SCIENCE: How U.S. nuclear testing moratorium launched a supercomputing revolution
Thirty years ago, Sept. 23, 1992, the United States conducted its 1,054th—and last—nuclear weapons test. No longer testing nuclear weapons ushered in a revolution in high-performance computing that has wide-ranging impacts on national and global security that few are aware of. The need to maintain our nuclear weapons in the absence of testing drove an unprecedented requirement for increased scientific computing power. Read the full article here. Courtesy/LANL
LANL News:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) shares a compilation of news stories for the week of Sept. 26, 2022.
SCIENCE: We proved Schrödinger wrong about color perception
A project to improve data visualization ended up overturning a century-old model of color space that underpins industry standards for color everywhere from digital displays to paint. Read the full article here. Courtesy/LANL
SCIENCE: Observations confirm model of sea-level change from Greenland melt
Rising sea levels from melting glaciers and ice sheets pose an increasing threat to coastal communities worldwide. A new analysis of high-resolution satellite observations takes a major step forward in assessing this risk by confirming theoretical predictions and computational models of sea-level changes used to forecast climate-change-driven impacts. Read the full article here. Courtesy/LANL
SCIENCE: Curiosity still making new finds with Los Alamos tech
ChemCam has helped make a number of discoveries that have fundamentally changed how we understand Mars. One of the earliest discoveries ChemCam helped make was the detection of hydrogen in Martian soil and dust that covers most of the surface of Mars, which indicates that water leftover from its ancient past lakes and river still clings to these tiny particles. Read full article here. Courtesy/LANL
People: Raised on a New Mexico ranch, teamwork still a priority for LANL employee
From a young age, Los Alamos National Laboratory employee Loretta Ortega picked up the meaning of hard work, discipline and respect as she helped her father and siblings on their ranch with everything from feeding animals and tractor work to helping with equipment maintenance. Her father never differentiated between the boys or girls in her family. In his eyes, they were all capable of doing everything on the ranch. Read the full article here. Courtesy/LANL