ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories employees and contractors saw their work culminate in a hypersonic flight test conducted by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army on March 19 at the Kauai Test Facility in Hawaii. The Navy and Army executed the launch of a common hypersonic glide body, which flew at hypersonic speed to […]
Category Archives: Science / Technology / Engineering
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Sandia initiatives to protect US energy grid and nuclear weapons systems
March 23, 2020 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — To deter attempts to disable U.S. electrical utilities and to defend U.S. nuclear weapon systems from evolving technological threats, Sandia National Laboratories has begun two multiyear initiatives to strengthen U.S. responses. One is focused on defending large U.S. electrical utility systems from potential attacks by hostile nations, as well as from damage […]
Patient-friendly brain imager gets green light toward first prototype
March 10, 2020 – 9:41 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M — It might not start a fashion trend, but Sandia National Laboratories is designing a wearable brain imager. The National Institutes of Health has granted Sandia $6 million to build the prototype medical device that would make magnetoencephalography (MEG) — a type of noninvasive brain scan — more comfortable, more accessible and potentially […]
Can the US make bioweapons obsolete?
March 9, 2020 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — As the threats posed by bioterrorism and naturally occurring infectious disease grow and evolve in the modern era, there is a rising potential for broad negative impacts on human health, economic stability and global security. To protect the nation from these dangers, Sandia National Laboratories has partnered with the Council on Strategic […]
Father, son bond over engineering a record-smashing roadster
March 2, 2020 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories manager Joel Wirth, a mechanical engineer by training, studied a problem with his car. The weight was too far back, making the car fishtail whenever he drove it faster than 200 mph. For the past eight years, he’s been working afterhours in his home garage with his crew chief […]
Identify, track, capture
February 25, 2020 – 9:27 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories robotics experts are working on a way to intercept enemy unmanned aircraft systems midflight. They successfully tested their concept indoors with a swarm of four unmanned aircraft systems that flew in unison, each carrying one corner of a net. Acting as a team, they intercepted the flying target, trapped […]
A material benefit to society, Sandia scientist elected AAAS fellow
February 3, 2020 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A perennial inventor of advanced materials has been elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Sandia National Laboratories senior scientist Tina Nenoff was bestowed the honor by her peers for the advancement of science “in service to society” and “for outstanding accomplishments in nanoporous materials and technology through […]
Seeing inside a battery while it’s working
January 27, 2020 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A new paper-thin radio-frequency detector designed to work inside a lithium-ion battery provides information about the battery’s health while charging and discharging. “It could enable researchers to check a battery’s function and capacity after years of storage without destroying it,” said Eric Sorte, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories. The work, funded […]
Sandia Fellow wins nuclear fusion award
January 16, 2020 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories Fellow Keith Matzen has been awarded the 2019 Distinguished Career Award by Fusion Power Associates, a national nonprofit research and educational foundation, for his many contributions to the laboratory development of nuclear fusion. The foundation annually brings together senior U.S. and international fusion experts to review the status of […]
Sandia establishes collaborative research facility for low-temperature plasmas
December 20, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is setting up a collaborative facility to help researchers worldwide study low-temperature plasmas, the most pervasive state of matter in the universe. The 5-year, $5.5 million project, called the Sandia Low Temperature Plasma Research Facility, is sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Participants will be selected […]
Internships fuel research for engineering students from Puerto Rico
December 5, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — For Edgardo Desarden Carrero, a student in the newly created electrical engineering doctorate program at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, his two summers working in resilient energy systems research at Sandia National Laboratories was his first internship. He is an unusual student in that he is also a professor of electrical […]
High-speed fire footage reveals key insights for power plant safety
December 4, 2019 – 9:22 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — High energy arcing faults are high-power electrical discharges between two or more conductors that can release tens of thousands of amps of current. They can result in explosions that reach about 35,000 degrees Celsius — about the temperature of lightning strikes — and vaporize steel and spew hot metal particles into the […]
NM company secures funds, land for medical-isotope producing reactor using Sandia concept
November 21, 2019 – 8:34 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A New Mexico company secured funding this year and located 240 acres of land in the southeastern corner of the state to build a small reactor that will exclusively produce medical isotopes. The concept was developed and licensed by Sandia National Laboratories to help establish a stable domestic supply of medical isotopes, […]
AI center to combine hardware, software for practical gains
October 31, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta are launching a research center that combines hardware design and software development to improve artificial intelligence technologies that will ultimately benefit the public. AI is an emerging field with eventual applications ranging from autonomous […]
Advanced microscopy reveals unusual DNA structure
October 30, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An advanced imaging technique reveals new structural details of S-DNA, ladder-like DNA that forms when the molecule experiences extreme tension. This work conducted at Sandia National Laboratories and Vrije University in the Netherlands provides the first experimental evidence that S-DNA contains highly tilted base pairs. The predictable pairing and stacking of the […]