps SC25 with HPC leadership, major science advances and artificial intelligence
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) capped a milestone week at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC25) with renewed leadership in supercomputing on the Top500, a Gordon Bell Prize win for real-time tsunami forecasting and a slate of sessions that underscored the Lab’s expanding role at the intersection…
LLNL, UT & UCSD win Gordon Bell Prize with exascale tsunami forecasting
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University of Texas at Austin’s (UT) Oden Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) on Nov. 20 were awarded the prestigious 2025 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Gordon Bell Prize for developing a real-time tsunami early-warning framework…
Gordon Bell finalist team pushes scale of rocket simulation on El Capitan
Researchers used Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) exascale supercomputer El Capitan to perform the largest fluid dynamics simulation ever — surpassing one quadrillion degrees of freedom in a single computational fluid dynamics (CFD) problem. The team focused the effort on rocket–rocket plume interactions. El Capitan is funded by the National Nuclear Security…
