PNNL-led researchers used ultrafast X-rays at SLAC to watch a molecule's electrons shift as it gained a proton while the surrounding water reorganized in step. That pins down timing in one reaction, though whether the water actually drives the proton hop, the part a catalyst designer could use, is still open.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives55
- Confidence50
Femtosecond electron imaging at SLAC shows copper holding crystalline order past the collapse point simulations predicted. The mismatch came down to one pressure assumption.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives40
- Confidence60
Physicists at Stanford, the University of Chicago and SLAC let one superconducting qubit address seven memory cells, at about 1.2% error per access. The tests measured access error, much of it from crosstalk between cells, so the promised cut in wiring per qubit is still a design argument.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives40
- Confidence55
Oak Ridge's STAR Lab tests sulfide solid-state and sulfur chemistries as complete cells, because the particle gaps, interface reactions and swelling that kill them do not appear in a materials test. Its results are scored against USABC metrics.
Reality
- Evidence42
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives65
- Confidence58
The LSST Camera's first image released for science stacks hundreds of exposures of the COSMOS field, where Hubble worked two decades ago, and Rubin's deputy director calls the field a testing ground for the ten-year survey.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption35
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives60
- Confidence60
Transition-edge sensors cooled near absolute zero measured the X-ray lines that sit inside the gamma-ray band used to identify nuclear material. Anyone who wants one also has to buy the refrigerator that keeps it cold.
Reality
- Evidence42
- Adoption55
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives70
- Confidence50
Stanford and SLAC found the early optical signal they went looking for in common II-VI semiconductors, but the geometry that revealed it has to know when the radiation arrived, which a working detector never does.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+28
- Incentives65
- Confidence52
Compression let the needles keep growing sideways inside the ceramic instead of into the electrodes. That hands a large part of the solid-state failure problem to whoever specifies stack pressure in the module.
Reality
- Evidence56
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+24
- Incentives55
- Confidence45