https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Quantum computers have the potential to transform science, accelerating breakthroughs in drug development, cosmology, materials science, nuclear physics, and more. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-qa-gen-quantum.html Quantum Physics Wed, 27 May 2026 15:20:03 EDT news699113823 From writing emails to generating computer code, much of the artificial intelligence prevalent in our daily lives has succeeded by mastering one domain: text. However, this leaves a major blind spot in the physical sciences, where models depend on the high-resolution, three-dimensional data of the physical world, like the intricate lattice of atoms in a crystal. Delivering on the promise of using AI for science requires teaching these data-driven text models to seamlessly "talk to" physics-based models. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-matterchat-ai-language-atom-scale.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 18 May 2026 18:40:01 EDT news698339724 Using a tool to solve a protein's structure, for most researchers in the world of structural biology and computational chemistry, is not unlike using the Rosetta Stone to unlock the secrets of ancient Egyptian texts. Once a protein's structure has been discovered or defined, one can infer crucial information about its function or, in a diseased state, its dysfunction. While researchers have been pursuing the quest of solving protein structure for decades, advancing tools and computing technologies offer a new frontier for this work. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-ai-enabled-quantum-refinement-code.html Biotechnology Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:00:11 EDT news692362959 What if the thermal noise that hinders the efficiency of both classical and quantum computers could, instead, be used as a power source? What if computers could make use of the noise instead of suppressing or overcoming it? These are the goals of a relatively new branch of computing known as thermodynamic computing. A collaboration between researchers at the Molecular Foundry and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), both U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) user facilities located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), is bringing them closer to reality. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-03-thermal-noise-framework-power-ai.html Energy & Green Tech Thu, 05 Mar 2026 15:40:01 EST news691946161 Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a new way to determine atomic structures from nanocrystals previously considered unusable, a breakthrough that could transform how researchers study materials too small or imperfect for conventional crystallography. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-4d-stem-method-isolates-atomic.html Nanomaterials Wed, 04 Mar 2026 04:17:13 EST news691820185 Understanding what complex chemical measurements reveal about materials and reactions can take weeks or months of analysis. But now, an AI-powered platform developed by researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) could reduce this interpretation cycle to minutes, enabling much faster insight into chemical processes relevant to energy storage, catalysis, and manufacturing. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-science-ai-powered-digital-twin.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 17 Feb 2026 12:32:29 EST news690553921 When it comes to powering aircraft, jet engines need dense, energy-packed fuels. Right now, nearly all of that fuel comes from petroleum, as batteries don't yet deliver enough punch for most flights. Scientists have long dreamed of a synthetic alternative: teaching microbes to ferment plant material into high-performance jet fuels. But designing these microbial "mini-factories" has traditionally been slow and expensive because of the unpredictability of biological systems. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-path-synthetic-jet-fuel-ai.html Energy & Green Tech Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:50:04 EST news688923802 Harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to study plant microbiomes—communities of microbes living in and around plants—could help improve soil health, boost crop yields, and restore degraded lands. But there's a catch: AI needs massive amounts of reliable data to learn from, and that kind of consistent information about plant-microbe interactions has been hard to come by. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-growth-chambers-enable-microbe-continents.html Biotechnology Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:10:32 EST news688320601 At the heart of our sun, fusion is unfolding. As hydrogen atoms merge to form helium, they emit energy, producing the heat and light that reach us here on Earth. Inspired by our nearby star, researchers want to create fusion closer to home. If they can crack the engineering challenges underlying the process, they would create an abundant new source of power to eclipse all others. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-view-shockwaves-boost-fusion.html Plasma Physics Thu, 08 Jan 2026 12:05:57 EST news687096271 Agriculture, from the outset, has been made possible by humans tweaking the genes of plants to make them grow faster, produce more of what we want, and survive drought, pests, and infection. For millennia, we did it with selective breeding. More recently, we advanced to genetic engineering. But even with today's ultra-fast sequencing technologies and streamlined CRISPR-based gene editing tools, successfully altering a plant is a slow, laborious process. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-scanner-thousands-gene.html Biotechnology Thu, 18 Dec 2025 12:02:30 EST news685281722 All around us are elements forged in stars, from the nickel and copper in coins to the gold and silver in jewelry. Scientists have a good understanding of how these elements form: In many cases, a nucleus heavier than iron captures neutrons until one decays, turning it into a heavier element. There's a slow version of this neutron capture, the s-process, and a rapid version, the r-process. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-stars-forge-elements-uncharted-ways.html Astronomy Tue, 18 Nov 2025 13:48:24 EST news682696097 A broad association of researchers from across Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley have collaborated to perform an unprecedented simulation of a quantum microchip, a key step forward in perfecting the chips required for this next-generation technology. The simulation used more than 7,000 NVIDIA GPUs on the Perlmutter supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) user facility. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-supercomputer-simulates-quantum-chip-unprecedented.html Quantum Physics Mon, 17 Nov 2025 19:30:02 EST news682615533 Members of the STAR collaboration, a group of physicists collecting and analyzing data from particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), have published a new high-precision analysis of data on the number of protons produced in gold-ion smashups over a range of energies. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-high-analysis-reveals-phase-turbulence.html General Physics Mon, 29 Sep 2025 14:19:06 EDT news678374341 Inside the microchips powering the device you're reading this on, the atoms have a hidden order all their own. A team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and George Washington University has confirmed that atoms in semiconductors will arrange themselves in distinctive localized patterns that change the material's electronic behavior. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-atomic-neighborhoods-semiconductors-avenue-microelectronics.html Electronics & Semiconductors Thu, 25 Sep 2025 15:03:36 EDT news678031412 Humans have been making metal alloys for thousands of years, and most of us can conjure a rough mental image of the process—it involves red-hot molten metals being mixed, poured, and shaped in a sweltering workshop or factory. This approach still works perfectly well for the traditional metals we see every day, like steel. But advanced metals with special chemical and mechanical properties, ones that scientists are investigating to use in energy technologies like long-lasting batteries and extreme-temperature engines for aerospace vehicles, need a more refined approach. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-electron-microscopy-reveals-method-exotic.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 24 Sep 2025 14:39:05 EDT news677943542 A research team led by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has built and successfully demonstrated an automated experimentation platform to optimize the fabrication of advanced materials. The platform, called AutoBot, uses machine learning algorithms to direct robotic devices to rapidly synthesize and characterize materials. The algorithms automatically refine the experiments based on analysis of the characterization results. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-autobot-platform-machine-rapidly-ways.html Energy & Green Tech Thu, 18 Sep 2025 13:00:01 EDT news677418930 The periodic table is one of the triumphs of science. Even before certain elements had been discovered, this chart could successfully predict their masses, densities, how they would link up with other elements, and a host of other properties. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-atom-technique-chemistry-bottom-periodic.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 04 Aug 2025 12:14:05 EDT news673528441 New research by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in collaboration with scientists from TAU Systems Inc., has brought the promise of smaller and more affordable X-ray free-electron lasers one step closer to reality. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-key-gains-compact-ray-free.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 29 Jul 2025 13:24:31 EDT news673014263 It took about 50 exploding stars to upend cosmology. Researchers mapped and measured light from Type Ia supernovae, the dramatic explosion of a particular kind of white dwarf. In 1998, they announced their surprising results: Instead of slowing down or staying constant, our universe was expanding faster and faster. The discovery of "dark energy," the unknown ingredient driving the accelerated expansion, was awarded a Nobel Prize. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-largest-supernova-dataset-hints-dark.html Astronomy Mon, 21 Jul 2025 12:27:45 EDT news672319658 A set of breakthroughs from scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is offering a new understanding of how energy flows through one of nature's most important molecular machines: the photosystem II supercomplex (PSII). https://phys.org/news/2025-07-insights-nature-oxygen-machinery.html Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Jul 2025 13:25:05 EDT news671199901 Understanding human biology requires more than mapping our genes—we must also understand how gene expression is regulated to guide healthy development, growth, and maintenance of our body systems over a lifetime. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-genome-switchboard-ai-decode-gene.html Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 18 Jun 2025 13:15:43 EDT news669471338 Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), UC Irvine, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), have used biology to convert human urine into a valuable product. The team genetically modified yeast to take the elements present in urine and create hydroxyapatite—a calcium and phosphorus-based mineral naturally produced by humans and other animals to build bones and teeth. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-genetically-yeast-valuable-materials-urine.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 17 Jun 2025 13:11:26 EDT news669384682 Research at the Quantum Systems Accelerator has been steadily breaking new ground, quickening the pace toward flexible, stable quantum computers with capabilities well beyond those of today's classical machines. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-ion-advances-ground-quantum.html Quantum Physics Thu, 12 Jun 2025 15:33:05 EDT news668961181 Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have made a breakthrough in laser technology by using machine learning (ML) to help stabilize a high-power laser. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-machine-ease-jitters-high-power.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 10 Jun 2025 11:49:36 EDT news668774973 A research team led by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) designed and fabricated catalysts that can increase the speed of carbon monoxide oxidation by nine times. Carbon monoxide oxidation is an important reaction used in numerous chemical industry and environmental cleaning applications. The cutting-edge fabrication approach involved making precise, atomic-level changes in catalysts to create new, performance-boosting chemical properties. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-platinum-atoms-precision-catalyst-efficiency.html Materials Science Thu, 05 Jun 2025 13:09:20 EDT news668347754 Open Molecules 2025, an unprecedented dataset of molecular simulations, has been released to the scientific community, paving the way for the development of machine learning tools that can accurately model chemical reactions of real-world complexity for the first time. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-chemistry-dataset-ai.html Analytical Chemistry Thu, 15 May 2025 11:17:05 EDT news666526621 In Biology 101, we learn that RNA is a single, ribbon-like strand of base pairs that is copied from our DNA and then read like a recipe to build a protein. But there's more to the story. Some RNA strands fold into complex shapes that allow them to drive cellular processes like gene regulation and protein synthesis, or catalyze biochemical reactions. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-sequence-fast-track-rna.html Biotechnology Tue, 13 May 2025 15:30:05 EDT news666368540 Interdisciplinary teams across the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA) are using innovative approaches to push the boundaries of superconducting qubit technology, bridging the gap between today's NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum) systems and future fault-tolerant systems capable of impactful science applications. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-superconducting-qubits-enable-quantum-simulations.html Quantum Physics Fri, 02 May 2025 03:00:01 EDT news665370816 New research has revealed the fundamental mechanisms that limit the performance of copper catalysts—critical components in artificial photosynthesis that transform carbon dioxide and water into valuable fuels and chemicals. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-scientists-decades-puzzle-carbon-dioxide.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:12:05 EDT news665068321 A moiré pattern appears when you stack and rotate two copies of an image with regularly repeating shapes, turning simple patterns of squares or triangles into a groovy wave pattern that moves across the combined image in an optical delight. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-moir-eye-phasons-enable-interlayer.html Nanophysics Mon, 24 Mar 2025 13:03:04 EDT news662040182