Qualla: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory: Introduction

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Asaavedra32, CC BY-SA 3.0. For two years during World War II, the most consequential laboratory on Earth had no name. Its only address was P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The University of California president who held its contract believed his institution was building a death ray. The thousands of scientists and engineers who lived behind its barbed wire fences could not tell their families where they were or what they did. When the work finally became public in August 1945, the world learned that a remote mesa in the Jemez Mountains had produced the weapon that ended the war and fractured history into before and after: the atomic bomb.

Image: Asaavedra32 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Los Alamos National Laboratory: The Mesa That Changed the World

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Army Corps of Engineers, Public domain. General Leslie Groves needed a site at least 200 miles from any international border, west of the Mississippi, and isolated enough to contain the most dangerous secret in human history. Major John Dudley scouted locations in Utah and at Jemez Springs, New Mexico, but none fit. Th...

Image: United States Army Corps of Engineers | Public domain

Los Alamos National Laboratory: From Weapons to Wonders

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Los Alamos National Laboratory, Public domain. After the war, many expected Los Alamos to shut down. Instead, director Norris Bradbury was tasked with making the hand-assembled bombs mass-producible, turning delicate scientific prototypes into weapons that soldiers could deploy. The lab developed the hydrogen bomb and, for de...

Image: Los Alamos National Laboratory | Public domain

Los Alamos National Laboratory: Secrets, Scandals, and Plutonium

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ENERGY.GOV, Public domain. A facility that has handled the nation's most dangerous materials for eight decades has inevitably accumulated its share of mishaps and controversies. Two criticality accidents in 1945 and 1946 killed scientists working with plutonium cores - incidents later termed the 'demon cor...

Image: ENERGY.GOV | Public domain

Los Alamos National Laboratory: Life on the Hill

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ENERGY.GOV, Public domain. Los Alamos is northern New Mexico's largest employer, with approximately 13,200 direct employees, 1,800 students, and 460 postdoctoral researchers. One-third of the technical staff are physicists, one-quarter engineers, one-sixth chemists and materials scientists. The annual budg...

Image: ENERGY.GOV | Public domain

Los Alamos National Laboratory: The Weight of History

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ENERGY.GOV, Public domain. Several Manhattan Project buildings at Los Alamos were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965, and the Bradbury Science Museum in the town of Los Alamos offers the public a window into the laboratory's history. The lab also gave the world the arXiv preprint server, which...

Image: ENERGY.GOV | Public domain