http://science.energy.gov/np/highlights/The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, providing more than 40 percent of total funding for this vital area of national importance. It oversees - and is the principal federal funding agency of - the Nation's research programs in high-energy physics, nuclear physics, and fusion energy sciences.en{093F52C4-AC9E-4AA7-9E08-68A03F1080C1}http://science.energy.gov/np/highlights/2012/np-2012-10-a/<img src='/~/media/np/images/highlights/2012/10/hall-b-thumb.jpg' align='left' style='height:75px;width:135px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px;'/>Discovery could provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the three quarks enslaved inside the nucleon.Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:45:58 -0500 <p>Modern experiments using electron beams at TJNAF and the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) detector address a precise question: how do the fundamental constituent particles of the Standard Model (quarks, antiquarks and gluons) assemble to form the composite “strongly interacting” particles observed in nature? Experimenters at TJNAF recently discovered five strongly-interacting unstable particles of a type known as “N* baryon resonances.” These composite particles, which are dominantly composed of three quarks, were predicted to exist in supercomputer studies of the theory of quarks and gluons, “Quantum Chromodynamics,” as well as by the original quark model of baryons. Since these predicted “missing resonances” had long eluded discovery, a conjecture arose that the presence of diquarks - a hypothetical strong pairing of two of the three quarks inside a baryon - might actually preclude their existence. The advanced experimental capability provided by the CLAS detector resolved the issue by finding some of these previously missing N* resonances; the crucial breakthrough was to search for the missing N*s in unusual decays that produced strange quarks. Since the previously “missing” N*s evidently do exist, this discovery eliminated the diquark conjecture regarding why these particular strongly-interacting composite particles were absent. The new particles discovered by CLAS have now been included in the Particle Data Group’s definitive 2012 Review of Particle Properties.</p> {D995B4A4-86BD-41FD-A5FE-1ED7261B7B33}http://science.energy.gov/np/highlights/2012/np-2012-10-b/<img src='/~/media/np/images/highlights/2012/10/lu-thumb.jpg' align='left' style='height:75px;width:135px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px;'/>Precision analytical techniques developed for fundamental experiments in nuclear physics now enable routine measurements of ultra-low concentrations of Krypton radioisotopes in samples of water, ice, and gas.Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:45:59 -0500 <p>A state-of-the-art Atom Trap Trace Analysis (ATTA) instrument has been developed by a team of physicists working at Argonne National Laboratory working in collaboration with Earth scientists and other supporting agencies in the U.S. and worldwide. The ages of groundwater, ranging from 200,000 to 1,000,000 years old, in the Nubian Aquifer underneath the Eastern Sahara Desert, the Great Artesian Basin of Australia, and the Guarani Aquifer of South America have been measured. These results reveal hydrologic behavior of huge aquifers, with important implications for climate history and water resource management. Application of rare isotope ^81,85Kr-, ³⁹Ar-dating using ATTA in other areas of Earth sciences now appears feasible.  The radioisotope 85Kr is routinely measured as a residence-time tracer for young (&lt;60 years) shallow groundwaters that are most susceptible to contamination. When combined with other tracers, ⁸⁵Kr measurements will improve the quality and reliability of groundwater flow and vulnerability assessments. A systematic survey of ³⁹Ar throughout the oceans could fill major gaps in our knowledge of deep ocean circulation and mixing, and allow better predictions of oceanic sequestration of atmospheric CO2.  Polar ice cores have been used to reconstruct Earth’s past climate and atmospheric composition as far back as 800,000 years in time. ⁸¹Kr could potentially be used for dating of old ice with ages ranging from 100,000 – 1,500,000 years.  In volcanic and geothermal systems, the analysis of crustal fluid samples for noble radionuclides ³⁹Ar, ⁸¹Kr, and ⁸⁵Kr could provide information on the origin, evolution, and migration of crustal fluids.</p> {5DB681AE-F466-4520-909F-89DB8ADBA6D3}http://science.energy.gov/np/highlights/2012/np-2012-10-c/<img src='/~/media/np/images/highlights/2012/10/nasa-chamber-a-thumb.jpg' align='left' style='height:75px;width:135px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px;'/>Thomas Jefferson Laboratory lends expertise in cryogenics developments.Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:26:48 -0400 <p>As the U.S. sweated through its warmest summer on record outside, an enormous testing chamber at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston reached its coldest temperatures yet on the inside, cooled by one of the world's most efficient cryogenic refrigeration systems. “Chamber A” is mammoth, having a hinged door over 12 meters in diameter, a height of over 36 meters, and a diameter of almost 20 meters. Designed by members of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Jefferson Lab's Cryogenics group in Newport News, VA, the system reached its target temperature of 20 Kelvin, about -424 degrees F, for the first time in May and again during commissioning tests in late August. It reached its target temperature in just over a day and maintains a steady temperature with less than a tenth of a degree in variation over a load temperature range of 16 to 330 Kelvin, all with no loss of helium and using half the liquid nitrogen than comparable systems. But what is even more remarkable is its ability to maintain design efficiency down to a third of its maximum load. &quot;The range of load temperature and capacity while maintaining peak efficiency and temperature stability is unprecedented,&quot; said Venkatarao (Rao) Ganni, deputy Cryogenics Department head at Jefferson Lab, and a key member of the system design team. The successful cool down is great news for NASA, which will use the Space Environment Simulation Lab Chamber A to subject components of the James Webb Space Telescope to the rugged conditions it will encounter in space when it is launched in 2018. The Jefferson Lab cryogenics group has pioneered new technologies that led to improvements in the efficiencies of the laboratories' cryogenics systems, applying the concepts of its patented Floating Pressure (known as the Ganni Cycle) and other improvements to reduce the cost and improve the efficiency and stability of cryogenics operations.</p> {D22228B8-E380-443C-8C9F-1A5C90F59B34}http://science.energy.gov/np/highlights/2012/np-2012-07-a/<img src='/~/media/np/images/highlights/2012/07/acctinium-225-in-2-v-vials-thumb.jpg' align='left' style='height:75px;width:135px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px;'/>High yield production of Ac-225 and Ra-223 by high energy proton bombardment of natural thorium targets.Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:46:54 -0500 <p>Ac-225 is a rare but medically-prized radioactive isotope, since it has the ability to precisely destroy cancerous cells without damaging healthy surrounding cells. It also has a short half-life, which means it ceases to be radioactive after a short period of time. However, production of the isotope has been costly and meager, too meager to support essential clinical trials of medicines based on the isotope. Those shortages of Ac-225 could be significantly lessened by this research. Using proton beams, lab researchers demonstrated that the current annual supply of Ac-225 can be produced in less than a week. Beyond their expected use in treating common cancers, new medicines made with Ac-225 are likely to be especially effective at treating diffuse cancers, which have spread through healthy tissue instead of staying concentrated in a single tumor. Diffuse cancers are among the most difficult to treat, and in many cases are considered untreatable. A collaborative project among Los Alamos, Brookhaven, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories is underway to develop production scale targetry and chemical processing as continuation of this research.</p> {E51F3176-915C-41B1-A404-1AEB2F94CF2E}http://science.energy.gov/np/highlights/2012/np-2012-06-a/<img src='/~/media/np/images/highlights/2012/06/fig1-thumb.jpg' align='left' style='height:75px;width:135px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px;'/>New calculations have quantified the boundaries and uncertainties of the ‘chart of the nuclides’—the extended periodic table of all matter.Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:45:56 -0500 <p>There are 288 stable or nearly stable nuclei that occur in nature, comprising 99.9 percent of the matter in the visible world around us. Some 3,000 more have been synthesized in laboratories. These nuclear species have been mapped onto a chart of nuclides—the periodic table of the nuclear physics world. Until recently, the boundaries marking the edge of where nuclei can exist in this nuclear landscape—where the addition of one more proton or one more neutron will cause the nucleus to fall apart—has been highly uncertain, especially for heavier elements. Research using a technique known as nuclear density functional theory carried out at the University of Tennessee and ORNL using one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers now predicts that the number of bound nuclides with atomic numbers between 2 and 120 is around 7,000. These findings represent a major advance in our understanding of nuclear stability, and where the ultimate limits of nuclear existence occur. Understanding the stability of nuclides is important to many applications and to natural phenomena such as the stellar processes that create the matter around us.</p> {D20FD8B4-7162-4BB6-82AE-DDDC4590EEC5}http://science.energy.gov/np/highlights/2011/np-2011-04-a/<img src='/~/media/np/images/highlights/2011/04/dunlop-thumb.jpg' align='left' style='height:75px;width:135px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px;'/>Observation of these particles in cosmic rays with space based detectors would imply large amounts of anti-matter somewhere in the universe.Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:45:55 -0500 <p>The world we live in is made of what we call “matter,” and our current understanding of physics tells us that when matter is produced an equal amount of “antimatter” should be produced. Observations of gold ions colliding at very high energies at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in fact show that particles are produced as matter-antimatter pairs. The STAR detector at this facility has observed the heaviest anti-nucleus ever found: anti-helium, also known as the anti-alpha particle. Finding these anti-alphas among many hundreds of particles produced in each collision was exceptionally difficult, as they are produced very rarely at the rate of only 18 being found in over 1 billion collisions of gold nuclei. This low yield of anti-alpha particles is explained well by a hypothesis where anti-neutrons and anti-protons produced in the collision of two gold nuclei are by chance close enough to combine to form the anti-alpha particle. The relatively small number of anti-alphas produced in such collisions implies that if they are observed in cosmic rays with detectors like the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer attached to the International Space Station, the result would imply large quantities of anti-matter, such as an anti-star, somewhere in the universe.</p>