Los Alamos National Laboratory (www.lanl.gov) has identified the Top 10 Laboratory science stories of 2009 based on global viewership of online media content and major programmatic milestones.
“Often our top breakthroughs in terms of scientific impact are also the ones that garner the most attention in the media”
“Often our top breakthroughs in terms of scientific impact are also the ones that garner the most attention in the media,” said Terry Wallace, Laboratory principal associate director of science, technology, and engineering. “This was certainly the case for Roadrunner and for the Ardi discovery. Sometimes, the best measure of impact is programmatic, such as the successful DARHT two-axis hydrotest, or our teams using nanotechnology for energy breakthroughs. In combination, this collection of advances points to the diverse capabilities at Los Alamos that we harness for national security science.”
Much of the science and technology at Los Alamos stems from or benefits the Lab’s key national security mission performed for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The Top 10 LANL Science Stories for 2009 are:
#1: Roadrunner:
The Roadrunner supercomputer at Los Alamos is the first computing system in the world to reach a petaflop, computer jargon for 1 million billion calculations per second, a record that stood for a year and a half. But the real accomplishment is that Roadrunner reached that goal using an entirely new computing architecture.
The secret to its record-breaking performance is a unique hybrid design. The full system consists of 278 server racks containing 6,562 AMD Opteron™ dual-core processors and 12,240 PowerXCell 8i™ Cell processors, a special IBM-developed variant of the Cell processor used in the Sony PlayStation®3. The node-attached Cell accelerators are what make Roadrunner completely different than typical computing “clusters.”
Roadrunner also is one of the most energy-efficient supercomputers. Using approximately 3 megawatts of power at sustained petaflop performance, the system produces about 500 megaflops per watt, more than twice the efficiency of the average supercomputer.
#2: Ardi:
A Los Alamos National Laboratory geologist is part of an international research team responsible for discovering the oldest nearly intact skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, who lived 4.4 million years ago.
The discovery reveals the biology of the first stage of human evolution better than anything seen to date. The fossil, nicknamed “Ardi,” is the earliest skeleton known from the human branch of the primate family tree. The discovery provides new insights about how hominids—the family of “great apes” comprising humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—may have emerged from an ancestral ape.
The discovery and associated research were named Science magazine’s Breakthrough of the Year for 2009 and selected by Time magazine as the #1 science story of 2009.
#3: Climate modeling & monitoring:
LANL innovations in high-resolution climate modeling and monitoring led to new insights into the impacts of climate change at global and regional scales.
The changing conditions in the ocean due to increased acidity from increased CO2 is one of the unknowns in future climate change projections. LANL’s Climate, Ocean, and Sea Ice Modeling effort for DOE and the National Science Foundation develops the highest-resolution dynamic models of the world’s oceans and polar icecaps.
Although up to 80 percent of the world’s oxygen is generated by photosynthetic processes in ocean phytoplankton and other sea plants, the effects of this photosynthesis on removing CO2 from the atmosphere have not been included previously because of the lack of available computing power.
Harnessing the petaflop capacity of LANL’s Roadrunner supercomputer (see #1 above), Lab researchers recently examined the effect of mesoscale ocean eddies (a few miles in size) on the transport of nutrients crucial for the growth of phytoplankton. These eddies cause vertical transport of nutrients, which is crucial for the growth of phytoplankton.
The model can then calculate surface chlorophyll concentrations, and compare to satellite images. This model is dramatically better than the previous state of the art in resolution and its ability to capture biological complexity.
The regional effects of global climate change on western U.S. forests also are important to understanding future impacts, especially as forests comprise an important CO2 sink. The widespread die-off of piñon trees in the Southwest is now being followed by a larger-scale pine mortality in the Mountain West. LANL scientists documented a new mechanism for this mortality, called carbon starvation. It has been widely presumed that trees die of hydraulic failure (drying out). Instead, they die from closure of the tiny pores on the surfaces of leaves that permit the exchange of gases between the atmosphere and the leaf. When the pores are closed (to prevent water loss during extreme drought), the photosynthetic uptake of carbon also stops, starving the trees. This type of mortality has been documented on all six vegetated continents and is increasing, with climate change, across all biomes (forest, desert, grasslands, tundra, and aquatic ecosystems).
This work is an enormous step forward in demonstrating that regional climate change drives a global-scale response of vegetation mortality. Massive forest die-offs can change vegetated areas from carbon sinks to carbon sources.
#4: MagViz:
LANL’s MagViz team pioneered the use of modified magnetic resonance imagery (MRI) technology to distinguish and alert airport security staff to potentially dangerous liquids and gels in airport carry-on baggage.
Using extremely low magnetic fields and high-powered computer analysis, the MagViz equipment was demonstrated for its Department of Homeland Security sponsors and potential Transportation Safety Administration users at the Albuquerque International Sunport (http://www.youtube.com/LosAlamosNationalLab#p/a/u/4/xT2zncrtU-s).
A new area of development is a bottled-liquid scanner system based on the same technology.
#5: First dual-axis hydrodynamic test:
LANL scientists and engineers fired the first-ever double-viewpoint, multiframe hydrodynamic test at DARHT, the Laboratory’s Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test facility – leading to future experiments at LANL and across the nation’s nuclear security enterprise, supporting the stockpile stewardship and weapons assurance mission. “Initial data return was excellent,” said the hydrodynamic experiments division leader, David Funk. “The baseline experiment captured five time-dependent X-ray images and a variety of data from other diagnostics of pressure, temperature, and timing. This data provides the nation with one of the most rigorous tests of our capability to predict weapons performance.”
#6: Hurricane prediction:
A system of sensors developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nonproliferation mission has also begun to give meteorologists their most detailed view of the relationship between hurricanes and lightning.
By examining the rate and nature of lightning in the hurricane’s eye wall, scientists may begin to be able to predict the potential strengthening of these destructive storms.
#7: Fuel from plants: