#ThrowbackThursday to 1953, when our particle collider was called the Cosmotron, and buttons and gauges were all the rage.
Way back in 1872, the mid-stride motion of a galloping horse remained a mystery. Did all four hooves leave the ground? And if so, when? The human eye was incapable of pinpointing the action, so people turned to what was then the cutting edge in photon-based technology: the photograph. Eadweard Muybridge tackled the puzzle, pioneering techniques to produce brief and powerful bursts of light. Muybridge found a way to capture the horse at each moment of its stride—as seen in the GIF above—and instantly transformed both photography and the science of motion. Now, scientists are casting light on even fleeter feet: quantum waves. "Muybridge needed a photon source and detection source with unprecedented speed, so he pushed the limits of the technology," said Brookhaven physicist Yue Cao. "His puzzle happened to be about a half of a millisecond, while we're looking at things about a billion times faster, but the principle of using light to produce a revelatory snapshot is the same."
Cao and his collaborators developed a new x-ray technique that reveals never-before-seen, trillionth-of-a-second magnetic fluctuations that transform the electronic and magnetic properties of materials. They used synchronized infrared and x-ray laser pulses to simultaneously manipulate and reveal the ultra-fast magnetic properties of this promising quantum landscape. The rapid, light-driven switching between magnetic states, which they explored with unprecedented precision, could one day revolutionize the reading and writing of data in computers and other digital devices.
“Ch-ch-ch-changes...”
It might not be exactly what Bowie was singing about, but it comes to mind while watching this video. What you’re looking at are the nanoscale changes inside a battery material while it charges.
We start with pure magnetite. Next, lithium ions first diffuse into the surface of the nanoparticle and then proceed inward, creating lithiated rock salt, and finally a composite of metallic iron and lithium oxide. It’s easier to see in false color:
The red is the magnetite, the blue is the rock salt, and the green is the composite metal.
Given the laws of thermodynamics, the reactions behind these changes should happen at different voltages because of differences in their natural chemistry. The observed overlap between the two reactions suggests that the kinetic effect, or how charge or discharge currents impact the amount of energy that can be stored within a battery, plays an important role in lithiation -- the electrochemical process behind the power of a battery.
These reactions are happening on extremely small scales and at extremely fast rates. Brookhaven scientists used powerful microscopes at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials and the bright x-rays at the National Synchrotron Light Source II to explore these tiny realms.
What does science at the South Pole look like? Vast expanses of white and stunning views of the Aurora.
These photos were taken on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, where Brookhaven scientists are collaborating on a project to study the climate, and the ways clouds and aerosols impact it. The project, called the ARM West Antarctic Radiation Experiment (AWARE), will lead to a better understanding of how much of the sun’s light and the atmosphere’s heat radiation reach the Antarctic surface—variables that affect temperature patterns and ice melt throughout the region.
In one of the most remote science stations on Earth, Brookhaven scientists have contributed instruments that use radar to scan clouds and measure how much of the sun’s light and the atmosphere’s heat radiation reach the Antarctic surface.
“We will be analyzing what physical processes are going on for a better understanding of the factors that are governing the surface energy balance in Antarctica,” said Andrew Vogelmann, an atmospheric scientist in the Environmental and Climate Sciences Department at Brookhaven Lab. “This improved understanding can ultimately be used to understand why the Antarctic is warming the way it is.”
Not only are we, as Carl Sagan said, stardust, but we are quark-gluon plasma debris.
Brookhaven physicist Paul Sorensen, talking about diving deep into the atom and understanding the nature and origin of matter.
One of our RHIC physicists did a science chat with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. In it, he talks about how our atom smasher works, what we’re learning from it, and why it’s so important.
As he put it: “You’re trying to answer some of deepest, most fundamental questions in nature. This is something that if you can contribute, if you can move human knowledge just that one bit, it’s never going to go away as long as we exist. It’s a contribution that is laying a groundwork for every generation that comes after us.”
Give it a watch and let us know if you have any other questions about how we do what we do at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.
Source: vimeo.com
“Aerosols are so much more than just what is in your hairspray can," says Art Sedlacek, one of our atmospheric scientists.
Aerosols are suspensions of tiny particles in the atmosphere, and have both man-made sources such as industrial processes and car emissions, and natural sources such as forest fires, volcanoes, and wave-breaking in the ocean. Aerosol particles affect Earth's climate -- both individually and by serving as the nuclei around which cloud drops form -- by influencing how much solar energy is absorbed by Earth (including the oceans, atmosphere, and land) or is reflected back into space.
Collecting accurate data for a better understanding of the roles aerosols play is crucial to understanding their effects on Earth's climate. Our scientists fly planes kitted out with scientific equipment through forest fire smoke and clouds to get a better picture of these tiny particles that have a huge impact on our climate.
Straight down the barrel of the tube that delivers ions traveling just under the speed of light into the Time Projection Chamber at the STAR detector. Zoom zoom, little ions.
Up close and personal with the PHENIX detector, which we use to study proton spin at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. This is three stories above the ground, looking straight into the heart of the detector.
Today at the Lab, we hosted hundreds of middle schoolers for the Maglev Competition. This #STEM student is demonstrating the vehicle she made for the wind category, where magnets levitate the car above a track and a fan propels the student-designed vehicles. Fastest one wins!
Inside the target room at the NASA Space Radiation Lab, where scientists test shielding materials to protect astronauts from galactic cosmic rays while they're in space.
It might be warming up outside as spring comes, but deep in the heart of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, it's colder than outer space. Our experiments, like the PHENIX detector here, use supercooled magnets to power the accelerator where we smash particles to melt them into quark-gluon plasma and investigate the nature of visible matter. Credit: BNL Photography
The National Synchrotron Light Source II gets a big thumbs up from visiting #STEM students who came to the Lab as part of #MBKLabWeek.
Today at Brookhaven, we hosted hundreds of students from Long Island and New York City as part of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative. The high schoolers got to do some hands on science and visit our world class facilities, and we took over the Department of Energy’s Instagram for the day to share their excitement.
One of our favorite moments happened at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, outside one of the clean rooms lit with orange light bulbs. A student asked, “Why is the room orange like that?” The scientist leading the group said, “Great question! That’s the most asked question we get at the nanocenter. Any guesses?” And one student, the one on the left in the uppermost photo, said, “Yeah, I know. You said you were looking at materials that respond to UV light. So you’ve gotta be filtering out UV to protect the materials, right?”
Spot on.
These bright, young minds have a great future in STEM careers ahead of them, and we were lucky to have them visit for a day. We’re looking forward to seeing them go on to be the scientists and engineers of tomorrow and to them helping us continue to solve energy challenges across the nation and the world.
For more info on these photos, check out the Department of Energy (@energy) on Instagram.
brookhavenlab reblogged
Seasons in the #Amazon! Research could improve #climate, ecosystem models: http://1.usa.gov/1Ta8Qcj
Video credit: B. Nelson/INPA
An evergreen tropical forest isn’t actually evergreen. Individual trees change by quite a bit over the seasons, and the more or less green you’ve got, the more or less photosynthesis is happening.
Brookhaven climate researcher Jin Wu worked with a team to gather the images of the treetop canopy that make up this GIF. All over the Amazon, they surveyed trees and found that the internal dynamics of the forest are changing all the time.
During the dry season, leaves die off rapidly and are replaced with new shoots, which spread and create more and more leaf area as they grow. But even though they’ve grown wide enough to have a large surface area for converting light to energy, they don’t do that job very well until they’ve matured to a ripe old age of 2 to 5 months. (Remember, leave really only live about half a year.)
This data will help scientists better represent the tropics in climate models and predict more accurately the climate changes in the future.
Wanna spend some time oohing and ahhing over cute particles? (While also learning a lot about physics??) Check out The ABCs of particle physics from symmetry magazine. The supernova is especially adorable.
It’s always Groundhog Day at Brookhaven! We’ve got lots of these little critters roaming the grounds, living beneath our world-class science facilities. This one stopped a moment to smile for the camera. Burrow on, little dude. Burrow on.