Summary: Supercomputers might have helped unlock a new way to make controlled beams of gamma rays, according to scientists at the University of Texas at Austin. The simulations done on the Stampede and Lonestar systems at TACC will guide a real experiment later this summer in 2016 with the recently upgraded Texas Petawatt Laser, one of the most powerful in the world. The scientists say the quest for producing gamma rays from non-radioactive materials will advance basic understanding of things like the inside of stars. What's more, gamma rays are used by hospitals to eradicate cancer, image the brain, and they're used to scan cargo containers for terrorist materials. Unfortunately no one has yet been able to produce gamma ray beams from non-radioactive sources. These scientists hope to change that. On the podcast are the three researchers who published their work May of 2016 in the journal Physical Review Letters. Alex Arefiev is a research scientist at the Institute for Fusion Studies and at the Center for High Energy Density Science at UT Austin. Toma Toncian is the assistant director of the Center of High Energy Density Science. And the lead author is David Stark, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Jorge Salazar hosted the podcast.
