Posts Tagged Laboratory for Laser Energetics

Liquid metallic hydrogen is not present naturally on Earth and has only been created in a handful of places, including the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics. LLE scientists are researching the properties of liquid metallic hyrdrogen to understand how planets both inside and outside our solar system form magnetic shields.

This Senate bill must now be reconciled with the House of Representatives’ bill, which included $68 million for LLE. Both bills reject the Administration’s budget request to cut the Lab’s FY19 funding dramatically and to phase out of all federal support for LLE in three years.

University Research Awards for 2018-19 have been awarded to 15 projects ranging from an analysis of the roles of prisons in the Rochester region, to a new approach to genome editing, to new initiatives for advanced materials for powerful lasers.

Gilbert “Rip” Collins and Riccardo Betti will help facilitate partnerships with the Laboratory for Laser Energetics and expand research in laser, high-energy-density, and fusion sciences.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer announced a three-part plan to protect and expand the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) during his visit to the LLE on Monday, March 5. The Trump Administration’s Fiscal Year 2019 budget, announced last month, proposed significant cuts to the lab and a “three-year ramp-down” in federal support. During his visit, Schumer praised the LLE for creating jobs and advancing scientific research in physics, optics, and photonics. “The Laser Lab is vital not only to Rochester but to the United States and our national security,” Schumer said. “Turning out the lights on the Laser Lab is a horrible idea, and I promise you, it will not happen under my watch.” (University of Rochester photo / J. Adam Fenster)

The universe is filled with magnetic fields, but how it got that way has long been a mystery. To explain the magnetization of the universe, scientists proposed the existence of a “turbulent dynamo.” The phenomenon had never before been measured or observed directly—until recently.

Two local high school seniors have been named scholars in the prestigious Regeneron Science Talent Search for summer research projects they worked on at the University’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

The non-profit organization Fusion Power Associates awarded its Distinguished Career Award to recently retired director Robert McCrory, as well as other awards to the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at their annual meeting.

Professor Robert L. McCrory, a physicist and scientific leader who has shepherded the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics to international prominence during the past 35 years, will retire from the directorship on October 1.

Institutions including Cornell, Michigan, Princeton, and Stanford will join Rochester in developing an instrument to produce and study matter that exists under pressures far higher than either on or inside Earth.