Spectroscopy
Los Alamos Science Sleuth on the Trail of a Martian Mystery
March 19, 2013 6:22 pm | News | CommentsWhen it comes to examining the surface of rocks on Mars with a high-powered laser, five is a magic number for LANL postdoctoral researcher Nina Lanza. Lanza described how the laser-shooting ChemCam instrument aboard the Curiosity rover currently searching the surface of Mars for signs of habitability has shown what appears to be a common feature on the surface of some very different Martian rocks.
Pittcon 2013 Exposition Highlights
March 13, 2013 11:58 am | News | CommentsPittcon 2013, The Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy Exposition, takes place March 17-21, 2013, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA. It will include 1,011 exhibitors (count as of March 1, 2013) displaying products and services used by the scientific community in industrial, academic, and government labs.
New Spectroscopy Method Could Lead to Better Optical Devices
March 5, 2013 11:23 am | News | CommentsA multi-university research team has used a new spectroscopic method to gain a key insight into how light is emitted from layered nanomaterials and other thin films. The technique, called energy-momentum spectroscopy, enables researchers to look at the light emerging from a thin film and determine whether it is coming from emitters oriented along the plane of the film or from emitters oriented perpendicular to the film.
NASA Goddard Lab Works at Extreme Edge of Cosmic Ice
March 4, 2013 5:36 pm | News | CommentsBehind locked doors, in a lab built like a bomb shelter, Perry Gerakines makes something ordinary yet truly alien: ice. This isn't the ice of snowflakes or ice cubes. No, this ice needs such intense cold and low pressure to form that the right conditions rarely, if ever, occur naturally on Earth. And when Gerakines makes the ice, he must keep the layer so microscopically thin it is dwarfed by a...
Water on the Moon: It’s been There all Along
February 27, 2013 11:55 am | News | CommentsResearchers have detected significant amounts of water in the samples of the lunar highland upper crust obtained during the Apollo missions. The lunar highlands are thought to represent the original crust, crystallized from a mostly molten early Moon that is called the lunar magma ocean
Scientists Unravel Mysteries of Spider Silk
February 1, 2013 3:59 am | News | CommentsScientists are celebrating their recent success on the path to understanding what makes the fiber that spiders spin — weight for weight — at least five times as strong as piano wire. They have found a way to obtain a wide variety of elastic properties of the silk of several intact spiders’ webs using a sophisticated but non-invasive laser light scattering technique
Two PNNL researchers named American Physical Society Fellows
December 13, 2012 1:11 pm | News | CommentsTwo scientists from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have been named Fellows of the American Physical Society. Wayne Hess and Hongfei Wang were recognized for their "exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise." APS fellows are nominated...
Airborne Scientists Search Distant Stars for Complex Organic Molecules
December 10, 2012 1:10 pm | News | Comments12/10/12 - A team of astrobiology researchers — including two from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute — will use a series of nighttime flights on an airborne observatory to search newly born stars for the presence of precursors to life.
Four PNNL scientists elected AAAS fellows
November 29, 2012 9:10 pm | News | CommentsFour Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for their efforts to advance science or its applications. The PNNL honorees and the AAAS sections that elected them are: Nigel Browning,...
Solar Wind Particles Likely Source of Water Locked Inside Lunar Soils
October 31, 2012 8:52 am | News | CommentsThe most likely source of the water locked inside soils on the moon's surface is the constant stream of charged particles from the sun known as the solar wind, a University of Michigan researcher and his colleagues have concluded
Green Laser Pointer Identifies Traces of Dangerous Chemicals in Real-Time
October 18, 2012 11:20 am | News | CommentsBy using an ordinary green laser pointer, the kind commonly found in offices and college lecture halls, an Israeli research team has developed a new and highly portable Raman spectrometer that can detect extremely minute traces of hazardous chemicals in real time
ORNL study confirms magnetic properties of silicon nano-ribbons
October 17, 2012 2:10 pm | News | CommentsNano-ribbons of silicon configured so the atoms resemble chicken wire could hold the key to ultrahigh density data storage and information processing systems of the future.
First Images of Landau Levels Revealed
October 10, 2012 6:15 am | News | CommentsPhysicists have directly imaged Landau Levels — the quantum levels that determine electron behavior in a strong magnetic field — for the first time since they were theoretically conceived of by Nobel prize winner Lev Landau in 1930
Laser helps Scientists See Smallest World
September 26, 2012 7:33 am | News | CommentsResearchers have employed a high-powered laser to dramatically improve one of the tools scientists use to study the world at the atomic level, using an amped-up electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometer to study the electron spin of free radicals and nitrogen atoms trapped inside a diamond
ORNL research uncovers path to defect-free thin films
September 20, 2012 2:11 pm | News | CommentsA team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Ho Nyung Lee has discovered a strain relaxation phenomenon in cobaltites that has eluded researchers for decades and may lead to advances in fuel cells, magnetic sensors and a host of energy-related materials.
Chemists Develop Reversible Method of Tagging Proteins
September 18, 2012 9:37 am | News | CommentsChemists have developed a method that for the first time provides scientists the ability to attach chemical probes onto proteins and subsequently remove them in a repeatable cycle. Their achievement will allow researchers to better understand the biochemistry of naturally formed proteins in order to create better antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs, biofuels, food crops and other natural products
Laser Discoverer Charles Townes to Receive First Golden Goose Award
September 13, 2012 11:53 am | News | CommentsNearly 60 years ago, when the U.S. Navy funded Charles Townes’ work to develop an intense source of short-wavelength radiation, it was unclear what impact this would have outside Townes’ rather arcane study of atoms and molecules. The impact is very clear today. Thanks to that federal funding, Townes built the first maser — a device that amplified microwaves into an intense, coherent beam — and designed its more practical and now ubiquitous successor, the laser
Interfaces are key in metal oxide superlattices
September 4, 2012 2:10 pm | News | CommentsResearchers have gained the first insights into quantum interactions in transition metal oxide superlattices.
Dancing the Time Warp in the Quantum World
July 25, 2012 8:07 am | News | CommentsImagine dancing in a nightclub — and it’s your movements that are controlling not only the sound but also a range of stunning, bright visual effects surrounding you. This is the experience that a groundbreaking interactive experiment will be giving dancers
New Fuel Cell Keeps Going after Hydrogen Runs Out
July 12, 2012 11:41 am | News | CommentsImagine a kerosene lamp that continued to shine after the fuel was spent, or an electric stove that could remain hot during a power outage. Materials scientists at Harvard have demonstrated an equivalent feat in clean energy generation with a solid-oxide fuel cell
Rensselaer Scientists Unlock Some Key Secrets of Photosynthesis
July 2, 2012 10:10 pm | News | Comments07/02/12 - New research led by chemists in the Baruch ’60 Center for Biochemical Solar Energy Research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is seeking to detail the individual steps of highly efficient reactions that convert sunlight into chemical energy within plants and bacteria.
Lamborghini Microscope Sports James Bond Features
June 13, 2012 7:48 am | News | CommentsPaul Kotula recently told a colleague that Sandia’s new aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (AC-STEM) was like a Lamborghini with James Bond features
Small worlds come into focus with new Sandia microscope
June 11, 2012 6:10 am | News | CommentsALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Paul Kotula recently told a colleague that Sandia’s new aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (AC-STEM) was like a Lamborghini with James Bond features. The $3.2 million FEI Titan G2 8200 is 50 to 100 times better than what came before, both...
Thousands of Invisibility Cloaks Trap Rainbow
May 25, 2012 6:54 am | News | CommentsMany people anticipating the creation of an invisibility cloak might be surprised to learn that a group of American researchers has created 25,000 individual cloaks
Crime Scene: Black Hole Caught Red-Handed in a Stellar Homicide
May 9, 2012 8:14 am | News | CommentsAstronomers have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close
