Number 191

Making it possible to search for life on Mars

Scientists at DOE's Idaho National Laboratory have developed a new technique that pushes the limits of our ability to find signs of life. Researchers studied jarosites, minerals common on Earth and discovered on Mars in 2004. Using Laser-Desorption Mass Spectrometry, scientists detected smaller quantities of biomolecules than with any existing method. This technique can be used on large, nonuniform samples. In addition, the “single-shot” approach doesn't average over different locations, so it allows researchers to detect a single speck of evidence for life. The results were presented in August at the Joint International Symposia for Subsurface Microbiology and Environmental Biogeochemistry. The project is funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute 's Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program.

[Hannah Hickey, 208/526-4595,
Hannah.Hickey@INL.gov]

Simulating first stars

Researchers at DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of California San Diego recently performed a massive computer simulation of the first stars in the universe. According to the model, the first star lived for 2.5 million years, ionized a huge region of space (roughly 15,000 light-years across) around where it formed, including all of the neighboring halos, and then collapsed into a black hole. The collaborators theorize that the ionization of gas in the neighboring halos actually spurs star formation by catalyzing the formation of molecular hydrogen, which allows primordial stars to form in halos that would ordinarily be too small for the process to occur.

[Todd A. Hanson, 505/665-2085,
tahanson@lanl.gov]

Fermilab researchers looking for ^sTop signs

Pedrame Bargassa of Rice University and DZero has been looking for signs of sTop, which are somewhat harder to find than STOP signs that are readily found at Fermilab and elsewhere.

Scientists at DOE's Fermilab are searching for supersymmetric particles including the ^sTop, the superpartner for the Top quark, which was discovered at Fermilab in 1995. Supersymmetry (SUSY) is an extension of the current Standard Model of particle physics, with superpartners for all the known particles. SUSY particles could make up part of the mysterious dark matter of the universe, and further the quest to unify the forces of nature. A first search for the ^sTop at the DZero detector experiment has focused on final states of decays of the Standard Model Z boson with two muons. lthough no sign of SUSY has yet been observed at low ^sTop masses, a higher range of ^sTop masses will soon be explored.

[Mike Perricone, 630/840-5678,
mikep@fnal.gov]

Journey to the Center of the Earth, 2005

KamLAND is the first neutrino detector used to identify and measure geoneutrinos.

Results from KamLAND, an underground neutrino detector in central Japan , have shown that anti-electron neutrinos emanating from the earth, so-called geoneutrinos, can be used as a unique window into the center of our planet, revealing information that is hidden from other probes. “This is a significant scientific result,” said Stuart Freedman, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicist and co-spokesperson for the U.S. team at KamLAND. Measurements of uranium and thorium isotopes, the two main sources of terrestrial radiation, were found to be in close agreement with the predictions of the leading geophysical models of our planet's thermal activities.

[Lynn Yarris 510/486-5375,
lcyarris@lbl.gov]

The Desire to Know How

Adam Kaminski will lead Ames Laboratory's Physics of Toys Workshop to help celebrate the 2005 World Year of Physics.

Ames Laboratory researcher Adam Kaminski was destined to become a physicist from the time he was a five-year-old in Poland and a physics teacher colleague of his mother's showed him a steam jet engine. "I took it apart to look for the springs like those that propelled my other mechanical toys, but, of course, I couldn't find any," he says.

The young Kaminski wondered if steam could work, how else might the engine be powered. These early musings were telltale signs of a physicist in the making.

Kaminski later earned a master's degree in experimental physics, but he craved more. "I decided to look for opportunities in the United States, the unofficial capital of physics," he says.

Kaminski went on to earn a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His desire to know how things work was a perfect fit for his fascination with high-temperature superconductors and his efforts to determine what force or forces cause the electrons to superconduct.

"What I like most about my work is that I am given an opportunity to provide the pieces of a puzzle that with time will answer the question of how high-temperature superconductivity works," says Kaminski. His Ames Laboratory position affords Kaminski the perfect means to discover those elusive puzzle pieces. He's constructing a laboratory-based high-precision Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy system as well as working on commissioning the high flux Iowa State University beam line at the Synchrotron Radiation Center in Stoughton, Wis.

Kaminski has not forgotten that, as a child, it was the simple objects he encountered daily—his toys—that inspired his desire to know how things work. Hoping to spark a similar interest in youngsters today, he will lead an Ames Laboratory 2005 World Year of Physics event—The Physics of Toys Workshop—at the Ames Public Library in August.

Submitted by DOE's Ames Laboratory

 

DOE Pulse highlights work being done at the Department of Energy's national laboratories. DOE's laboratories house world-class facilities where more than 30,000 scientists and engineers perform cutting-edge research spanning DOE's science, energy, national security and environmental quality missions. DOE Pulse is distributed every two weeks. For more information, please contact Jeff Sherwood (jeff.sherwood
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