July 08, 2005

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Publication Date: Friday, July 08, 2005

"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind." Albert Einstein, physicist, 1879-1955
PHYSICS: The science of matter, energy, space and time.
"Albert Einstein's scientific legacy has had a monumental impact on our understanding of the universe. His theories, put into practice, helped to shape our modern world." Michael Anastasio, director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
"Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory supports Pleasanton's economy on a number of levels. The Lab employs more than 500 Pleasanton residents. As well, the Lab does business with local companies thereby creating opportunities to strengthen the regional economy. As importantly, the Lab is a good corporate citizen through their participation and contribution to many educational and charitable organizations." Pamela Ott Economic Development Manager Pleasanton

Secrets revealed

Most people, when they think of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, think one thing: THE BOMB. And, indeed, the Lab's primary mission is safeguarding the nation's nuclear stockpile.

But just as space exploration brought 20th century science forward by leaps and bounds, so too does atomic research at the Lab have applications for everything from cancer research to global warming.

The Lab employs 507 Pleasanton residents, paid collectively $4.4-million. It partners with more than 100 local businesses, is actively engaged with local schools and helps more than a dozen local charities. Its fire department stands ready to help if the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department ever needs it. For those who've seen this side of the Lab, it will come as no surprise that it is engaged in research with far-reaching positive global benefits.

Lab science got its kick-start 100 years ago during what is called physicist Albert Einstein's "miracle year." During that year, Einstein, just 26, developed theories that formed the basis for much of modern-day physics. Later, Einstein would say it all began when he pondered what he might see if he could travel on a beam of light. The one-time patent clerk's theories ultimately proved the existence of atoms and molecules as well as the effect of gravity on space and time.

Einstein's thought processes led to present-day knowledge and ongoing research into the laws that govern the universe. Although not a big fan of institutional learning, Einstein nonetheless taught at Princeton and once said, "I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts. The rest are details."

Those "details," however, are resulting in enhanced understanding of how: ¥ forests - specifically the roots of plants - store carbon dioxide (CO2) ¥ tree rings, coral reefs and geologic features like stalactites provide proof of past climate change ¥ subterranean rock may be a medium for trapping CO2 to reduce how much greenhouse gas enters, and warms, the atmosphere.

The Lab's environmental and bioscience programs took on a life of their own as scientists began to understand the consequences of atmospheric, as well as below ground, nuclear testing. Among the developments prompted by that ongoing research was the Department of Energy's decision to launch its Human Genome Project.

The Lab also is tweaking hydrogen-powered cars so drivers can travel 300 miles without refueling and more, such as developing a high-powered land-based telescope designed to spot far away asteroids on a possible collision course with Earth.

Astrophysics and the basic sciences of nuclear weapons are integrally linked, explains Lab director emeritus Bruce Tarter. He adds, "Exploding stars are analogous to the explosions of nuclear weapons.

"X-rays and gamma rays that occur in space are similar to complicated things that happen in the atmosphere after a bomb explodes." A bomb currently in development at the Lab mimics the heat found at the center of the sun.

Physicists at the Lab working in the weapons program, "did astrophysics on our own time," Tarter remembers. "Out of the nuclear weapons program, good science emerged to help nurture other Lab programs."

That science has led to Homeland Security advances such as detection systems that can: ¥ hone in on and stop possible truck bombs ¥ monitor the environment for airborne biological agents ¥ find deliberate contamination of drinking water.

Last month, a Homeland Defense program that partners the Lab with the California National Guard was approved for $10-million in federal funding. The heart of the program is the Lab's cutting edge technology.

What it means for Californians, reports Congressman Richard Pombo, is the ability to ferret out vulnerabilities in infrastructure like bridges, and chart wind patterns to predict accurate consequences of a terrorist attack using chemicals, disease or radiation.

The Lab is even making strides in improving U.S. relationships with other countries through information-sharing international conferences and worldwide collaborations in energy research. Lab experts are teaching Russia how to secure its own nuclear stockpiles and helping its nuclear scientists find work in the private sector. In the Middle East, Lab expertise is improving seismic (earthquake) modeling.

What the Lab is learning about ongoing clean up of its own radioactive and chemical pollution of groundwater (water that is underground) from past practices at Lab and other DOE sites shows promise for cost-effective improvements in groundwater cleanup throughout the country.

In 1917, one of Albert Einstein's theories led to the invention of the laser almost 40 years later, reports Lab literature. His ongoing legacy is the pivotal work being done by world-class physicists at the Lab today. Their complex projects make the Lab both a national secret - and a national treasure.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand - while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."

- Albert Einstein, physicist

FAST FACT:

In 1939, following German physicist Albert Einstein's discovery of the huge amounts of energy generated by nuclear fission, expressed in his famous equation E=mc2, he signed a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt warning that Nazi Germany might be taking advantage of that research to construct an atomic weapon.

After the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Einstein embraced Pacifism and said, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. ... Had I known, I would have become a watchmaker."

Cancer, Alzheimer's, Diabetes and more

If you've ever experienced cancer, either directly or through someone you love, you know that if it spreads to the liver, brain or bone, it's especially bad.

While some cancers are relatively "slow growing" - once those same cancer cells come in contact with certain other cells, like bone cells, the slow grower suddenly becomes a racehorse.

Bone naturally breaks down and builds up constantly, points out Lawrence Livermore Lab physicist Dr. John Vogel. But when prostate or breast cancer cells lodge on its surface, or it's being riddled by osteoporosis, it breaks down faster.

Current technology - counting broken bones or measuring the density of bone with X-rays - only confirms the spread once it's advanced. When cancer has spread to the bone, death is often imminent.

Bone cancer spreads faster than other cancers, like prostate cancer, because, at a cellular level, the bone's trigger for breaking down is speeded up by the "signal" it gets from the cancer cell, Vogel explains.

Pharmaceutical companies interested in developing drugs that "turn off" that signal are taking a strong interest in research taking place at the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The research utilizes an isotope called calcium-41. calcium-41 is mildly radioactive. Although the National Academy of Sciences recently concluded that even very low doses of radiation pose a risk of cancer over a person's lifetime, Vogel reports that research to date involving both animals and humans has found calcium-41 causes no apparent physical damage when used as a diagnostic tool. Vogel and lead Lab chemist, Darren Hillegonds, are developing calcium-41 for potential use in cancer research, and someday, in monitoring cancer treatment.

Once the calcium-41 "tracer" is absorbed by the bone, as the bone breaks down, the isotope is released, Vogel explains. It leaves "marker" atoms in urine that can be counted by the Lab's ultra-fast accelerator mass spectrometer. Investigators use the "counts" to evaluate whether bone is abnormally breaking down.

Before AMS was perfected, calcium-41 was unusable as a tracer, said Vogel, because it doesn't give off much energy as it decays and is hard to detect. He explains that all radiological isotopes decay. after a period of time. Some have longer "half lives". than others. The half-life is how long it takes for half of the atoms of that isotope to decay to stable atoms that can be counted.

Calcium-41's half-life is 105,000 years, long compared to the average human life span, but still a short time compared to the life of the Earth, said Vogel, adding, "There is no calcium-41 naturally present in the environment or in our bones.

"This long half-life also means that it's very difficult to detect and count the isotope by waiting for it to decay, but the Lab's accelerator mass spectrometer can count the number of calcium-41 atoms in a sample by measuring the mass and type of individual accelerated atoms."

Because the Lab's machine has custom modifications designed and built by Lab scientists, it is the fastest accelerator mass spectrometer in the world, say scientists. As a result, "The technology finally allows calcium-41 to be used as an atomic tracer that is safe for studying the formation and change in bone for a long time - many years, in fact - after the dosing," said Vogel. If the counts indicate cancer is on the bone, he adds, drugs can be prescribed that "turn off" the "signal" it gives the bone to break down so quickly.

Using calcium-41, the Lab's AMS technology is a promising tool for early detection of bone cancer. Plus, counting atoms using AMS allows researchers to get results in a single week that tell them if medicines given to arrest early-stage bone cancer are working, Vogel relates. If not, then a different treatment can be initiated, and perhaps spare cancer patients the debilitating radiation treatments used for later-stage bone cancer.

To date, the research has proven so encouraging that human clinical trials are being designed right now for using calcium-41 as a tracer for early detection of the spread of prostate cancer to the bone, Vogel said. Not too far down the road, similar trials could start for early detection of breast cancer bone metastasis, and new treatments for osteoporosis.

"Coral reefs, tree rings, sediment cores (mud samples) and cave deposits (such as stalagmites and stalactites) are like libraries containing descriptions of environmental conditions going back thousands of years." Dr. Chris Swanston Environmental, scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

A tale of time

Had the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories been asked to radiocarbon date the Shroud of Turin, its super-fast modified machine could have done it in a fraction of the time.

Environmental scientist Chris Swanston PhD noted that the Center's enhanced capabilities also make using Livermore Lab's accelerator mass spectrometer more expensive than older carbon dating machines.

The three labs that were asked to do the dating concluded in 1988 that the one-by-eight centimeter strip provided by the Vatican dated only to Medieval times - in other words, too late to be the burial cloth of Jesus. A chemist at Livermore Lab's sister lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico took issue with the finding.

Raymond Rogers, a chemistry fellow at Los Alamos who died in March, tested Shroud fibers obtained by a team of scientists in 1978 that were lifted from the same corner later radiocarbon dated - and debunked - in 1988. He concluded that the fibers and corner were chemically consistent with each other - but inconsistent with the main body of the Shroud.

Rogers said his chemical analysis proved the corner had been dyed to match the original, rewoven into the whole, and was, in fact, a patch applied in Medieval times - making the radiocarbon dating accurate for the corner, but not the Shroud itself.

Rogers also confirmed that stains on the Shroud that appear to be the image of a man, (with perhaps coins on his eyes to keep them closed - a common burial practice, he said, at the time of Christ), are in fact blood. But Rogers also said the DNA is too fragmented to determine whether the blood is male or female.

Rogers decried the most recent restoration, saying it was very damaging to the surface of the Shroud's chemical composition. Sufficiently damaging, he believed, as to obscure chemical clues to the original Shroud's true date of origin. Whether the controversial Shroud was, or will ever be, accurately radiocarbon dated is unclear as no further sampling has been permitted. Less mysterious are various things being radiocarbon tested by the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at the Livermore Lab today.

"Coral reefs, tree rings, sediment cores and cave deposits (such as stalagmites and stalactites) are like libraries containing descriptions of environmental conditions going back thousands of years," reports environmental scientist Chris Swanston PhD. At the Center, scientists use such "environmental archives" to measure carbon-14 (radiocarbon) and other isotopes.

Radiocarbon, or carbon-14, is created when cosmic radiation interacts with nitrogen in the upper atmosphere, Swanston explained. Everything alive on Earth has c-14 in its makeup, he added. As organisms die, the c-14 "decays" (decomposes) into stable atoms that can be "counted" by accelerator mass spectrometry and used to date the object.

For example, Swanston said, reef building corals and many trees deposit annual growth bands that contain c-14. (One type of tree growing in the California High Sierra, the Bristle cone pine, can be up to 3,000 years old, he said.)

Tree rings in the trunks of old or preserved trees reveal a series of overlapping sequences, he explains. Calling c-14 "a natural tracer in the environment," Swanston's research focuses largely on c-14 as it relates to forest ecology, sediment cores and soil sampling.

By extracting c-14 from rings of wood, or bands of coral and cave structures like stalagmites and stalactites, he said, the chemical and isotopic composition can be used to track changes over time of environmental factors such as ambient temperature, rainfall, pollution and so on. The information helps researchers model current-day climate change and future global warming.

Because different atoms have different weights, accelerator mass spectrometry, AMS for short, works by quickly filtering a sample so as to count the pure c-14 atoms. One atom equals a "count." Labs lacking the speed possible with Livermore Lab's AMS may need several grams of sample material and analysis can take a week or more, explains Swanston.

At the Lab's AMS Center, the machine requires less than one-tenth of a gram. A prepared sample can be analyzed in 10 minutes or less. Swanston estimates the value of the Lab's AMS machine at more than $12-million and calls it "unique" because it was modified with parts taken from other machines. Two to 10 times faster than other accelerator mass spectrometers, Livermore Lab's machine was designed and built by its own scientists.

The Lab's Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry is so highly regarded, fully one-quarter of the world's radiocarbon measurements are taken there, the Lab reports.

"Accelerator mass spectrometry," Swanston adds, "has revolutionized radiocarbon dating." -Carol Bogart
"It's the 'accelerator' that gives accelerator mass spectrometry a level of sensitivity that standard mass spectrometers just can't touch. The accelerator does two things that allow us to measure radiocarbon and other extremely rare isotopes.

The first is that it uses high energy (up to 10 million volts) to break up molecules that might otherwise be confused for radiocarbon. The second is that it accelerates ions that, traveling at about 50 million miles an hour, can now be separated by charge and mass using magnets and velocity filters.

The 75-meter long AMS beamline - including three multi-ton magnets, the accelerator, and numerous magnetic and electrical coils - is essentially designed to get rid of the 'junk,' leaving the radiocarbon to arrive finally at the detector (after several microseconds of travel)." Chris Swanston, PhD, environmental scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Every scientist starts somewhere

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory provides many opportunities for local students to see real life applications of science and learn about science from some of the most intelligent and passionate minds in the field. To this end, the Lab offers a wide variety of programs for students of all ages. Discovery Center

The Discovery Center on the Lab's site provides fun, interactive exhibits for younger children all year round. For the summer, there are seven new exhibits on loan from the Exploratorium to celebrate the "World Year of Physics 2005," a program organized by the Lab to honor the 100 year anniversary of Albert Einstein's three major physics theses. Some of the new exhibits include a tornado generator, pendulum and water spinner. The Discovery Center is open noon to 4 p.m., Monday - Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday. Fun With Science

The Fun with Science program is a traveling science show that can be requested by elementary and middle schools and is aligned to the California Science Education Standards for grades K-8. Trained volunteers from the Lab teach students about science through hands-on activities and demonstrations on a wide variety of science topics including air and pressure, cold and hot, chemistry, electricity and magnetism and lasers and lights. The goal of the program is to dispel myths about people who work in science and show students that there is still a world of science waiting to be discovered. Science on Saturday

One of the most popular programs is the Science on Saturday lectures that are held at the Amador Theater. There are five lectures in this series geared toward high school students and teachers. The series start at the end of February every year and this year students learned about lasers, forensics and the Big Bang. The lectures cannot be taken for curriculum credit, although some teachers offer extra credit as an incentive for students to attend. With or without that extra push, the Science on Saturdays program has become quite popular and this year drew the largest crowds in its five-year history. Tri-Valley Expanding Your Horizons

The lab not only provides resources for students already interested in science, but also reaches out to those who might not traditionally gravitate toward the subject through the Tri-Valley Expanding Your Horizons conference. EYH is a one-day conference that introduces middle and high school girls to the possibility of a career in science. Women already in science-oriented careers lead hands-on workshops and lectures to illustrate their work. The Lab has sponsored the conference for 26 years and the average attendance is approximately 600 students. In fact, there are many women who went through EYH who now work in the science field and come back to the conference to speak with the new batch of budding scientists.
Visit http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/education for a complete list of all the educational activities at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. -Rebecca Guyon

IF YOU GO:

Interested in touring Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? Visit www.llnl.gov/pao/com/tours.html or call 422-4599.

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