Sandia National Lab

Sandia-cooler

Every year, the information technology sector spends almost $7 billion on electricity costs, and much of that money goes to cooling computer processing units (CPUs) in data centers. At the Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratories, researchers have developed an innovative new air-cooling technology — the Sandia Cooler — that improves the way heat is transferred… Keep reading →

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Sandia National Laboratories are home to the state-of-the-art Centrifuge Test Complex, with both indoor and outdoor centrifuges designed to simulate environments and situations with high inertial forces, like atmospheric reentry and jet aircraft acceleration. This photo shows the 29-foot-radius indoor centrifuge that’s housed in an underground, temperature-controlled environment. The centrifuge can accelerate a maximum payload… Keep reading →

WVM

The solar industry is rapidly expanding, providing enough clean electricity to power millions of homes across the country. Still, solar variability — fluctuations in solar power output based on the availability of sunlight — presents a challenge for the continued expansion of the industry. Some aspects of solar variability (think sunrise and sunset) are simple… Keep reading →


On Saturday October 6th, the New York Times wrote an editorial that criticized the mission, effectiveness, and budget of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), an experimental laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. This editorial followed an article from the prior week noting scientific challenges in the NIF’s mission and airing division among scientists about the facility’s future.

The NIF consists of 192 lasers, each of which is among the largest and most energetic in the world. It was built between 1997 and 2009 for the purposes of conducting experiments with fusion energy. Keep reading →