(AGENPARL) – ven 06 dicembre 2024 A weekly compendium of media reports on science and technology achievements
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Though the Laboratory reviews
items for overall accuracy, the reporting organizations are responsible for
the content in the links below.
….. LLNL Report, Dec. 6, 2024
LLNL’s National Ignition Facility target chamber is where the magic
happens.
… Smashing a nuclear-fusion record
https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-024-03745-z/index.html
The sun shone brightly on Livermore, California, on June 8, 2011, when
researchers charged up the world’s largest laser for its first major fusion
experiment. It might have seemed like a good omen for the stadium-sized
facility, which is a flagship project of the U.S. nuclear weapons program.
That day, the laser at Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility
(NIF) blasted a pea-sized target with a huge jolt of energy. It was an
important first step, but the test ended with a brief flash and a fizzle.
This result would become frustratingly familiar.
The facility was designed with a singular goal: to compress hydrogen isotopes
into a white-hot core, where their nuclei would meld to create helium and
enough surplus energy to drive a cascade of fusion reactions. Nobody had
expected success straight away, but by June 2011 the researchers were already
eight months into a two-year effort that was expected to achieve
“ignition”: when an experiment generates more energy than the laser
supplies. Those two years would drag into 12.
In December 2022, the Laboratory finally reached its ignition goal as laid
out by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences 25 years earlier, and the
researchers have since upped their game. NIF shattered records this February
by producing double the amount of fusion energy that the laser provided, and
the facility confirmed its sixth successful ignition experiment this month.
Read More https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-024-03745-z/index.html
With a peak performance of 2.79 exaFLOPS, El Capitan provides Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory with a flagship machine 22 times more powerful
than its previous fastest supercomputer, Sierra. (Photo: Garry McLeod/LLNL)
… El Capitan reaches high
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/lawrence-livermore-labs-el-capitan-crowned-worlds-fastest-supercomputer/
A supercomputer housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
has officially been crowned as the world’s fastest. The computer, known as
“El Capitan,” is a collaboration between LLNL, the National Nuclear
Security Administration and Hewlett Packard Enterprises.
El Capitan is an exascale system dedicated to national security. Exascale
computing systems, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, feature more
powerful hardware than the previous generation of supercomputers and are able
to process information much faster.
El Capitan’s processing speed has been verified as 1.742 exaFLOPs — 1.742
quintillion calculations per second — on the High Performance Linpack,
according to LLNL. The High Performance Linpack is the standard benchmark
used to evaluate supercomputing.
Read More
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/lawrence-livermore-labs-el-capitan-crowned-worlds-fastest-supercomputer/
LLNL researchers worked with Russian scientists in the discovery of Element
116. (Image: Adobe Stock)
… The facts and nothing but the facts
https://facts.net/science/chemistry/40-facts-about-livermorium/
Livermorium, a synthetic element with the symbol Lv and atomic number 116, is
a fascinating subject for science enthusiasts. Named after Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, this element is part of the post-transition metals
group.
Discovered in 2000 by a team of Russian and American scientists, Livermorium
is highly radioactive and has no stable isotopes. Its most stable isotope,
Livermorium-293, has a half-life of about 60 milliseconds.
Due to its short-lived nature, Livermorium doesn’t have practical
applications yet, but it plays a crucial role in scientific research,
particularly in understanding the properties of superheavy elements.
Read More https://facts.net/science/chemistry/40-facts-about-livermorium/
Running on the second-generation Cerebras WSE-2 — a cutting-edge processor
boasting 850,000 cores — the team from LLNL, LANDL and Sandia and Cerebras
Systems demonstrated the chip can perform complex simulations involving
hundreds of thousands of atoms at speeds previously thought unattainable.
… It’s massive
In a groundbreaking development for computational science, a team of National
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Tri-Lab researchers, including
Lawrence Livermore,  has unveiled a revolutionary approach to molecular
dynamics (MD) simulations using the Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE), the
world’s largest computer chip.
The AI “chip” is the size of a pizza box and is making some impressive
claims about its AI processing performance.
At the recent Supercomputing conference, Cerebras announced a breakthrough in
molecular dynamics simulations. Data from third-party benchmark firm
Artificial Analysis shows a single Cerebras CS-2 system with one Wafer Scale
Engine-2 (WSE) achieved over 1.1 million steps per second, which is 748 times
faster than what is possible on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s
Frontier supercomputer.
Molecular dynamics simulations are critical for understanding the behavior of
materials at the atomic level, driving advancements in fields such as
materials science, biophysics and drug design. MD simulations are of
particular interest to the NNSA labs, where they are essential for exploring
how materials behave when experiments are either too expensive or are
otherwise unable to reach relevant conditions such as temperature, pressure
and time- and length-scales, researchers said.
Read More
Fast Cure silicone in direct-ink-write additive manufacturing can produce
previously unattainable structures, such as tall, overhanging, or thin-walled
structures. Such structures, featured on the October journal cover of
Advanced Materials Technologies, are obtained thanks to the quick gelling
process.
… That’s one fast cure
https://phys.org/news/2024-12-fast-silicone-ink-doors-3d.html
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed a
new method to 3D print sturdy silicone structures that are bigger, taller,
thinner and more porous than ever before.
he team’s two-part “fast cure” silicone-based ink for direct ink
writing mixes just before printing and sets quickly at room temperature,
allowing for longer print times, simplifying the fabrication process, and
ensuring structures will not collapse or sag, even in complex shapes and
configurations.
“There are other methods for silicone direct-ink writing, but this is the
simplest solution and the bulletproof one,” said Anna Güell Izard, a
postdoc in the Materials Engineering Division (MED) and the research
paper’s first author. “There is nothing extra to worry about; you can
just print.”
Read More https://phys.org/news/2024-12-fast-silicone-ink-doors-3d.html
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provides solutions to our nation’s most important national security
challenges through innovative science, engineering and technology. Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory is managed by Lawrence Livermore National
Security, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security
Administration.
Read previous Lab Report articles online https://www.llnl.gov/news/lab-report
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