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Physics

neutron star simulation ORNLFeaturedScience

Journey to the Center of a Neutron Star

For astrophysicists, neutron stars stand out as objects of irresistible fascination — perhaps, in part, because of how difficult they are to decipher. But calculations conducted on the Frontier supercomputer, located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have revealed new clues about the inner workings of neutron…
Coury Turczyn
June 2, 2025
FeaturedScience

Summit’s Bonus Year of Scientific Achievement

Leadership-class supercomputers dedicated to open science are not built to last forever. In fact, they have a limited lifespan by design. No matter how powerful they may be on launch day, advancements in computing technology and changing computing needs will push them closer to obsolescence with each passing year until…
Coury Turczyn
December 3, 2024
FeaturedScience

Frontier Simulations Could Help Build a Better Diamond

The world’s fastest supercomputer helped researchers simulate synthesizing a material harder and tougher than diamond — or any other substance on Earth. The study used Frontier, the HPE Cray EX supercomputing system at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to predict the likeliest strategy to synthesize such a…
Matt Lakin
July 26, 2024
neutrinosFeaturedScience

Untangling the Entangled

Researchers used quantum simulations to obtain new insights into the nature of neutrinos — the mysterious subatomic particles that abound throughout the universe — and their role in the deaths of massive stars. The study relied on support from the Quantum Computing User Program, or QCUP, and the Quantum Science Center, a national Quantum Information…
Matt Lakin
June 21, 2024
Exascale new frontier OLCF BannerTechnology

Exascale’s New Frontier: LatticeQCD

PI: Andreas Kronfeld, Distinguished Scientist, Fermilab In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That leap meant rethinking, reinventing, and optimizing dozens of scientific applications and…
Coury Turczyn
February 22, 2024
oxygen-28Science

Oxygen-28 Unbound

Isotopes — atoms of a particular element that have different numbers of neutrons — can be used for a variety of tasks, from tracking climate change to conducting medical research. Investigating rare isotopes, which have extreme neutron-to-proton imbalances and are often created in accelerator facilities, provides scientists with opportunities to…
Coury Turczyn
August 30, 2023
Exascale new frontier OLCF BannerScience

Exascale’s New Frontier: WarpX

PI: Jean-Luc Vay, Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory In 2016, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (10¹⁸) or more calculations per second. That meant…
Coury Turczyn
July 18, 2023
dark matterScience

Peering into the Universe’s Dark Matter

A research team from the University of California, Santa Cruz, have used the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Summit supercomputer to run one of the most complete cosmological models yet to probe the properties of dark matter — the hypothetical cosmic web of the universe that largely remains a mystery…
Coury Turczyn
July 5, 2023
core-collapse supernovaScience

Reaching a New Summit for Supernova Simulations

As a result of largescale 3D supernova simulations conducted on the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Summit supercomputer by researchers from the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, astrophysicists now have the most complete picture yet of what gravitational waves from exploding stars look like. This is critical…
Coury Turczyn
June 27, 2023
KHARMA simulationScience

Simulating a More Detailed Universe with Frontier

A trio of new and improved cosmological simulation codes was unveiled in a series of presentations at the annual April Meeting of the American Physical Society in Minneapolis, MN. Chaired by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) Director of Science Bronson Messer, the session covering these next-generation codes heralds…
Coury Turczyn
April 26, 2023
ScienceTechnology

Exascale Acceleration

Just how fast can the world’s fastest supercomputer go? Maybe even faster than imagined. Researchers studying plasma physics for particle accelerators recently used the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Frontier supercomputer to achieve a speedup by as much as eightfold in their code’s performance – more than double the improvement…
Matt Lakin
November 18, 2022
Science

Distilling How Water Turns into Ice

Among the mysteries of science that continue to elude researchers, one stands apart in its vexing simplicity: ice. Yes, frozen water. Water’s transformation from liquid to solid is actually a complex process of nature that scientists have named—nucleation—yet do not fully understand. However, Princeton University researchers have taken trailblazing steps…
Coury Turczyn
November 9, 2022
WarpXScienceTechnology

WarpX Named Gordon Bell Prize Finalist

The development of plasma-based particle accelerators—experimental technology that promises several advantages over conventional accelerators—may soon be accelerated itself by a new, advanced simulation code: WarpX. Produced primarily by a team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic…
Coury Turczyn
October 28, 2022
Abstract imageScienceTechnology

Spinning up Quantum Fidelity

Researchers reached new levels of accuracy in quantum simulations of spin defects using the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Quantum Computing User Program, or QCUP, at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Their work offers a potential step toward greater precision and reliability in computations on quantum…
Matt Lakin
October 3, 2022
Science

Compelling Evidence of Neutrino Process Opens Physics Possibilities

SCGSR Awardee Jacob Zettlemoyer, Indiana University Bloomington, led data analysis and worked with ORNL’s Mike Febbraro on coatings, shown under blue light, to shift argon light to visible wavelengths to boost detection. Image Credit: Rex Tayloe/Indiana University The COHERENT particle physics experiment at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National…
Dawn Levy
January 26, 2021