(AGENPARL) - Roma, 13 Marzo 2026 - (AGENPARL) – Fri 13 March 2026 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 13, 2026
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured images of asteroid 2024 YR4 that
indicate the asteroid is about the size of a 15-story building. (Image: NASA,
ESA, CSA, STScI, Andy Rivkin/APL)
The moon avoids an asteroid
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/notorious-asteroid-2024-yr4-wont-crash-into-the-moon-after-all/
Of all the asteroids that have imperiled the planet, 2024 YR4 is
unparalleled. An Earth impact was eventually ruled out in February of last
year.. But a late plot twist revealed 2024 YR4 stood a 4.3 percent (1-in-23)
chance of slamming into our moon. Now a concerted effort by astronomers
indicates the asteroid will comfortably miss our alabaster companion, too —
by 21,200 kilometers.
Remarkably, this revelation comes from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST),
an observatory that was designed to look at ancient black holes, distant
galaxies, convulsing stars and far-flung planets—not help defend the planet
from rogue asteroids.
“I am truly amazed at what JWST has been able to do for us with a
real-life, short-term response to an asteroid threat,” says Kathryn
Kumamoto, head of the planetary defense program at the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in California.
Read More
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/notorious-asteroid-2024-yr4-wont-crash-into-the-moon-after-all/
Researchers from LLNL and Meta created the world’s largest open dataset of
atomistic polymer chemistry. (Graphic: Dan Herchek/LLNL; background image:
Evan Antoniuk/LLNL)
Opening up a world of polymers
https://www.rdworldonline.com/llnl-and-meta-release-opoly26-the-worlds-largest-open-dataset-for-polymer-ai/
Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Meta have
created an open dataset of atomistic polymer chemistry. The dataset includes
millions of quantum-accurate simulations designed to help AI model the
complex behavior of plastics, films, batteries and other materials.
The dataset, called Open Polymers 2026 (OPoly26), enables AI to learn
patterns from millions of precomputed polymer structures in hours or days.
The work builds on the Meta and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)
led Open Molecules 2025 (OMol25) dataset, which contains open molecular data
aimed at advancing AI-driven chemistry.
By generating critical missing data on polymers, the team aims to expand and
democratize open datasets for materials scientists, accelerating the pace of
discovery across polymer chemistry.
“This fills a huge gap,” said Evan Antoniuk, an LLNL materials scientist
and OPoly26 co-principal investigator. “We see this as a community
resource, one that we hope becomes the go-to starting point for anyone
interested in performing atomistic simulations of polymers.”
Read More
https://www.rdworldonline.com/llnl-and-meta-release-opoly26-the-worlds-largest-open-dataset-for-polymer-ai/
An image captured by the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube a few minutes
after DART collided with Dimorphos. (Image: ASI/NASA)
A snowball fight in space
https://scitechdaily.com/at-first-we-thought-something-was-wrong-nasa-dart-mission-reveals-a-cosmic-snowball-fight/
Images from NASA’s DART mission revealed the first direct evidence that
asteroids in a binary system can exchange rocks and dust. Slow moving debris
from the asteroid Didymos appears to have struck its moon Dimorphos, leaving
distinctive streaks scientists describe as “cosmic snowballs.”
Identifying the streaks took months of careful analysis. The patterns were
not visible in the original DART images. University of Maryland astronomy
research scientist Tony Farnham and former postdoctoral researcher Juan Rizos
developed specialized techniques to remove shadows from boulders and lighting
effects from the photographs. Once those distortions were corrected, the
subtle streaks created by the ‘cosmic snowballs’ became visible.
Computer simulations performed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
confirmed laboratory experiments. Whether the incoming material was a compact
rock like the marble or a looser clump of dust, boulders on the asteroid
surface naturally shaped the debris into fan-like rays.
Read More
https://scitechdaily.com/at-first-we-thought-something-was-wrong-nasa-dart-mission-reveals-a-cosmic-snowball-fight/
LLNL biologist James Thissen loads DNA samples for sequencing in a
pathogen-agnostic method to identify respiratory viruses. (Image: Randy
Wong/LLNL)
PCR plus
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-03-pathogen-agnostic-reveals-hidden-respiratory.html
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the term “Polymerase Chain Reaction testing”
into the mainstream. The PCR method is a type of nucleic acid amplification
test (NAAT) that detects a pathogen by finding and amplifying components of
its genetic material, and it is widely used to detect SARS-CoV-2.
But these types of tests have a weakness: you have to know exactly what
pathogen you’re looking for.. In a recent study, published in Scientific
Reports, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and
the California Department of Public Health identified other potentially
harmful respiratory viruses in samples that tested negative in a standard,
NAAT-based panel.. The results suggest that a pathogen-agnostic approach is a
crucial complement to tests like PCR.
“If a patient is infected with a life-threatening pathogen that is not
covered by these tests, then this would cause a serious health risk,” said
LLNL scientist and author Crystal Jaing.
Read More
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-03-pathogen-agnostic-reveals-hidden-respiratory.html
LLNL’s selected project will explore how quantum simulations and computing
can improve the energy efficiency of magnets.
Quantum for chemistry