Part Two of a five-part series outlining the proposals awarded “Discovery” Laboratory Research and Development funds for 2010. This part describes an advanced approach to modeling subsurface fluids.

It takes special software to map the universe from noisy data. A Berkeley Lab code called MADmap does just that for the cosmic microwave background and has now been adapted by scientists probing the sky with the PACS camera aboard the Herschel satellite to make spectacular images of the infrared universe.

Using the supercomputers at NERSC, Berkeley Lab researchers demonstrated that the semiconductors known as highly mismatched alloys (HMAs) hold great promise for the future development of high performance thermoelectric devices. Thermoelectrics could play a key role in green energy production because of their ability to convert heat into electricity.

What if the light waves emitted by exploding stars could be translated into sound? That’s the idea behind a musical project to “sonify” the universe by Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart that caught the attention of Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist George Smoot.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a “molecular worm” algorithm that makes it easier and faster to simulate the passage of a molecule through the labyrinth of a chemical system, a progression that is critical to catalysis and other important chemical processes.

A superbright supernova found in a dwarf galaxy by the Nearby Supernova Factory based at Berkeley Lab is the first confirmed example of a pair-instability supernova, the result of the partial core collapse and thermonuclear detonation of an enormously massive star, like the earliest stars in the Universe.

Scientists will examine cloud computing as a cost-effective and energy-efficient computing paradigm to accelerate discoveries in biology, climate change and physics. A program funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the Department of Energy will examine cloud computing as a way to accelerate discoveries in a variety of disciplines.

In order to facilitate data-intensive research, ESnet, the Department of Energy’s high-performance networking facility managed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is receiving $62 million to develop what will be the world’s fastest computer network, designed specifically to support science.

Berkeley Lab won four of R&D Magazine’s R&D 100 Awards for 2009, which recognize the 100 most significant proven technological advances of the year. This year’s winners offer the promise of cost-competitive solar cells, more computer memory at less cost, an unmatched look at atomic scale matter in 3-D, and a more powerful way to find hidden energy sources.

Finding rare and fleeting cosmic events not only requires the right kind of telescope and camera, it depends on high-performance computing that can pinpoint objects of interest among thousands of sky images while there’s still time for follow-up observations. Caltech and DOE’s NERSC join forces in just such a search, the Palomar Transient Factory.