Neutron Science In the News – 2012
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December
U.S. Rep. Fattah of Pennsylvania tours ORNL
Oak Ridge Today 12/11
U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Pennsylvania Democrat, visited Oak Ridge National Laboratory today.
While at the lab, Fattah visited the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, BioEnergy Science Center, Spallation Neutron Source, Center for Nanophase Materials Science, and Manufacturing Demonstration Facility.
He spoke with lab leadership about ORNL’s research in areas that include advanced manufacturing, materials research, supercomputing and biofuels; the transfer of ORNL technology to the private sector; science, technology, engineering and math education; and other topics.
Neutron Science and Supercomputing Come Together at Oak Ridge National Lab
HPC Wire 12/4
Next-generation neutron scattering requires next-generation data analysis infrastructure. And that means not just more data, accelerated reduction, and translation and analysis, but linking the neutron scattering on a beam line live to a simulation platform where modeling and simulation can guide the experiment.
As the data sets generated by the increasingly powerful neutron scattering instruments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) grow ever more massive, the facility’s users require significant advances in data reduction and analysis tools so they can cope. SNS is the world’s most intense pulsed, accelerator-based neutron source for scientific research and development.
Funded by the US Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences, this national user facility hosts hundreds of scientists from all over the world every year, most of whom are engaged in materials science research. Now the SNS data specialists have teamed with ORNL’s Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate to form a strategic alliance to meet the neutron science users’ next-generation requirements.
November
After two target failures, user research resumes at SNS this morning
Oak Ridge Today 11/28
Its mercury targets have failed twice in the past two months, but the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is available for user research again.
The program resumed at 8 a.m. Wednesday.
The $1.4 billion research facility is used to help scientists study material structures and properties.
The failures of its targets 6 and 7 in September and October have been attributed to an apparent failure in a weld joint.
SNS operations set to resume after problem identified, fixed
Knoxville News Sentinel 11/23
It's been a difficult couple of months at the Spallation Neutron Source.
The high-end science center has been mostly out of action this fall because of back-to-back failures with a key component that holds the system's 40,000-pound mercury target, which is bombarded by pulses of a proton beam 60 times a second to produce neutrons for experiments with materials.
The SNS problem, however, has reportedly been resolved, with a new target vessel thoroughly analyzed and installed last week, and officials plan to resume production of neutrons Nov. 28.
That's a relief, not just to officials at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but to research teams around the world who want to use the facility's rich streams of neutrons and unique research instruments to explore the essence of materials, find out how they're put together and why they behave the way they do.
"We're really pleased with the progress," Kelly Beierschmitt, ORNL's associate lab director for neutron sciences, said in a telephone interview.
Twas the week after Thanksgiving: a neutron story
Knoxville News Sentinel 11/13
The folks at the Spallation Neutron Source have got a new target vessel ready to go, and the current plan is to restart operations the week after Thanksgiving. Operations at the SNS have been rocky since late August, when the accelerator-based research facility was restarted following a lengthy summer maintenance period.
One two separate occasions, a stainless-steel vessel that holds the 40,000-pound mercury target failed prematurely, forcing a shutdown of operations. The SNS team, after a highly technical investigation, finally determined that the vessels apparently failed because of a problem with a weld in virtually the same area of the vessel's interior.
"We have qualified one of our spare targets and are planning for a startup just after the thanksgiving holiday," Kelly Beierschmitt, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's associate lab director for neutron sciences, said in an email.
In an operational uptdate, ORNL said the plan is to resume operations for research users in the last week of November.
"A preliminary FY 2013 schedule has been drafted that brings users back after Thanksgiving with a short facility shutdown over the winter holidays," the SNS team said. "Beam for users is then planned from shortly after the New Year through May 2013."
The annual summer maintenance outage is slated to begin next June.
October
Beierschmitt: 'We're really encouraged'
Knoxville News Sentinel 10/25
Kelly Beierschmitt, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's associate lab director for neutron sciences, last night said the Spallation Neutron Source team is further investigating a "promising lead" on the problem in the SNS Target Facility.
Beierschmiitt declined to be specific about what the SNS folks think may be the problem that caused two target vessels to fail -- or give the data indications of failure -- within a couple of months at the research facility. But he said officials are "really encouraged" by the findings that could lead a resolution of the problem.
"I've definitely got something I can go chase now," he said.
He reiterated earlier comments that any of the potential problems are fixable, it's just a matter of fixing the right things.
Beierschmitt said a technical workshop was held earlier this week to discuss the SNS problem and ways to address it, with some of the brightest minds at the laboratory contributing their thoughts and expertise.
He praised the staff for truly putting the "tech" into detective work, saying there had been some extraordinary efforts to evaluate the last target vessel that was removed from the station where the mercury target is bombarded with a proton beam to produce neutrons for research. The target vessel is radioactive and must be studied using remote technologies and manipulators inside a hot cell at the SNS.
Neutron experiments give unprecedented look at quantum oscillations
Phys Org 10/23
In the experiment on the uranium nitride crystal—with each of the light nitrogen atoms centered in a cage of heavier uranium atoms—neutron scattering at ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) revealed an unexpected series of distinct and evenly spaced oscillations: The nitrogen atom vibrates like a molecular-level ball on a spring.
"Students of physics are familiar with this idealized quantum 'mass on a spring,' but it is very unexpected to find such a precise literal version of this theoretical model in a real experiment," said Steve Nagler, director of ORNL's Quantum Condensed Matter Division of the Neutron Sciences Directorate and a co-author on the paper, published in the journal Nature Communications.
The new data, obtained using SNS's wide angular-range chopper spectrometer (ARCS) and fine-resolution Fermi chopper spectrometer (SEQUOIA) instruments, revealed up to 10 equally spaced energy levels corresponding to oscillations of individual nitrogen atoms in different quantum states. The team was "astonished" to find this series of high-energy vibrational modes in uranium nitride—particularly in an experiment that originally set out to investigate magnetism in the material.
Double trouble at SNS
Knoxville News Sentinel 10/15
Research experiments at the Spallation Neutron Source have been shut down for a couple of weeks because operators received data feedback suggesting that failure was imminent in the vessel that holds the mercury target. According to Kelly Beierschmitt, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's associate lab director for neutron sciences, the signals were virtually the same as last month when an end-of-life condition was detected, prompting the subsequent changeout of the stainless-steel vessel.
Before changing another target vessel (which cost about $1 million apiece) Beierschmitt said today the SNS team wants to take a close look and try to better understand what's going on before proceeding.
"These are too expensive to just throw away," he said. "We need to understand this . . . We're looking for a smoking gun."
Beierschmitt said officials hope to determine if there actually was a condition that caused the earlier vessel to fail prematurely and -- if so -- what was the cause of that failure. He said today the team had not yet identified failure-type damage in the vessel that was removed from the Target Facility last month.
September
SNS researchers overcome the freezing sample problem in biostudies
R&D Magazine 9/13
Researchers at the Spallation Neutron Source BASIS beam line at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have successfully developed a method to study biomolecules (proteins) at temperatures far below freezing using a lithium chloride preparation in the aqueous solvent that prevents freezing.
Studying biosamples at supercold temperatures—200 K—was previously impossible, as the water in such a solution inevitably freezes, and with it, the biosample's dynamic interactions freeze, too. The ability to study proteins at these temperatures gives researchers an important new avenue for understanding how they function in living organisms.
Lab Breakthrough: Neutron Science for the Fusion Mission
Azosensors.com 9/10
Researchers can effectively adopt the Neutron-Sensitive Anger Camera to analyze a wide range of crystalline structures and for carrying out major researches in materials science, biology, geology, earth science, and condensed matter physics.
According to Yacouba Diawara of ORNL, focused on DOE's Spallation Neutron Source, this ORNL detector system resolves the time and position of the neutrons being captured, wherein highly accurate neutron time-of-flight measurements can be achieved.
The detector features high timing and position resolution, increased efficiency, and low background noise, all economically packed within a single design that supports biological, medical, and general scientific research.
The ORNL research team honed an existing technology ‘Anger Camera’ which got its name from its inventor, Hal Oscar Anger. The upgrade included improvement in the detector's capability to view the atomic structure of crystals, like those having protein macromolecules.
August
Lab Breakthrough: Neutron Science for the Fusion Mission
AOL Government 8/15
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist Robert McGreevy explains the accelerator's role in the complex, seven-country consortium to develop an experimental fusion reactor. Fusion power technology is tricky, though with Oak Ridge's help the international team anticipates the first commercial fusion energy reactor to be online by 2050
June
Peering into protein dynamics
R&D Magazine 6/28
Two post doctoral researchers and a doctoral student donned safety glasses and put their arms into a high purity, inert atmosphere glove box recently, to prepare protein samples for neutron scattering on the Cold Neutron Chopper Spectrometer (CNCS) at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The young collaborators were working in the SNS chemistry laboratory for Alexei Sokolov, who holds a joint University of Tennessee (UT)-ORNL Governor's Chair appointment in biophysics.
"This is work to understand protein dynamics," said Jonathan Nickels, a postdoctoral student of Sokolov's at UT. "Anyone can look up the structure of a protein online now, there are so many databases. But that's just a freeze frame shot of the structure.
"Clearly structure and function are linked but there is a lot of missing depth to this picture. We need to know more about how these things move," he said.
Physics professor receives early career research award from Department of Energy
The Lane Report 6/26
Christopher Crawford, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy [University of Kentucky], recently received a prestigious five-year, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2012 Early Career Research Program.
The program supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and stimulates research careers in the disciplines supported by the DOE Office of Science. Crawford’s award will allow him to study the forces that hold the atomic nucleus together and that cause nuclear decays. The program supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and stimulates research careers in the disciplines supported by the DOE Office of Science. Crawford’s award will allow him to study the forces that hold the atomic nucleus together and that cause nuclear decays.
Crawford will conduct his experiments at the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
May
New research instrument at SNS
Knoxville News Sentinel 5/30
A new research instrument, the Hybrid Spectrometer (HYPSPEC), is online at the Spallation Neutron Source (at Beam Line 14-B) and being commissioned for experimental use.
According to information released by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the new instrument "combines the time-of-flight technique used at pulsed sources such as SNS with the advantages of crystal spectrometers that use continuous neutrons.
ORNL spokesman Bill Cabage said HYSPEC was developed by a team that included participation from top U.S. universities, as well as national labs and an international user group.
"HYSPEC is a new concept in high-flux inelastic neutron spectrometry," he said. Cabage said HYSPEC is the first polarized beam spectrometer among the SNS research instruments. A dozen instruments have already been commissioned at the SNS, which sits atop Chestnut Ridge about a mile from the main ORNL campus, and HYSPEC and another newcomer, TOPAZ, a single crystal diffractometer, are being commissioned for experimental use.
'Where atoms are, and what they do'
PhysOrg 5/24
New research from the University of Southampton has devised a new method to more accurately measure gas bubbles in pipelines. A 100-million-year old fossil from Antarctica's tropical age, revealed by neutron imaging, fascinated participants at the "Neutron Scattering for Novices" workshop at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), held May 16.
Robert McGreevy, ORNL's deputy associate lab director for Neutron Sciences showed the geological sample as an example of what advanced neutron techniques can do -- in this case, nondestructively see what's inside an ancient fossil.
The workshop, organized by the University of Tennessee-ORNL Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences (JINS), introduced neutron scattering techniques to scientists who have little or no experience with neutrons in research. Kelly Beierschmitt, associate laboratory director for Neutron Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, invited faculty members, research scientists, and postdocs, as well as senior Ph.D. students, to become neutron users at facilities such as the SNS and the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at ORNL.
The use of acoustic inversion to estimate the bubble size distribution in pipelines
EurekAlert 5/15
New research from the University of Southampton has devised a new method to more accurately measure gas bubbles in pipelines. The ability to measure gas bubbles in pipelines is vital to the manufacturing, power and petrochemical industries. In the case of harvesting petrochemicals from the seabed, warning of bubbles present in the crude that is being harvested is crucial because otherwise when these bubbles are brought up from the seabed (where pressure is very high) to the surface where the rig is, the reduction in pressure causes these bubbles to expand and causes 'blow out'. A blow out is the sudden release of oil and/or gas from a well and issues with the blow out preventer were key in Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also known as the Macondo blowout) in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Now, a team led by Professor Tim Leighton from the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton, has devised a new method, which takes into account that bubbles exist in a pipe. Professor Leighton and his team (Post-doctoral research fellows Kyungmin Baik and Jian Jiang) were commissioned to undertake the work as part of an ongoing programme to devise ways of more accurately estimating the BSD for the mercury-filled steel pipelines of the target test facility (TTF) of the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, USA one of the most powerful pulsed neutron sources in the world
ORNL's Mook Wins Onnes Prize for Superconductivity Research
Newswise 5/14
Herbert A. Mook Jr., a UT-Battelle Senior Corporate Fellow at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has won the 2012 H. Kamerlingh Onnes Prize, awarded for outstanding experiments in the study of superconductivity.
Mook was cited "for several decades of important neutron spectroscopy and diffraction experiments on superconductors, especially those with magnetic tendencies."
The Onnes Prize, named after the winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of superconductivity and related research, is awarded every three years for outstanding experiments in superconductivity, or the absence of electrical resistance in certain materials at extremely cold, typically near absolute zero, temperatures.
Mook began his distinguished career in 1965 at ORNL, where he has expanded his neutron scattering research to investigate the interaction of magnetism and superconductivity. Among Mook's diverse range of experiments utilizing neutron analysis, he and collaborators have studied the nature of the magnetic structure and fluctuations in high-temperature superconductors using ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor.
Mook served as the first scientific director of the Spallation Neutron Source from 1995 to 2000 and the director of the Center for Neutron Science from 2000 to 2004. He has twice received the DOE Award for Outstanding Scientific Accomplishments in Solid State Physics, in 1982 and 1998.
Neutron scattering charts moves of memory-shape alloys that change structure in response to environmental cues
PhysOrg.com 5/9
Shape-memory alloys (SMAs) are an engineer's dream, able to shape-shift spontaneously to accommodate changing operating conditions. A research team from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the University of Central Florida is studying the internal mechanisms of these real-life "Transformers" at the Spallation Neutron Source at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with an eye toward increasing their use in everyday scenarios.
The shape-memory alloy research is funded by NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program. The SNS is a user facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory sponsored by the Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Scientific User Facilities Division in the Office of Science.
ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor may be last reactor to convert to low-enriched fuel
Knoxville News Sentinel 5/8
One of the nonproliferation goals of the Obama administration is to eliminate the use of highly enriched uranium in research reactors around the globe, providing assistance to convert these reactors to use low-enriched uranium (less than 20 percent U-235) and helping supply the fuel as needed. It's a way of reducing the threat of weapons-making materials falling into the hands of terrorists or others with nuclear weapon ambitions.
This initiative, of course, has been on the U.S. agenda well before the current administration, but it's been getting additional emphasis post-Prague, with the removal of HEU from Mexico being one of the latest examples. Although converting these research reactors is a stated priority, the schedule for getting it done is slipping in some cases. One of those cases is at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the High Flux Isotope Reactor uses highly enriched uranium (greater than 90 percent U-235) and will, according to the latest info from ORNL, continue to use HEU until February 2020. That's the new date for conversion.
The new date is considerably later than the previous conversion date for HFIR, which was September 2016. And the previous date was considerably later than its predecessor conversion date, which was in 2014. So you can see thetrend. ORNL officials have said developing a fuel for high-performance reactors such as HFIR has been a challenge, to say the least. Money apparently has been a factor, too.
April
Neutron scattering unlocks milk protein
R&D Magazine 4/4
Martha, a cow placidly grazing in a field in The Netherlands, became an important collaborator with researchers who successfully analyzed and characterized the internal protein structure and the composite particles of her milk using small-angle neutron scattering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR).
Researchers have long struggled with the challenge of unraveling the internal structure of this protein. An international collaboration was formed among University of Utrecht researchers C. G. (Kees) de Kruif and Andrei Petukhov; Volker Urban, an instrument scientist at HFIR; and Thom Huppertz from NIZO, a Dutch independent contract research company that helps food and ingredient companies improve the quality and profitability of their products.
The researchers used the HFIR's general purpose small-angle neutron scattering instrument (GP-SANS) to study samples of milk from Martha, a cow on the de Kruif family's farm. They compared the neutron scattering data with various theoretical models of casein structure that have been proposed in the literature. The results showed that one model prevails: The casein micelle proteins are composed of a protein matrix in which calcium phosphate nanoclusters (about 300 per casein micelle) are dispersed.
March
$20M plutonium project at ORNL to support space program
Knoxville News Sentinel 3/30
Over the next two years, Oak Ridge National Laboratory will carry out a $20 million pilot project to demonstrate the lab's ability to produce and process plutonium-238 for use in the space program.
Tim Powers, director of ORNL's Non-Reactor Nuclear Facilities Division, said the technology demonstration will include development of neptunium-237 targets that will then be introduced into the High Flux Isotope Reactor to produce small amounts of Pu-238. Later, workers will remove the targets from the reactor core and process the radioactive materials in hot cells at the lab's Radiochemical Engineering Development Center, separating the Pu-238 from the neptunium and purifying the plutonium.
Powers said the ORNL program will support the U.S. Department of Energy's plan to eventually produce 1½ to 2 kilograms of Pu-238 per year, using existing infrastructure within the DOE complex. For years, the U.S. has relied on purchases from Russia to supplement the inventory of the radioisotope for the space power program. There have been multiple proposals to re-establish a U.S.-based production program, none of which took hold.
According to Powers, very small amounts of neptunium will be introduced into the High Flux Isotope Reactor in the early stages of the demonstration project. Over time, some of the targets will be withdrawn for evaluation, while others will be left in the reactor core for longer irradiation periods, he said.
Spallation Neutron Source puts the squeeze on methane hydrate cages
PhysOrg.com 3/15
Our robot would find this energy source in shale deposits, notably here on the east coast of the United States. However, the most abundant deposits of natural gas are under water on the continental shelves and in the permafrost in the Arctic region. At both poles, methane mixes with water and freezes, remaining trapped as an ice-like compound, for millions of years.
Much further afield, methane, along with water and ammonia, are major constituents of Saturn's icy moon Titan. Some scientists speculate that on Titan there is a methanological cycle similar to the hydrological cycle here on earth. Surface methane evaporates into the atmosphere, where it condenses, and rains down to the surface again. NASA's Cassini-Huygens Titan probe has been there and sampled it.
Methane holds promise as an abundant energy source for tomorrow, but it is Janus-faced: While often referred to as the cleanest fossil fuel producing far less greenhouse gas than either coal or oil, historically it has been seen as a major source of environmental pollution. That's because burning it produces carbon dioxide, a very potent greenhouse gas.
Scientists are looking at how to sequester that CO2 byproduct, in an ice-like state. Such a strategy would create a carbon 'energy cycle' in which the methane resource is recovered, used, and then the greenhouse gas sequestered in a form very closely related to the naturally occuring initial materials.
"What we do know right now is that when methane is taken up and released into the environment, water plays a critical role", said Chris Tulk, lead instrument scientist on the Spallation Neutrons and Pressure Diffractometer (SNAP) at ORNL. "Whether it is in the oceans where hydrates form on continental shelves, in the icy permafrost conditions, or even as these materials decompose and release the methane into the atmosphere to contribute to the greenhouse effect, water is certainly involved in the process. This research should lead to better models of how hydrocarbons are taken up and released in the environment."
February
New research instrument at SNS; called 'vibrational spectrometer'
Knoxville News Sentinel 2/22
Another new research instrument is being commissioned at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Lab. According to information released by ORNL, the instrument is called a "vibrational spectrometer" or VISION. It's located on beam line 16b and reportedly received its first stream of neutrons last week.
The material research instrument is "optimized to characterize molecular vibrations in a wide range of crystalline and diordered materials over a broad energy range, while simultaneously recording structural changes . . . " It apparently has multiple advantages over similar spectrometers that are currently available.
ORNL said there are currently 13 instruments available for experiments at the SNS, with another three -- including VISION -- coming online in the near term. VISION is one of the research instruments sponsored by the Dept. of Energy's Office of Science. It will be used for studiies in nanotechnology, catalysis, biochemistry, geochemistry, and "soft-matter science," the lab said.
Christoph Wildgruber is the instrument scientist, Malcolm Cochran is scientific associate and John Larese is principal investigator, ORNL said. In photo, inserted above, that's Cochran on the left and Wildgruber on the right. They're flipping the switch for the beam line (16b).
ORNL hopes to win advanced batteries research project
Knoxville News Sentinel 2/15
Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been highly successful in recent years by winning scientific competitions, and the lab has its sights set on another big prize: a five-year, $120 million project to focus research on advanced batteries and electrical energy storage.
ORNL Director Thom Mason confirmed the lab plans to compete for the fourth in a series of so-called Energy Innovation Hubs sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. The lab earlier headed a multi-institutional team that won a hub for nuclear energy, which resulted in the ORNL-based Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL).
DOE announced the upcoming "funding opportunity" to alert interested parties of the competition on advanced batteries. The federal agency said it hopes the five-year research effort will develop "revolutionary" technologies to advance energy storage and batteries for transportation and energy grid purposes.
DOE is encouraging national labs and universities, as well as private companies and nonprofits, to form teams to compete for the Hub. The letters of intent to apply are due by March 1, with applications due May 31.
Mason said the Oak Ridge lab is well prepared for such a venture. "'It's definitely in one of our sweet spots, in terms of novel materials and applying them to energy innovation," Mason said. He noted the lab has the people and the research facilities — such as the Spallation Neutron Source, the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences and the Advanced Microscopy Laboratory — to support that work.
The director said the lab has scientists already engaged in related activities and has "mature" collaborations with other institutions (and potential partners for a Hub proposal) on battery and electrical energy storage projects.
ORNL Director Mason talks about the future of the High Flux Isotope Reactor
Knoxville News Sentinel 2/5
Last week, I talked to Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason and asked him about the status of the High Flux Isotope Reactor, which was shut down last month -- unplanned -- because of an electrical problem.
Mason noted that the HFIR had experienced an unusual run of reliability in recent years in the range of 99 percent, adding, "Sooner or later, I guess, the law of averages bring you home." On a couple of occasions in recent months, I'd asked Mason about reports that the ORNL research reactor was under the gun from budget pressures and he elaborated on that. ''Everything, I mean, is under pressure from a funding point of view," he said. "We'll see what happens when the President's budget comes out (for Fiscal Year 2013). I think, based on past experience, what we've seen is that most of the areas we're in -- and that would certainly include the neutron facilities and materials and so on -- are a pretty high priority. So, we may get squeezed, but I'm not anticipating (any shutdown-type numbers)."Searching for a solid that flows like a liquid
PhysOrg.com 2/3
"The goal of our experiments is to find this new quantum state of supersolidity. This is a challenge for theory as well as experiment," says principal investigator Hans Lauter of ORNL. "The superfluid transition we have observed in solid helium may lead to supersolid helium as a new quantum state."
Whether there's such a thing as supersolidity isn't an issue apt to cause much of a stir outside the physics community. But in the world of condensed matter physics, discovering a new quantum state would be like sighting a new species would be for a biologist, or a new star for an astronomer.January
Texas congressman Ralph Hall visits ORNL
Knoxville News Sentinel 1/11
U.S. Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and the oldest member in Congress, was in town Tuesday for his first tour of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Hall was accompanied by U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., who welcomed the Texas congressman during a pre-tour meeting with the news media and called ORNL a "critically important" research institution. "I'm a little sick of hearing of Oak Ridge," Hall joked to his host. "I want to find out if all those things you say are true."
Hall was scheduled to visit the High Flux Isotope Reactor and other ORNL facilities, including the National Center for Computational Sciences, which houses some of the world's fastest supercomputers.
