Science/Technology

GENEVA (AP) — To cheers and standing ovations from scientists, the world's biggest atom smasher claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle Wednesday, calling it "consistent" with the long-sought Higgs boson — popularly known as the "God particle" — that helps explain what gives all matter in the universe size and shape.

"We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics," Rolf Heuer, director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists.

Bomb Squads from across the U.S. wrangled their bomb squad robots at the sixth annual Robot Rodeo beginning Tuesday, June 19 at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Eight teams participated in the three-day competition that featured 12 events. The Laboratory — along with Sandia National Laboratories, the Region II International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators, REMOTEC, U.S. Technical Working Group and QinetiQ — sponsor the Robot Rodeo. This year's winner, the Doña Ana County Sheriff's Office.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced that a supercomputer called Sequoia at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) was ranked the world’s most powerful computing system.

Clocking in at 16.32 sustained petaflops (quadrillion floating point operations per second), Sequoia earned the number one ranking on the industry standard Top500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers released Monday at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC12) in Hamburg, Germany. Sequoia was built for NNSA by IBM. 

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The mayor of Hobbs, N.M., says his city has been chosen as the site for a $1 billion scientific ghost town where researchers will be able to test everything from renewable energy innovations to intelligent traffic systems and next-generation wireless networks.

Mayor Sam Cobb confirmed to The Associated Press that the southeastern New Mexico community was selected prior to a news conference Tuesday with Gov. Susana Martinez and the investors developing the Center for Innovation, Technology and Testing, or CITE.