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Scientists know of more than 3,300 isotopes. Researchers have compiled experimental nuclear data for all known nuclei, including mass, quantum numbers, half-life, decay modes, and branching intensities. The researchers evaluated all the data and reported recommended values and their uncertainties, making the results available in the NUBASE library.

You may have flown a flight simulator in a computer game or at a science museum. Landing without crashing is always the hardest part. But that’s nothing compared to the challenge that engineers are facing to develop a flight simulation of the very large vehicles necessary for humans to explore the surface of Mars. The Red Planet poses innumerable challenges to astronauts, not the least of which is getting there. That’s where the Department of Energy Office of Science’s user facility supercomputers come in. Researchers at DOE’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) are working with NASA engineers and scientists to simulate the process of slowing down a huge spacecraft as it moves towards Mars’ surface.

When superconductors encounter too much current, they can become resistive. Researchers can design microscopic electronic components that use this effect to create a switch, like a transistor. The resulting nanowire superconducting switching devices (called nano-cryotrons, or nTrons) show promise for future superconducting electronics or particle detectors.

Soil microbes use volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as a food source but can also release VOCs as gases that enter the atmosphere. Researchers used an enclosed, artificial tropical rainforest and discovered that microbes switch from their growth to instead producing biological molecules, including VOCs, during drought conditions. This shows that drought enhances the loss of carbon from soil, a factor in climate change.

To study quantum many-body systems, researchers use computational tools called quantum Monte Carlo simulations. In this work, researchers used a specific approach called the “floating block method” to compute atomic nuclei corresponding to two different Hamiltonians. The method makes possible calculations that were previously not feasible for large quantum systems.

Creating multiple universes to see how they run might be tempting to scientists, but it’s obviously not possible. That is, as long as you need physical universes. If you can make do with virtual ones, there are far more options. Cosmologists supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science are developing computer simulations of the universe designed to run on exascale computers. These models are leveraging these supercomputers to provide new insights into our universe’s past and present.

In early 2023, scientists published a new measurement testing the strong nuclear force. The experiment involved the way an  alpha particle becomes excited. The study suggested a puzzle that could not be solved with existing theoretical methods. Since then, researchers conducted new theoretical calculations to explain the experimental findings and resolve the puzzle.

Lanthanide elements are important for clean energy and other applications. To use them, industry must separate mixed lanthanide sources into individual elements using costly, time-consuming, and waste-generating procedures. An efficient new method can be tailored to select specific lanthanides. The technique combines two substances that do not mix and that prefer different types of lanthanides. The process would allow for smaller equipment, less use of chemicals, and less waste production.

On screensaver mode, smart TVs often rotate through photos of natural wonders, from waterfalls to canyons. Now imagine hundreds of those televisions, with one single image spread out among them. The photograph is a sweeping panorama of a huge section of the night sky, with stars and galaxies shining bright throughout. That is the type of image that the newly-completed Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera will take every 20 seconds on clear nights for the course of a decade.