February 13, 2023

The interstates and back roads of southeastern Idaho pass through a carpet of farmland, unrolling in all directions. Tall irrigation pivots pump water out across the broad expanses of leafy green potato plants, lifeblood of the state’s economy. But in...

January 26, 2023

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has awarded more than $5.8 million to Idaho National Laboratory to support research that boosts domestic supplies of the critical elements needed to meet the nation’s clean energy goals.  The...

August 8, 2022

Idaho National Laboratory is perhaps best known for innovative research that helps shape the clean energy economies of today and tomorrow – and for good reason. But while much of the laboratory’s work is focused on building a sustainable future,...

January 19, 2021

An artist’s rendition of what the Snake River Plain might have looked like 13,000 to 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, when woolly mammoths, giant bison and other species roamed the region. Some of the...

April 3, 2018

As an archaeologist for Idaho National Laboratory, Marie Holmer spends a lot of time with a portable precision-calibrated X-ray fluorescence machine, examining and analyzing obsidian sources and artifacts from the Snake River Plain. It’s interesting, exciting and meaningful, and a...

July 3, 2017

In North America, most archaeologists believe that the extinction of mammoths occurred earlier than the first appearance of Folsom spear points (distinctive knife-like tools made from chipped stone). In fact, some scientists think that mammoth died off hundreds of years...

April 26, 2017

It’s surprising how much information you can get from a rock. For example, obsidian originating in southeast Idaho has been found in the form of artifacts as far away as Texas and the Mississippi River — providing clues about Native...

August 4, 2016

“July 26th This morning at half past three o’clock Father breathed his last on earth. He was taken very bad in the night while crossing the desert, and kept getting worse until he died. He did not talk only to...

January 7, 2016

Veterans Day came early for Nancy Gavalis of Bristol, N.H., who on Nov. 9 was able to stand at the place on the Idaho sage desert where her father, Sgt. George H. Pearce, Jr., lost his life almost 72 years...