Science and Technology Highlights

The diamond-shaped stamp used at the Y-12 National Security Complex to certify the First Production Unit of the W80-4 canned subassembly, a key milestone in the Life Extension Program.
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LLNL’s designs enable delivery of W80-4 subassembly First Production Unit

NNSA announces the diamond stamping of the first production unit of a canned subassembly for the W80-4 Life Extension Program will be achieved 18 months ahead of schedule.

Scientist Thomas Kruijer uses the thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to analyze meteorite samples.
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Meteorite samples are time capsules from the early solar system

LLNL scientist and collaborators describe how meteorites tell the story of the early solar system. 

Researchers shed light on how memory T cells, which are crucial for lifelong immunity, live and persist in different parts of the body.
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Not all immune cells are created equal

In a recent study, LLNL scientists and collaborators explain how long memory T cells live and persist in different parts of the body.

The newly discovered phase of water, Ice XXI, only forms from water under strong supercompression. It is the largest and most complex unit of any ice phase discovered so far.
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Researchers discover entirely new phase of ice

In a recent study, LLNL researchers explored how water freezes under extreme compression at room temperature.

Artist’s illustration of gold compressed to ultra-high pressures by laser pulses at the National Ignition Facility. X-rays scatter from the sample, producing diffraction patterns that reveal how its atomic structure changes under extreme compression.
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Watching gold change structure at extreme pressures

In a recent paper, LLNL researchers and collaborators conducted high-pressure experiments with gold.  

Harrison Horn and collaborators used a laser-heated diamond-anvil cell to recreate the conditions that could exist on some exoplanets.
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Experiments show how water could form on exoplanets, disrupting current theories

In a recent study, an LLNL postdoctoral researcher demonstrates a novel pathway for producing significant quantities of water on sub-Neptune-sized exoplanets.

Researchers used Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s exascale supercomputer El Capitan to perform the largest fluid dynamics simulation ever — surpassing one quadrillion degrees of freedom in a single computational fluid dynamics problem. The team focused the effort on rocket–rocket plume interactions, achieving better than 500 trillion grid points, or 500 quadrillion degrees of freedom, in simulating the turbulent exhaust flow generated by many rocket engines firing simultaneously.
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Gordon Bell finalist team pushes scale of rocket simulation on El Capitan

Researchers used LLNL's exascale supercomputer El Capitan to perform the largest fluid dynamics simulation ever.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s exascale El Capitan retained its ranking as the world’s fastest supercomputer with a verified 1.809 exaFLOPs (quintillion calculations per second) on the Top500 organization's High Performance Linpack benchmark. El Capitan’s smaller sibling system, Tuolumne, repeated at 12th on the list at 208.1 petaFLOPs (quadrillion calculations per second).
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El Capitan retains title as world’s fastest supercomputer in latest Top500

LLNL's El Capitan once again claimed the top spot on the Top500 List of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

ElMerFold researchers produced high-quality 3D structure predictions for more than 41 million proteins — at a scale and speed previously thought impossible — using Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s El Capitan, the world’s fastest supercomputer. This image shows predictions across different biomolecular complexes by the preview release of OpenFold3, an open-source reproduction of AlphaFold3.
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LLNL and partners launch record-breaking protein-folding workflow

LLNL scientists and collaborators have achieved a milestone in biological computing: completing the largest and fastest protein structure prediction workflow. 

Demonstrations of a new corrective manufacturing technique. In the left panel (a), low resolution printed shapes are shown at top and corrected shapes are shown at bottom. In the right panel (b), hybrid manufacturing is used to correct a gap in a fluidic structure.
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Unique resin allows 3D-printing method to add and subtract

In a new study, LLNL researchers developed a hybrid additive and subtractive manufacturing system with a unique resin that enhances traditional 3D printing.