Jupiter and Saturn will appear to come together in the night sky this evening, as the two bright planets closely align and Jupiter overtakes Saturn, from our vantage point, in its orbit around the Sun.
It’s an astronomical event known as the “Great Conjunction.” It’s also popularly known as the “Christmas Star,” according to NASA.
Tonight (Monday, December 21) will be the culmination of the planetary conjunction.
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Note: This story was last updated at 3 p.m. June 24.
A Japanese supercomputer has displaced the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as the world’s most powerful and bumped other U.S. and Chinese machines down one spot on a semiannual list of the fastest systems.
Summit had been ranked the world’s most powerful supercomputer on the semiannual TOP500 list since June 2018. It was bumped to number two when the new TOP500 list was released Monday.
The new top system is installed in Kobe, Japan, and it is named Fugaku. In a high-performance test, it performed at 415.5 petaflops. A petaflop is a quadrillion floating-point operations per second.
Fugaku’s performance was 2.8 times better than Summit’s, according to TOP500. Summit delivered 148.8 petaflops on the high-performance test.
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A researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory helped discover a small cave snail.
The new snail species has been named the Tennessee cavesnail, or Antrorbis tennesseensis. Its name honors the state where it was found and the fact that several researchers involved in its discovery are affiliated with the University of Tennessee. A paper describing and naming the species was published in December.
The snail, which is less than two millimeters long, was found in two caves in Roane County a few miles south of the Oak Ridge Reservation. The reservation includes ORNL and parts of the city of Oak Ridge.
The snail is found on or under rocks far inside the caves, usually in streams that aren’t too muddy or silty, ORNL said. Researchers recommended that the species be listed as endangered.
The ORNL researcher is Evin Carter. He is a research associate and wildlife ecologist at ORNL, which is a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory. With only a handful of surveys completed so far, Carter has plans to survey the 40 or so other caves on the Oak Ridge Reservation, ORNL said.
[Read more…]The U.S. Department of Energy has proposed an isotope production and research center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory that could be important for medical, national security, and research projects.
In a budget request released in February, DOE said its supply of certain key enriched stable isotopes has been depleted, making the United States more dependent upon foreign imports for enriched stable isotopes. Isotopes are forms of an element that have the same number of protons but different number of neutrons in their nuclei.
DOE said the demand for enriched stable isotopes continues to grow substantially, including for the medical, national security, and fundamental research projects.
The new center at ORNL, the U.S. Stable Isotope Production and Research Center, would reduce the nation’s dependence upon foreign countries for those isotopes, DOE said.
DOE approved the mission need for the facility in January 2019. Although the cost range could change, the current project estimate is between $175 million and $298 million.
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The next decision about the second target station at the Spallation Neutron Source could be made later this year or in the first quarter of next year, U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told a House subcommittee on Thursday. The next decision would include an alternative selection and a cost range.
The $1.4 billion SNS is located on Chestnut Ridge at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It provides neutrons for research.
The second target station has been part of SNS plans for many years. It’s one of two upgrades being pursued at SNS. The other is a proton power upgrade, which is expected to double the power of SNS’s proton beam from 1.4 megawatts to 2.8 megawatts.
The second target station has a current estimated cost range of $800 million to $1.5 billion. The U.S. Department of Energy said the second target is needed more than a decade ago, in January 2009. The second target station would use a narrow proton beam and a compact, rotating, water-cooled tungsten target. It is expected to fill gaps in materials research that require the combined use of intense, cold (longer wavelength) neutrons and instruments that can help analyze complex materials. It could have up to 22 experimental beamlines.
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Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been chosen as the site of an experimental facility to test materials that would withstand the harsh conditions of the plasmas created in fusion devices, which, researchers hope, could eventually provide carbon-free energy to people around the world.
The proposed facility, the Materials Plasma Exposure Experiment facility, or MPEX, has an estimated cost range between $87 million and $175 million. It would be in an existing facility in an area at ORNL known as the Energy Systems Test Complex.
Fusion devices would use the same reactions that power the sun. Temperatures inside a fusion reactor could reach millions of degrees.
Scientists are studying materials that could withstand the conditions inside fusion reactors by exposing them to prototypical plasma conditions. Plasma, the heated matter created in a fusion device, has high-energy neutrons, electrons, and ions. MPEX would study materials that face the plasma. Finding materials capable of withstanding the harsh environment remains a major hurdle to using fusion to produce energy.
A critical decision for the MPEX facility was completed in early February by the U.S. Department of Energy. ORNL is a DOE Office of Science lab. The critical decision, CD-1, is the second step in the five-step process that DOE uses to manage projects. The CD-1 decision included an alternative selection and a cost range.
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Submitted
On the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation, located in East Tennessee, more than 1,100 vascular plants, 72 fish, 34 mammals, and more than 200 bird species have been observed.
This year, the public is invited to nine nature walks designed to highlight not only the rich flora and fauna diversity of the reservation, but also to demonstrate the work being done to sustainably manage and conserve this resource. Walks will take place on several locations across the Oak Ridge Reservation beginning in late winter through mid-summer. No pets, please.
Reservations for the following events must be made in advance by noon the Thursday prior to each walk by contacting Tracy Clem at (865) 574-5151 or [email protected] More information about these walks is available by contacting Trent Jett at (865) 574-9188 or [email protected]
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Tamke-Allan Observatory at Roane State Community College continues its Summer Public Stargazing with an examination of light and light pollution on Saturday, August 3.
The gates open at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and a public lecture will be presented at 8 p.m. by guest lecturer and retired clinical researcher Linda Fippin.
“For the vast majority of human history, nighttime lighting was limited to the hearth fire,” a press release said. “As villages, towns, and eventually cities developed, lighting was still limited to oil lamps and candles. Gas lighting was not invented until the late 18th century, and electric street lights have only been in use for about 140 years. Nighttime lighting has many benefits, but excessive and inappropriate use has led to light pollution, which not only has negative effects on people, quality of life, and the natural environment, but also wastes energy resources. This talk will cover a brief history of nighttime lighting, the effects of light pollution, and what can be done to lessen them.”
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A nuclear engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the first African American woman to be involved with the discovery of an element, tennessine, the lab said Tuesday.
Clarice Phelps of ORNL’s Isotope and Fuel Cycle Technology Division is one of two researchers at the lab to be featured on the “Periodic Table of Younger Chemists,” ORNL said in a press release.
Also honored is Nathan Brewer, a postdoctoral researcher in ORNL’s Physics Division.
Phelps and Brewer are both early career researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory.
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You can learn about water quality and microplastics in the Tennessee River during a meeting in Oak Ridge tonight (Thursday, June 6).
The program is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. Thursday at the University of Tennessee Arboretum Auditorium. It’s a free program offered by the UT Arboretum Society and co-sponsored by Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning. No registration is required.
Microplastics have been in the news recently, a press release said. Martin Knoll, a professor of geology and hydrology at Sewanee: The University of the South, will explain why microplastics are an issue, and he will present his findings on the water quality of the Tennessee River during the program this evening.
As project manager for the Tenneswim in 2016, Knoll directed the most detailed analysis of Tennessee River water quality ever conducted, the press release said. During this project, Knoll and his colleagues found the highest levels of microplastics recorded in any river of the world to date.
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The Secret City Wildbots, Team 4265, won the Smoky Mountains Regionals robotics tournament on Saturday, March 30, 2019, as captains of the fourth-seeded alliance, along with alliance partners 2614 Mars of Morgantown, W.V., and 2556 RadioActive Roaches of Niceville, Fla. The win secures a place in the World Championship at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas, from April 17-20. (Photo by Angi Agle)
Photos, video, and information submitted by Angi Agle
The Secret City Wildbots, Team 4265, won the Smoky Mountains Regionals robotics tournament on Saturday as captains of the fourth-seeded alliance. Their alliance partners were 2614 Mars of Morgantown, West Virginia, and 2556 RadioActive Roaches of Niceville, Florida.
The win secures a place in the World Championship at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas, from April 17-20.
The Wildbots’ alliance remained undefeated until the second match of the finals, racking up two matches with the event high score of 95 in the elimination rounds. The tiebreaker match was won 90-83. [Read more…]
The University of Tennessee Arboretum Society will have a meet and greet followed by a spring wildflower walk at Haw Ridge Park on Saturday, April 13, 2019. Kris Light, an expert naturalist, educator, and photographer, will lead this fun, educational, and easy walk, a press release said. (Submitted file photo)
The University of Tennessee Arboretum Society will have a meet-and-greet followed by a spring wildflower walk on Saturday, April 13. The event is scheduled from 2 to 4 p.m. at Haw Ridge Park on Edgemoor Road in Oak Ridge.
Participants are asked to meet at the parking lot, which is at the west end of the park next to the kiosk, near the Soccer Trail, a press release said. The walk is free and open to the public. Kris Light—an expert naturalist, educator, and photographer—will lead this fun, educational, and easy walk, the press release said.
Participants may want to bring a camera to take pictures of the many wildflowers on the grounds. If participants have a wildflower book, Kris suggests bringing that as well, the release said. [Read more…]
