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Nuclear and Chemical Sciences
LLNL’s Rebecca Toomey recognized with Division of Nuclear Physics’ Distinguished Service Award
Rebecca Toomey, a postdoctoral research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), has been recognized with the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Nuclear Physics’ (DNP) Distinguished Service Award. The honor is intended to recognize those who have made substantial and extensive contributions to the nuclear physics community through the activities…
LZ dark matter experiment sets a world’s best and spots neutrinos from the sun’s core
There’s more to the universe than meets the eye. Dark matter, the invisible substance that accounts for 85 percent of the mass in the universe, is hiding all around us — and figuring out exactly what it is remains one of the biggest questions about how our world works. The newest results from LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) extend the experiment’s search for low-mass dark matter and set…
Undergraduate interns explore nuclear physics research at LLNL
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recently helped launch a new internship program aimed at connecting with undergraduate students at two nearby California State University (CSU) campuses and inspiring them to consider a science-focused research career. The new program, which started in early 2025, involves multiple staff and postdocs from the Lab…
Energy-efficient process delivers rare-earth element for magnets
Neodymium is a rare-earth element essential for producing the strongest permanent magnets, which are widespread in defense technologies, hard drives, medical imaging devices, electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and more. Despite its designation in the U.S. as a critical material, neodymium is primarily mined and refined overseas. China controls much of the supply chain,…
Meteorite samples are time capsules from the early solar system
When a meteor streaks across the sky, it’s not just beautiful. It’s nature’s way of delivering a time capsule to Earth. Contained within are hints about the very beginning of the solar system and how planets, including our own, formed. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist Thomas Kruijer and collaborators describe how meteorites tell the story of the…
LLNL’s Wei Jia Ong receives American Physical Society’s 2025 Freedman Award
Wei Jia Ong, a staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), has been recognized as the recipient of the American Physical Society’s (APS) 2025 Stuart Jay Freedman Award in Experimental Nuclear Physics. The award is presented annually to an outstanding early career experimentalist in nuclear physics. Ong was selected for her work “spearheading a…
River ecosystem that converts air to fertilizer could hold clues for sustainable nitrogen production
Every living thing needs nitrogen, and the world uses a significant portion of its energy making nitrogen fertilizer for agriculture. Studying microorganisms that naturally capture atmospheric nitrogen — a process called nitrogen fixation — can inspire new sustainable methods to produce fertilizers, saving energy and reducing water pollution. In a new study, published in…
Learn what it takes to make a new element with the Big Ideas Lab podcast
Scientists are still adding to the periodic table and expanding what we know about matter. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), researchers are creating entirely new elements that exist for only moments. In the latest episode of the Big Ideas Lab, step into the world of superheavy element discovery to understand how these rare atoms are made, why they matter…
Samples from asteroid Bennu contain secrets of the early solar system
In September 2023, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission became the first U.S. mission to collect a sample of material from an asteroid and return it to Earth. Now, a team including researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has analyzed that material. Their work, published in…
First-of-its-kind microscope takes 3D ghost images of nanoparticles
Ghost imaging is like a game of Battleship. Instead of seeing an object directly, scientists use entangled photons to remove the background and reveal its silhouette. This method can be used to study microscopic environments without much light, which is helpful for avoiding photodamage to biological samples. So far, quantum ghost imaging has been limited to two dimensions,…
Big Ideas Lab podcast visits the Forensic Science Center: part 2
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Forensic Science Center (FSC) is a unique place. It is the only forensic science center in the United States that could accept a truly mixed hazard sample — with a biological material, a chemical agent, explosives and nuclear material. It is one of only two laboratories in the United States — and among 30 in the world — that is…
LLNL and Purdue University accelerate discovery of medical countermeasures for emerging chemical threats
In a major advance for chemical defense and public safety, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) Forensic Science Center (FSC) and Purdue University have developed and demonstrated a high-throughput, automated mass spectrometry platform. Their platform dramatically accelerates the discovery of medical countermeasure candidates against A-series…
Big Ideas Lab podcast delves into Forensic Science Center cases, podcast nears milestone
In May 1999, Bulgarian customs officials seized a vial containing a small amount of highly enriched uranium (HEU) at a checkpoint on the Bulgarian/Romanian border. The material, about four grams of HEU, was hidden in a shielded lead container inside the trunk of a car being driven by a Turkish citizen. The driver had first attempted to sell the material in Turkey and then…
Five LLNL postdocs selected to attend 2025 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings
Five Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) postdoctoral researchers have been selected to participate in the prestigious 2025 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. Ian Colliard, Nicholas Cross, Caspar Donnison, Vidia Gokool and Jonas Kaufman will join young scientists from around the world to learn from Nobel Prize laureates through academic panels, lectures, group…
Nuclear chemistry research gets an efficiency boost
Heavy actinides — elements at the bottom of the periodic table, after plutonium — are radioactive, rare and chemically complex, making them notoriously difficult to study. Most studies conducted on these elements have traditionally been done one-compound-at-a-time or extrapolated from less toxic and non-radioactive surrogates, like lanthanides, that are safer to work with…
Search for sterile neutrinos continues at nuclear reactors
Neutrinos, elusive fundamental particles, can act as a window into the center of a nuclear reactor, the interior of the earth, or some of the most dynamic objects in the universe. Their tendency to change "flavors" may provide clues into the prominence of matter over antimatter in the universe or explain the existence of dark matter. Physicists are particularly interested…
CERN teams, including LLNL researchers, win 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
In 2012, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN jointly announced the discovery of the Higgs boson — a missing piece in the Standard Model of particle physics. Since beginning work, the teams have also observed never-before-seen quark states, ruled out different theories of new physics, and studied the properties of quark-gluon plasma,…
Jennifer Pett-Ridge inducted into Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist Jennifer Pett-Ridge has been selected as one of this year’s 12 inductees to join the 2025 Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame. Since its establishment in 1993, the Hall of Fame has honored almost 300 exceptional women who have made a lasting impact in Alameda County’s communities. “I’m hugely flattered to be selected,…
LLNL’s Jennifer Pett-Ridge named 2024 AAAS fellow
Jennifer Pett-Ridge is a biogeochemist who likes to ‘dig deep’ into the soil. She knew early on that she wanted to pursue environmental science and has now become one of the world’s foremost experts in soil ecology and carbon cycling. Now, Pett-Ridge will be recognized as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest…
Emilie Dunham shoots for the stars
What if we could determine what material built our solar system, how old it is, and even the type of star it came from? Emilie Dunham, postdoctoral researcher in the Nuclear and Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), is exploring the answers to these very questions, all while following a childhood passion. Dunham, a 2023 Lawrence…
