DEVELOPING AND DESIGNING NEW CHEMICALS AND MATERIALS - Chemistry: Notable Research and Discoveries - page 11

substance, rhenium diboride, at standard atmospheric (ambient) pres-
sure, so they did not have to apply extreme pressure, which requires
costly procedures and equipment. As reported in “Synthesis of Ultra-
Incompressible Superhard Rhenium Diboride at Ambient Pressure,”
published in Science in 2007, this combination formed short bonds and
tight packing, achieving a hard, solid material. In the words of the re-
searchers, “scratch marks left on a diamond surface confirmed its super-
hard nature”—the substance is hard enough to scratch diamond!
Scientists who are seeking new materials often think beforehand
about what kind of structure would work best. But on occasion, a
new and unexpected structure presents itself, as happened in 1985,
when researchers found a third form of carbon that became known as
buckminsterfullerene.
1950s, Livermore scientists developed a nuclear weapon
that could be launched from submarines and weapons that
carried multiple warheads. Livermore also investigated other
aspects of nuclear weapons and the dangerous radiation re-
leased upon explosion. Nuclear radiation often damages an
organism's genetic material, known as deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA), and researchers at Livermore and other laboratories
began studying DNA in order to understand these effects.
These efforts eventually led to the Human Genome Project,
an ambitious undertaking begun formally in 1990 to map
the whole set of human DNA. The Human Genome Project
was finished in 2003, though much research on the data
continues.
Today, the laboratory employs 3,500 scientists and has
an annual budget of about $1.6 billion. In addition to projects
such as Manaa's fullerene research, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory operates the world's largest laser facili-
ty—National Ignition Facility—as well as a number of powerful
supercomputers. This equipment provides researchers with
the tools to study atoms and molecules on an experimental
basis as well as supplying computational power to simulate
their activity on a theoretical level.