A team of researchers has produced a record-shattering underwater sound with an intensity that eclipses that of a rocket launch. The intensity was equivalent to directing the electrical power of an entire city onto a single square meter, resulting in sound pressures above 270 decibels.
The tech world is abuzz about quantum information science (QIS). This emerging technology explores bizarre quantum effects that occur on the smallest scales of matter and could potentially revolutionize the way we live.
For the first time, a team of researchers has studied the effects of tiny areas within lithium metal batteries that are much hotter than their surroundings. These hotspots, the researchers find, can make batteries grow spiky tumors of metal called dendrites that could cause short circuits, and potentially lead to fires.
An international team of researchers used an X-ray laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to create the first detailed maps of two melatonin receptors that tell our bodies when to go to sleep or wake up and guide other biological processes. A better understanding of how they work could enable researchers to design better drugs to combat sleep disorders, cancer and Type 2 diabetes. Their findings were published in two papers today in Nature.
Scientists are excited by the prospect of stripping catalysts down to single atoms. Attached by the millions to a supporting surface, they could offer the ultimate in speed and specificity. Now researchers have taken an important step toward understanding single-atom catalysts by deliberately tweaking how they’re attached to the surfaces that support them – in this case the surfaces of nanoparticles.
Using a new X-ray technique, a team of researchers was able to watch in real time as a molecule split apart into two new molecules. The method could be used to look at chemical reactions that other techniques can’t catch, for instance in catalysis, photovoltaics, peptide and combustion research. The team, led by researchers from Brown University in collaboration with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, published their results in March in Angewandte Chemie.
The Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the first light at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) April 10. More than 300 participants – a mix of SLAC staff and scientists from partner laboratories and the international user community – gathered for a day-long symposium that highlighted the past, present and future trajectory of the revolutionary X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL).
When is a day not a day? When you work in the central nervous system of the world’s longest linear accelerator, open 24-7.
With an extremely fast “electron camera” at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, researchers have made the first high-definition “movie” of ring-shaped molecules breaking open in response to light. The results could further our understanding of similar reactions with vital roles in chemistry, such as the production of vitamin D in our bodies.
A new type of pocket-sized antenna, developed at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, could enable mobile communication in situations where conventional radios don’t work, such as under water, through the ground and over very long distances through air.
Long before David Reis joined the faculty of the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, he was helping lay the groundwork for the lab’s first-of-a-kind X-ray free-electron laser, or XFEL, and the revolutionary science that followed its opening in 2009. Now he’s director of the PULSE Institute, which was founded by SLAC and Stanford with the express purpose of exploiting the possibilities for ultrafast science at that X-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS).
Computer simulations by scientists from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory suggest that a new method could turn random fluctuations in the intensity of laser pulses from a nuisance into an advantage, facilitating studies of these fundamental interactions.
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis announced plans this week for Mission Jurassic, a project that will support paleontological excavation of a fossil-rich plot of land in northern Wyoming. The project will bring together scientists from around the world, including the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, to reveal dramatic new secrets about the world of millions of years ago.
When silicon, an element abundant in the Earth’s crust, is subjected to extreme heat and pressure, an initial “elastic” shock wave travels through the material, leaving it unchanged, followed by an “inelastic” shock wave that irreversibly transforms the structure of the material. Using a new technique, researchers were able to directly watch and image this process for the first time.
Scientists have found a new way to use some of the world’s most powerful X-rays to watch how atoms move at ultrafast speeds within a single atomic sheet.
An international team has used an X-ray laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to get an incredibly detailed look at what happens to the structure of a model photocatalyst when it absorbs light.
Twenty-eight teams from 17 Bay Area high schools faced off Feb. 9 in the SLAC Regional DOE Science Bowl, a series of fast-paced question-and-answer matches that test knowledge in biology, chemistry, physics, earth and space sciences, energy and math. The competition is hosted annually by the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Electrons flowing across the boundary between two materials are the foundation of many key technologies, from flash memories to batteries and solar cells. Now researchers have directly observed and clocked these tiny cross-border movements for the first time, watching as electrons raced seven-tenths of a nanometer – about the width of seven hydrogen atoms – in 100 millionths of a billionth of a second.
New research offers the first complete picture of why a promising approach of stuffing more lithium into battery cathodes leads to their failure. A better understanding of this could be the key to smaller phone batteries and electric cars that drive farther between charges.
A pair of 1964 films detailing the construction of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, later renamed SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, were recently remastered and are now available for viewing on YouTube thanks to a partnership between the films’ producer, J. Douglas Allen, and the SLAC Archives, History & Records Office.
Experiments at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have seen for the first time what happens when magnetic materials are demagnetized at ultrafast speeds of millionths of a billionth of a second: The atoms on the surface of the material move, much like the iron bar did. The work, done at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser, was published in Nature earlier this month.
A weird feature of certain exotic materials allows electrons to travel from one surface of the material to another as if there were nothing in between. Now, researchers have shown that they can switch this feature on and off by toggling a material in and out of a stable topological state with pulses of light. The method could provide a new way of manipulating materials that could be used in future quantum computers and devices that carry electric current with no loss.
Scientists have their first direct, detailed look at how a single atom catalyzes a chemical reaction. The reaction is the same one that strips poisonous carbon monoxide out of car exhaust, and individual atoms of iridium did the job up to 25 times more efficiently than the iridium nanoparticles containing 50 to 100 atoms that are used today.
Magnetic field lines tangled like spaghetti in a bowl might be behind the most powerful particle accelerators in the universe. That’s the result of a new computational study by researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which simulated particle emissions from distant active galaxies.
A team that includes researchers from the Bridge Institute at the University of Southern California (USC) and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory used X-rays to map the shape of a receptor in the body as it binds with misoprostol. This research, published in Nature Chemical Biology, could help in the quest to design low-cost drugs that can tackle postpartum bleeding without affecting other tissues.
New accelerator-based technology being developed by the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University aims to reduce the side effects of cancer radiation therapy by shrinking its duration from minutes to under a second. Built into future compact medical devices, technology developed for high-energy physics could also help make radiation therapy more accessible around the world.
An international team has unearthed what life might have been like for a now-extinct subspecies of spotted hyena. They found that despite their massive size, some cave hyenas experienced times of hardship that affected them to the bone, causing areas of arrested growth that appear as dark lines, like rings on a tree trunk.
Despite its role in shaping life as we know it, many aspects of photosynthesis remain a mystery. An international collaboration between scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and several other institutions is working to change that. The researchers used SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser to capture the most complete and highest resolution picture to date of Photosystem II, a key protein complex in plants, algae and cyanobacteria responsible for splitting water and producing the oxygen we breathe.
A new study is a step forward in understanding why perovskite materials work so well in energy devices and potentially leads the way toward a theorized “hot” technology that would significantly improve the efficiency of today’s solar cells.
Revealed for the first time by a new X-ray laser technique, their surprisingly unruly response has profound implications for designing and controlling materials.
In independent studies reported in Science and Nature, scientists from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University report two important advances: They measured collective vibrations of electrons for the first time and showed how collective interactions of the electrons with other factors appear to boost superconductivity.
The Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has joined a new research network called LaserNetUS that aims to boost access to high-intensity laser facilities at labs and universities across the country, including the Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) laser facility at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS).
When the FACET-II facility at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory opens its doors to scientists from around the world in early 2020, it’ll offer exceptional conditions for experiments that aim to revolutionize the field of accelerator physics.
Scientists from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have demonstrated a surprisingly simple way of flipping a material from one state into another, and then back again, with single flashes of laser light.
Scientists, including researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, have compiled the most detailed catalog of such blobs using eight years of data collected with the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. The blobs, including 19 gamma-ray sources that weren’t known to be extended before, provide crucial information on how stars are born, how they die, and how galaxies spew out matter trillions of miles into space.
a team of researchers has used an X-ray laser to measure, for the first time, how a plasma created by a laser blast expands in the hundreds of femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second) after it’s created. Their technique could eventually reveal tiny instabilities in the plasma that swirl like cream in a cup of coffee.
Nearly 300 representatives from industry, the Department of Energy, DOE national laboratories and the investment sector gathered to discuss energy storage innovation at the inaugural Department of Energy InnovationXLab Summit Sept.18-19 at DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
X-ray experiments at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have revealed that the pathways lithium ions take through a common battery material are more complex than previously thought.
Tais Gorkhover, a principal investigator with the Stanford PULSE Institute, will receive the 2018 LCLS Young Investigator Award, granted to early-career scientists in recognition of exceptional research using the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Graham Neil George, professor and Canada Research Chair in X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS) at the University of Saskatchewan, has been chosen to receive the 2018 Farrel W. Lytle Award for his outstanding contributions to synchrotron science at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Chuntian Cao, a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, discovered her passion for batteries in graduate school. She says she loves studying something that’s so closely related to everyday life. In her current research, she probes lithium-ion battery materials and devices using SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, or SSRL.
Four scientists discuss X-ray experiments at SLAC’s synchrotron that reveal new insights into how a promising solar cell material forms.
A team of 12 design engineers develop application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, for X-ray science, particle physics and other research areas at SLAC. Their custom chips are tailored to extract meaningful features from signals collected in the lab’s experiments and turn them into digital signals that can be further analyzed.
This summer, five graduate students from the University of Puerto Rico had the opportunity to use SLAC’s world-class facilities to keep their studies on track.
The event attracted 124 participants and explores the successes and challenges of the theory that describes subatomic particles and fundamental forces.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have developed a new imaging technique to better understand the mechanisms that lead to hearing loss when aminoglycosides are introduced to the body. Using the lab’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser and Stanford Synchrotron Lightsource (SSRL), SLAC researchers, in collaboration with researchers at Stanford University, were able to observe interactions between the drugs and bacterial ribosomes at both extremely low and room temperatures, revealing never-before-seen details.
Scientists have now observed for the first time how diamonds grow from seed at an atomic level, and discovered just how big the seeds need to be to kick the crystal growing process into overdrive.
Work on the camera for the future Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) has reached a major milestone with the completion and delivery of the camera’s fully integrated cryostat. With 3.2 gigapixels, the LSST camera will be the largest digital camera ever built for ground-based astronomy. It’s being assembled at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
A group of researchers, including scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, summarize current applications and future prospects of machine learning in particle physics in a paper published today in Nature.
Risa Wechsler has been appointed director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint institute of the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University. On Sept. 15, she’ll take over from Tom Abel, whose five-year term at the helm of the institute is coming to an end.
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