(AGENPARL) – Fri 21 March 2025 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, March 21, 2025
This artist’s rendering shows a NIF target pellet inside a hohlraum capsule
with laser beams entering through openings on either end.
… Making stars on earth
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/fusion-energy-unlocking-the-power-of-the-stars/
Scientists are conducting experiments to generate clean energy through
fusion, the same sub-atomic reaction that powers our Sun, with the aim of
constructing plants that produce more energy than they consume. Correspondent
Ben Tracy visits the National Ignition Facility, in Livermore, Calif., where
the largest laser ever built is used as part of the process; and Commonwealth
Fusion Systems in Massachusetts, where super-heated plasma burns around 180
million degrees Fahrenheit.
Read More
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/fusion-energy-unlocking-the-power-of-the-stars/
Engineers work on the high-pressure cryogenic heat exchanger-based system,
which is shown to the right of the picture. (Photo courtesy of Verne.)
… Hydrogen creation just got cooler
https://www.powermag.com/lawrence-livermore-lab-verne-demonstrate-hydrogen-production-program/
California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and hydrogen
technology group Verne have demonstrated a novel pathway for creating
high-density hydrogen through a research program funded by the federal
government’s ARPA-E group.
The demonstration validated that it is possible to efficiently reach
cryo-compressed hydrogen conditions with liquid hydrogen-like density
directly from a source of gaseous hydrogen, substantially reducing the energy
input required compared to methods that rely on energy-intensive hydrogen
liquefaction.
So far, the hydrogen supply chain has been hindered by a trade-off between
gaseous hydrogen—which is cheap to produce, but low in density—and liquid
hydrogen, which is high in density, but expensive to densify (via
liquefaction). This trade-off has led to expensive distribution costs that
have limited the adoption of hydrogen solutions.
Read More
https://www.powermag.com/lawrence-livermore-lab-verne-demonstrate-hydrogen-production-program/
Organizations like LLNL likely instill valuable skills that transfer to
entrepreneurship—strategic thinking, mission focus, technological expertise
and performance under pressure.
… LLNL churns out unicorns
https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/google-stanford-and-the-idf-professional-backgrounds-of-unicorn-founders/
Before Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia, he was a dishwasher at Denny’s, but
most unicorn founders get their start in far more predictable places. The
Stanford GSB Venture Capital Initiative team and I analyzed 2,791 founders
behind 1,110 U.S.-based VC-backed unicorns to understand their professional
backgrounds.
Some of the most intriguing findings come from less obvious unicorn talent
sources.
Founders with Israel Defense Forces experience are 3.1x more likely than
average to build U.S.-based billion-dollar companies. Other government and
research organizations also outperform expectations, including Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory (2.1x), the US Air Force (1.7x) and The Howard
Hughes Medical Institute (1.6x).
Read More
https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/google-stanford-and-the-idf-professional-backgrounds-of-unicorn-founders/
LLNL is also advancing additive manufacturing by constructing a workflow to
design, fabricate, characterize and field fully 3D-printed fuel capsules for
the National Ignition Facility.
… Sound bubbles make audio havens
https://studyfinds.org/audible-enclaves-sound-waves-penn-state/
Ever been annoyed by someone else’s music in a shared space? Or struggled
to have a private conversation in a busy office? Researchers might have just
solved these everyday acoustic headaches with a breakthrough that creates
“sound bubbles” only the intended listener can hear.
These localized audio spots, which the researchers dubbed “audible
enclaves,” can be placed with pinpoint accuracy—even behind obstacles
like human heads—while remaining silent to everyone else in the room.
The system works by sending out two beams of ultrasonic sound that travel
along curved paths and meet at a specific target location. Using 3D-printed
structures called metasurfaces, they shape these ultrasonic beams to bend
around obstacles like a person’s head. The metasurfaces were 3D printed by
co-author Xiaoxing Xia, staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
Read More https://studyfinds.org/audible-enclaves-sound-waves-penn-state/
OpenAI researcher Aaron Jaech (center) assisted Lab scientists in working
with AI models at the 1,000 Scientist AI Jam Session, held in LLNL’s
Library and the Livermore Valley Open Campus. (Photo: Randy Wong/LLNL)
… Scientists jam out
https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/1000-scientist-ai-jam-session-explores-ai-driven-scientific-discovery/
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) on Feb. 28 joined an initiative
that brought together over 1,400 Department of Energy (DOE) scientists across
multiple sites to explore how cutting-edge AI models could transform
scientific research.
The first-ever 1,000 Scientist AI Jam Session, hosted at nine DOE labs
including LLNL, immersed scientists in a full-day, hands-on collaboration
with OpenAI to evaluate some of the company’s most advanced AI reasoning
models on real-world scientific problems. During the event, researchers
assessed the models’ capabilities in solving complex scientific challenges
and reported their findings, in hopes of charting a course for the future of
AI for science.
Read More
https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/1000-scientist-ai-jam-session-explores-ai-driven-scientific-discovery/
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Administration..
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