Latest news with #LosAlamosNationalLaboratory
Economist
3 days ago
- Science
- Economist
The bomb (part 1): were nuclear weapons inevitable?
Where did the world's most devastating weapon come from? In a four-part series, we go behind the scenes at America's nuclear laboratories to understand how a scientific-mystery story about the ingredients of matter led to a world-changing (and second-world-war -ending) bomb less than five decades later. Nuclear weapons have been central to geopolitical power ever since. Now America is seeking to modernise its stockpile and, in doing so, its scientists are pushing the frontiers of extreme physics, materials science and computing. In episode one, we look at the birth of nuclear physics—the science that emerged early in the 20th century to answer a mystery: what is an atom actually made of? Host: Alok Jha, The Economist 's science and technology editor. Contributors: Frank Close, a physicist and author of 'Destroyer of Worlds', a history of the birth of nuclear physics; Cheryl Rofer, a chemist who used to work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL); and Nicholas Lewis, a historian at LANL. This episode features archive from the Atomic Heritage Foundation.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Purdue signs research agreement with Los Alamos nuclear lab, seeks lab station near Purdue
WEST LAFAYETTE, IN — Purdue University has partnered with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, to perform joint research on cutting-edge defense and security technologies, Purdue announced in press release Wednesday President Mung Chiang signed a memorandum of understanding at the New Mexico lab Monday that extends through two organizations will conduct research in areas including advanced materials for hypersonics, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence modeling and energetics, and press release Los Alamos Lab, which hosted Purdue faculty and graduate students during World War II's Manhattan Project, has remained one of the nation's foremost nuclear defense centers since. The lab produces and designs nuclear weapons, addresses nuclear security threats and performs other national security research, according to the press agreement outlines the potential for a Los Alamos duty station near Purdue in the future to facilitate research coordination between the organizations. The latest agreement marks Purdue's most public involvement with the lab since 2018, when it lost a bid to run Los Alamos to a team including the University of California and Texas A&M amid a National Nuclear Security Administration push for a change in leadership."Purdue researchers have collaborated with Los Alamos National Lab researchers for decades since the Manhattan Project," Chiang said. "This (memorandum) creates a new framework for partnering in the research capabilities and infrastructures of both Purdue and Los Alamos to make critical advances that strengthen our national security."Los Alamos Director Thom Mason called Purdue a "natural partner in tackling the complex challenges vital to our nation's future." This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue signs research agreement with Los Alamos nuclear lab Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Eighty years after bomb, is AI a new arms race in Los Alamos?
When Pat Fitch started working on artificial intelligence in the 1990s, he concluded it was a waste of time. It now takes up a big chunk of his day. About two years ago, Fitch, the deputy director of science, technology and engineering at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said he and other top lab officials started to feel a sense of urgency to get ahead of the emerging technology. The lab invested in AI infrastructure, including installing the Venado supercomputer last year. It started carving out millions of dollars for an AI initiative. 'It's gone from being useful to being at a scale and impact that we've got to get all over this,' Fitch said of AI. Fitch isn't the only one with AI on the brain. When Chris Wright visited J. Robert Oppenheimer's home earlier this year, the newly minted federal energy secretary described the nascent technology as a new Manhattan Project. There are distinct similarities: While AI is being welcomed into the Land of Enchantment due to its potential for positive impacts on research, national security and economic development, it also poses risks — much as the World War II nuclear weapons project did. 'It's hard to overstate the importance and the impact AI will have in defense, in economics, in science,' Wright said at a February news conference in Los Alamos. 'This is just very powerful new tools being developed rapidly. We need to win the second Manhattan Project race, as well.' 022025_GC_EnergySecretary01rgb.jpg (copy) U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks to a small group of reporters at the J. Robert Oppenheimer house in Los Alamos in February 2025. 'It's hard to overstate the importance and the impact AI will have in defense, in economics, in science,' Wright said. 'This is just very powerful new tools being developed rapidly. We need to win the second Manhattan Project race, as well.' It's a weighty comparison, especially in a state still grappling with the environmental and social impacts of the atomic bomb, which exposed unsuspecting residents of Southern New Mexico to radiation during the Trinity Test explosion 80 years ago — on July 16, 1945 — and caused environmental contamination that required billions of dollars worth of cleanup. 'Promise and peril' Former President Joe Biden described AI in a 2023 executive order as a technology of 'promise and peril.' Fitch agreed: 'It's your classic dual-use technology,' he said. Fitch sees promise in the technology. Already, artificial intelligence has helped with everything from material science to seismic analysis, he said. 'That alone would be a big deal, but maybe it's not a Manhattan Project because it's a whole bunch of little things,' he said. 'If you're that individual scientist working on seismic signatures, the fact that you've never been able to do this before and now you can — that's a huge deal to you in your field, but maybe it's not as earth-shattering as the first atomic weapon or discovery of nuclear energy.' But uses of AI are expected to grow, Fitch said, and the impacts are not decades away. The potential, in particular, for natural language models of AI — think ChatGPT — will affect every facet of life. As it was during the Manhattan Project, the nation is in competition with other global powers. Then it was to get an atomic weapon first; now it is to develop the best AI models first. The Trump administration has repeatedly drawn a link between AI dominance and national security; Fitch said the nation remains a hairsbreadth ahead of other countries when it comes to AI development. 'We've got all the pieces. We don't … have the scale yet,' Fitch said. 'And I think the sense of urgency is growing.' New Mexico Economic Development Cabinet Secretary Rob Black sees promise, too, in the form of job and revenue growth. Growing the economies of rural areas is 'one of the more difficult things' his department aims to do. 022425_md_layoffs2.jpg (copy) Rob Black 'Rural economic development is not easy,' he said. Black sees an opportunity for artificial intelligence infrastructure to jump-start rural communities, pointing to Los Lunas, which has seen major population growth since Meta built a massive data center in one of the town's business centers. He also sees an opportunity for New Mexico, which has a high proportion of Spanish speakers, to correct an industry slant toward language models built on the English language. Black is encouraged by New Mexico State University's June announcement it would offer the state's first bachelor's degree program for artificial intelligence. But he thinks the state can do more to 'lean in' to develop the AI workforce, which, in turn, can benefit other industries in the state. 022525_GC_GovTechDeal01rgb.jpg (copy) Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Lanham Napier, chairman of BorderPlex Digital Assets, in February announce a deal for a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence data hub and advanced manufacturing center. The Santa Teresa site could bring up to 1,000 jobs to the area and will include microgrid power generation and water treatment facilities meant to attract trade-centric businesses as clients. 'You're starting to solve very difficult challenges around pharmaceuticals, around cancer treatments, around climate change, material sciences that traditional computing can't do or hasn't been able to do,' Black said. 'If we're the ones building those technologies and the workforce to utilize them, we will be leading on those areas as well.' Rising energy needs Reliant on energy- and water-intensive data centers, artificial intelligence poses an environmental pickle. For New Mexico, the challenges are doubled: Not only is the state obligated to fully transition its utilities to carbon-free energy by 2050 under a 2019 law, but it is also mired in drought and battles over dwindling water supplies. Data centers are some of the most energy-intensive buildings; the Department of Energy reports they can consume between 10 and 50 times more energy than the typical office building. And a 2018 report estimated data centers nationwide were consuming more than 400 million gallons of water a day. To ride the AI wave and minimize environmental impacts, Black said New Mexico and its industries must continue investing in clean energy. 'We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time,' he said. That could be a challenge. While the Trump administration has been a bulldog for artificial intelligence, it also has slashed funding for renewable energy and grid reliability. The Department of Energy issued a recent report projecting more blackouts across the nation unless plans to shutter greenhouse gas giants like coal and natural gas facilities are halted. That's because of surging energy demand driven largely by artificial intelligence and the data centers that support them. 'This report affirms what we already know: The United States cannot afford to continue down the unstable and dangerous path of energy subtraction previous leaders pursued, forcing the closure of baseload power sources like coal and natural gas,' Energy Secretary Wright said in a July 7 statement. 'In the coming years, America's reindustrialization and the AI race will require a significantly larger supply of around-the-clock, reliable and uninterrupted power.' (copy) San Juan Generating Station in August 2024, the day before the scheduled implosion of the four smoke stacks in Waterflow, N.M. The federal Department of Energy issued a recent report projecting more blackouts across the nation unless plans to shutter greenhouse gas giants like coal and natural gas facilities are halted, due to surging energy demand driven largely by artificial intelligence and the data centers that support them. New Mexico is already in the midst of its own energy transition. The coal-fired San Juan Generating Station near Farmington was shut down in 2022. The Four Corners Power Plant is scheduled to be shuttered next. According to Data Center Map, an industry tool launched in 2007, there are 21 data centers operating in New Mexico, primarily in the Albuquerque metro area. There are a handful in Northern New Mexico as well. Camilla Feibelman, director of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club, thinks there are sufficient safeguards in place to make sure big energy users don't derail the state's shift to renewable energy. Geothermal power is a potential win-win for buildings with high energy consumption, Feibelman said. But she said the state needs to ask the 'big questions' before opening the floodgates to AI development — namely, is it all worth it? 'Do those jobs actually appear?' she asked. 'Does the existence of AI end up helping society or does it end up harming society? And does powering these facilities put us at a greater risk of failing to meet the moment on the global climate crisis?' Given cuts to renewable energy and grid reliability programs at the federal level, she believes the state may have to dig its heels in on making sure the transition actually happens. 'Society hasn't even been willing to say, 'we're willing to do what it takes to curb global climate change,' much less what the role of AI will be in our society and in our attempts to reduce our use of fossil fuels,' Feibelman said. Workforce and resources Earlier this year, the New Mexico Artificial Intelligence Consortium — a group made up of representatives of the state's national laboratories and higher education institutions — hosted an industry day. Jen Gaudioso, director of Sandia National Laboratories' Center for Computing Research and the laboratories' consortium representative, said companies that attended were especially interested in AI education programs in the state. 'We have to both train our workforce into the capacity to utilize the technology, but we also want to be the place that is driving the development and invention of that technology,' Gaudioso said. The consortium is focused on three pillars: AI workforce development, research applications and infrastructure. Gaudioso sees potential in AI in materials sciences and resource management. It could help develop materials to replace persistent and hazardous 'forever chemicals,' find abandoned oil wells and bring advances in drug development. Between the state's research institutions and national laboratories, she said the state has some unique resources for AI. But there are still gaps. Broadband access — patchy in rural areas in the state — is an obstacle, Gaudioso said. And, like Feibelman, she said questions remain, including how much of the infrastructure needed to power AI must be located in the state. Fitch, at Sandia's northern counterpart, said data centers to power AI don't necessarily have to be located in the same state in which the industry operates. Data centers are typically located near major highways, places where there's an abundance of water and electricity, he said. 'That's not a particularly good description of Northern New Mexico,' Fitch said. Playing catch-up State Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, said with two national laboratories, New Mexico is well-positioned to take advantage of artificial intelligence. But when it comes to wrangling the industry, with its high demand for electricity and water use for powerful data centers, the state is far from prepared, she added. 'I think we're behind,' Chandler said. 'There are states across the country now paying attention, and I'd like to see us be a leader in that effort.' Chandler, who sponsored a bill in this year's legislative session to curb the use of discriminatory algorithms in rejecting or approving New Mexicans for jobs, housing or health care, is part of a group of legislators focusing on the technology. Regulating AI is difficult work, requiring complicated and technical legislation. Definitions for key terms aren't currently a part of state statute. House Bill 60, the Artificial Intelligence Act, faced opposition from those who said the bill would stymie innovation in the state. Some lawmakers are unfamiliar with the intricacies of the technology. Ultimately, the legislation failed. But Chandler thinks the state needs to act now, as efforts to resist and reverse regulation on the burgeoning industry crop up around the nation. A 10-year moratorium on state AI regulations was proposed as part of the nation's budget bill. Although the provision failed — the measure was overwhelmingly rejected in a shockingly bipartisan 99-1 vote — Chandler said it could be part of a trend. One of his first days in office, President Donald Trump overturned a Biden-era executive order on artificial intelligence that established several principles for 'responsible' AI development. 062325_md_govpresser2.jpg (copy) Colorado Gov. Jared Polis speaks at the lectern alongside New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, front left, South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden, back left, and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon in June 2025 outside of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum to open the annual Western Governors' Association meeting. Polis signed an act regulating artificial intelligence in his state with 'reservations.' Closer to home, a Colorado bill, which New Mexico's Artificial Intelligence Act was partially based on, was signed into law with 'reservations' by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. Despite his signature, the tech entrepreneur and Democratic governor later signaled his support for the proposed moratorium on state artificial intelligence regulation 'to give Congress time to figure this out' and create nationwide standards that would overrule state law. Chandler is also concerned about pushing a potentially resource-intensive technology while at the same time cutting funding for renewable energy and climate change research. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, credited with assisting the Department of Energy in developing report on grid reliability and the growing demand for power, largely driven by AI, is facing a budget less than half the size it was in the current fiscal year. 'The national labs should have a large portfolio of research,' Chandler said. 'My concern is that we are going to narrow our focus and simply focus on what appears to be AI and weapons development, nuclear development and perhaps civilian nuclear development.' Although Chandler sees the potential for AI, she's not convinced the Manhattan Project is the right analogy. She thinks the urgency of climate change, which poses an 'existential' threat, is a better comparison to the pressures in the 1930s and 1940s that led to the creation of the Manhattan Project. Facing down a race to develop the nuclear bomb, the government moved quickly, with few safeguards in place to prevent environmental damage, Chandler said. 'We're still kind of reeling' from the consequences, she added. 'There were a lot of unintended consequences as a result,' Chandler said. 'What I fear is all this hype, this excitement around AI could lead us to the same sort of thing. We don't really fully understand the implications of how it could be used or so forth.'
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
John W. Dean John W. Dean of Albuquerque NM died peacefully
Jun. 23—John W. Dean John W. Dean of Albuquerque NM died peacefully on Sunday, June 8, 2025 at the Montebello Assisted Living Facility in Albuquerque, NM. John was born on April 6, 1929 in Cambridge, MA to James and Mildred Dean. John spent much of his youth on his uncle Steven's farm in rural Connecticut where he became a Boy Scout and developed an interest in the outdoors. During WW2 he moved with his family to Louisiana where he graduated from high school and enrolled in at LSU. After receiving his B.A. from LSU he was drafted into the US Army and sent to White Sands Missile Range as a mechanic working on rocket engines. After receiving an honorable discharge from the Army, John enrolled in the graduate engineering program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. While attending graduate school, John met and married Margaret (Joy) Blackadar and they moved into a small cabin in Nederland, Colorado and adopted two children, Steven and Nancy. After receiving his Master's Degree in Engineering, John worked for the Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado; Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford, England; Brookhaven National Laboratory in NY and spent the rest of his career at Los Alamos National laboratory in Los Alamos, NM. After retiring, John began to build and fly ultra-light aircrafts. He spent many hours at the airport in Los Lunas, NM and made many friends in the ultra-light community. He was also a long time member of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, NM where he found great community, fellowship, and support. John is preceded in death by his parents James and Mildred Dean, his sister Nancy Humphrey and his wife Margaret (Joy) Dean. He is survived by his two children Steven Dean and his wife Erika Britt-Dean of Salt Lake City, UT and Nancy Johnson of Albuquerque, NM and his five grandchildren Wyatt and Savannah Dean and Emily, Cole, and Davis Johnson. Services will be held at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, Albuquerque, NM on Saturday, July 12, 2025 at 10:00 am. In lieu of flowers please send donations to the National Alzheimer's Association.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Richard Garwin, designer of the first H-bomb who also paved the way for MRI, GPS and touch-screens
Richard Garwin, who has died aged 97, was an American nuclear scientist who designed the world's first hydrogen bomb and went on to become a presidential adviser on arms control, while helping to lay the groundwork for such technology as magnetic resonance imaging, high-speed laser printers and touch-screen monitors. The Nobel prizewinner Enrico Fermi called him 'the only true genius I have ever met', but he never became a household name: a 2017 biography was subtitled 'The Most Influential Scientist You've Never Heard Of'. Edward Teller is usually credited, in an unattributed phrase, as the 'father of the sweet technology of the H-bomb'. Due to the secrecy surrounding its development, it was only in recent years that historians have become aware of Garwin's role, following the publication in 2001 of a transcript of a recording made by Teller in which, while not eschewing the credit for devising the bomb, the scientist recalled that the 'first design was made by Dick Garwin'. In 1951 Garwin, then a 23-year-old faculty member at the University of Chicago, was working during his summer holidays at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico where, building on Teller's ideas, he designed the 'Mike', an 82-ton sausage-shaped test device, after working out how to direct the radiation from the atomic device to initiate a fusion reaction in the hydrogen – what he called 'the match for the nuclear bonfire'. 'The shot was fired almost precisely according to Garwin's design,' Teller recalled, on Enewetak Atoll on November 1 1952. The power of the blast – 450 times that of Nagasaki – stunned even those who had watched previous bomb tests, with a mushroom cloud five times the height of Everest and 100 miles wide. Teller subsequently became famous for destroying the career of Robert Oppenheimer, who had run the Los Alamos lab in the Second World War, giving birth to the atomic bomb, but afterwards questioned the morality of devising an even more powerful weapon. When, amid the anti-communist paranoia of the McCarthy years, Oppenheimer had his security clearance removed by the government, Teller was the only member of the scientific community to testify against him. In fact Garwin, a board member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, had a lot of sympathy with Oppenheimer, telling an interviewer that if he could wave a magic wand to make the H- bomb go away, 'I would do that.' But as the clock could not be wound back, he believed that the best hope for human survival lay in the deterrence doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that suggests that a nuclear attack by one superpower would result in a retaliatory nuclear strike, leading to the complete destruction of both attacker and defender. 'The capability for MAD,' Garwin said 'is not a theory, but a fact of life'. In the 1980s, when Teller convinced President Ronald Reagan to invest in a defensive shield that, he claimed, would make it probable that enough Americans would survive a nuclear conflict to ensure the US's continued existence, Garwin was vocal in his criticism of the so-called 'Star Wars' initiative as ineffective and wasteful. He saw a Soviet-American balance of weaponry and arms-control measures as the best way of avoiding nuclear Armageddon. Richard Lawrence Garwin was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 19 1928, the older of two sons of Robert Garwin and Leona, née Schwartz. His father was a high school teacher; his mother a legal secretary. From Cleveland Heights High School Garwin graduated in physics in 1947 from what is now Case Western Reserve University, followed by a master's degree and doctorate under Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago. He joined the faculty, but at Fermi's suggestion spent his summers at the Los Alamos lab, where he returned every year until 1966. For 40 years from the early 1950s Garwin was a researcher at IBM, maintaining a faculty position at Columbia University and advising presidents (excepting Reagan) from Eisenhower to Clinton on nuclear weapons and arms-control issues. As a researcher he contributed to a huge range of scientific discoveries and innovations, and in 2016, when he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama, the president recalled: 'Ever since he was a Cleveland kid tinkering with his father's movie projectors, he's never met a problem he didn't want to solve. Reconnaissance satellites, the MRI, GPS technology, the touch-screen – all bear his fingerprints. He even patented a mussel washer for shellfish: that, I haven't used. The other stuff I have.' In 1991 Garwin chaired a conference to discuss solutions to staunching the Kuwaiti oil leaks during the first Gulf War. He advised the Obama government on dealing with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. From 1993 to 2001 he chaired the State Department's Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board. His belief in the vital importance of nuclear balance led him to oppose any policy that might upset that balance. In 2007, in evidence to the British Commons Defence Select Committee, he described Prime Minister Tony Blair's claim that work must start soon on replacing the ageing Vanguard-class subs of Britain's nuclear submarine fleet as 'highly premature''. The subs' working life could be extended to 45 years or more, he argued, putting off the need for a replacement into the late 2030s or beyond. In 2021 he was one of 700 signatories to an open letter to President Biden, asking him to pledge that the US would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict and calling for curbs on his role as sole authority in ordering the use of nuclear weapons – as 'an important safeguard against a possible future president who is unstable or who orders a reckless attack'. The plea fell on deaf ears. In 1947 Richard Garwin married Lois Levy. She died in 2018, and he is survived by two sons and a daughter. Richard Garwin, born April 19 1928, died May 13 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
