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In recognition of her foundational superconductor research, Ming Yi has been awarded the 2018 William E. and Diane M. Spicer Young Investigator Award, which is presented to a young scientist who has made significant contributions to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) and the light source community. SSRL is a DOE Office of Science user facility at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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Emma McBride and Caterina Vernieri are the recipients of this year’s Panofsky Fellowships at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. McBride will develop techniques to study matter in extreme conditions like the ones inside planets and stars. Vernieri will continue her research on the Higgs boson and its interactions with other elementary particles, which could lead to the discovery of new phenomena on nature’s most fundamental level.

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An extremely fast “electron camera” at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has produced the most detailed atomic movie of the decisive point where molecules hit by light can either stay intact or break apart. The results could lead to a better understanding of how molecules respond to light in processes that are crucial for life, like photosynthesis and vision, or that are potentially harmful, such as DNA damage from ultraviolet light.

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Experiments at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have confirmed the predictive power of a new computational approach to materials synthesis. Researchers say that this approach, developed at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, could streamline the creation of novel materials for solar cells, batteries and other sustainable technologies.

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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have recorded the most detailed atomic movie of gold melting after being blasted by laser light. The insights they gained into how metals liquefy have potential to aid the development of fusion power reactors, steel processing plants, spacecraft and other applications where materials have to withstand extreme conditions for long periods of time.

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A device under development at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University could help bring back lost brain function by measuring how the brain responds to therapies that stimulate it with electric current.

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Four scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory will receive Early Career Research Program awards for research that’s developing new ways to study fundamental particles with machine learning and study nanoscale objects and quantum materials with powerful X-ray laser beams.

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Scientists have made the first molecular movie of the instant when light hits a sensor that's widely used in nature for probing the environment and harvesting energy from light. The sensor, a form of vitamin A known as retinal, is central to a number of important light-driven processes in people, animals, microbes and algae, including human vision and some forms of photosynthesis, and the movie shows it changing shape in a trillionth of an eye blink.

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SLAC and Stanford scientists have discovered how some archaea thrive where other organisms would starve: Their crystalline shells not only protect them from the environment, but they also draw in nutrients through nanosized pores. Those nutrients concentrate in the space between the shell and the microbial cell, so what looks like a famine turns into a feast.

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Ten years ago on this day, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope (then called GLAST) was launched into space, beginning its mission to explore the most energetic light in the universe and the powerful cosmic processes that produce it.

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The Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has started to assemble a new facility for revolutionary accelerator technologies that could make future accelerators 100 to 1,000 times smaller and boost their capabilities.

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SLAC theorist Lance Dixon and collaborators have calculated the formula for the energy-energy correlation (EEC) with more precision than ever before.

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An international team of researchers has found a new way to investigate how tuberculosis bacteria inactivate an important family of antibiotics: They watched the process in action for the first time using an X-ray free-electron laser, or XFEL.

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Researchers have probed the movements of molecules in liquid water that occur in less than 100 millionths of a billionth of a second, or femtoseconds.

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Scientists have used a powerful X-ray laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to heat water from room temperature to 100,000 degrees Celsius in less than a tenth of a picosecond, or millionth of a millionth of a second.

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The National Institutes of Health announced today that it will establish a national service and training center for cryogenic electron microscopy research at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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An international research team has come up with a new method with potential for revealing the structure of individual amyloid fibrils with powerful beams of X-ray laser light.

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The U.S. Department of Energy has approved funding and start of construction for the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment, which will begin operations in the early 2020s to hunt for hypothetical dark matter particles called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. The experiment will be at least 50 times more sensitive than its predecessor, exploring WIMP properties that can’t be probed by other experiments and giving researchers a powerful new tool to understand one of the biggest mysteries of modern physics.

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A team including SLAC researchers has measured the intricate interactions between atomic nuclei and electrons that are key to understanding intriguing materials properties, such as high-temperature superconductivity.

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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have found a way to create the equivalent of negative pressure by mixing two materials together under just the right conditions to make an alloy with an airier and entirely different crystal structure and unique properties.

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Menlo Park, Calif. — A new facility for cryogenic electron microscopy, or cryo-EM, has opened at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Built and operated in partnership with Stanford University, it’s equipped with four state-of-the-art instruments for cryo-EM, a groundbreaking technology whose rapid development over the past few years has given scientists unprecedented views of the inner workings of the cell.

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A team led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory turned tiny liquid jets that carry samples into the path of an X-ray beam into thin, free-flowing sheets, 100 times thinner than any produced before. They’re so thin that X-rays pass through them unhindered, so images of the samples they carry come out clear.

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Scientists who conduct experiments at the Stanford Radiation Synchrotron Lightsource (SSRL) have received an unusual and highly valuable gift—a library of element calibration foils for a technique used to understand the structure of matter called X-ray absorption spectroscopy.

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Accelerator scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are testing a new type of electron gun for a future generation of instruments that take snapshots of the atomic world in never-before-seen quality and detail, with applications in chemistry, biology, energy and materials science.

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SLAC and its collaborators are transforming the way new materials are discovered. In a new report, they combine artificial intelligence and accelerated experiments to discover potential alternatives to steel in a fraction of the time.

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To catch chemistry in action, scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory use the shortest possible flashes of X-ray light to create “molecular movies” that capture the motions of atoms in chemical reactions and reveal new details about the most fundamental processes in nature.

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Accomplished neutrino physicist Hirohisa Tanaka has joined the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory as a professor of particle physics and astrophysics. He oversees a group at the lab that is preparing for research with the future Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) at the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF). The experiment will give scientists unprecedented opportunities to learn more about neutrinos – fundamental particles with mysterious properties that could play crucial roles in the evolution of the universe.

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Secretary of Energy Rick Perry visited the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory today, where he toured the site of a superconducting upgrade to the accelerator that powers the lab’s X-ray laser and met with employees in a town hall meeting.

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There’s a class of materials responsible for the chemistry we rely on to make fertilizer for crops, create prescription drugs and refine oil into gasoline. They’re called catalysts, and they speed up chemical reactions and steer the direction of the changes that happen during the transformation from one chemical compound to another. Despite the fact that many catalysts are commonly found in biology (these catalysts are called enzymes), the chemistries of most catalysts are still not fully understood because of their complexity.

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An international team of researchers is getting a clear look at the hidden text of the Syriac Galen Palimpsest with an X-ray study at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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Understanding strontium titanate’s odd behavior will aid efforts to develop materials that conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency at higher temperatures.

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Scientists have gained new insights into a fundamental mystery about hybrid perovskites, low-cost materials that could enhance or even replace conventional solar cells made of silicon.

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An award-winning mentor and networking guru, Al Ashley has placed thousands of underrepresented minority students in science and engineering summer research programs.

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An international, multidisciplinary team is using X-rays to reveal the hidden text of a medical manuscript by the ancient Greek doctor Galen that was written on parchment in the 6th century and scraped off and overwritten with religious text in the 11th century.

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In a recent study, researchers developed a new holographic method called in-flight holography. With this method, they were able to demonstrate the first X-ray holograms of nano-sized viruses that were not attached to any surface.

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Lithium ions have to travel through layers of molecules in the electrolyte liquid before they can enter or leave a lithium-ion battery electrode. Tweaking this process could help batteries charge faster.

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Menlo Park, Calif. —Scientists have turned the smallest possible bits of diamond and other super-hard specks into “molecular anvils” that squeeze and twist molecules until chemical bonds break and atoms exchange electrons. These are the first such chemical reactions triggered by mechanical pressure alone, and researchers say the method offers a new way to do chemistry at the molecular level that is greener, more efficient and much more precise.

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Forty-five years ago this month, a telescope tucked inside a 14-story, 500-ton dome atop a mile-high peak in Arizona took in the night sky for the first time and recorded its observations on glass photographic plates. Today, the dome closes on the previous science chapters of the 4-meter Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope and starts preparing for its new role in creating the largest 3-D map of the universe. This map could help determine why the universe is expanding at faster and faster rates, driven by an unknown force called dark energy.

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Twenty-four teams from 16 Bay Area high schools faced off Feb. 3 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.

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With a symposium on fundamental physics, the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory remembered one of its key figures: world-renowned theoretical physicist Sidney Drell, who passed away in December 2016. Nearly 200 guests attended the Jan. 12 event to celebrate Drell’s numerous scientific contributions, which continue to have a tremendous impact on our understanding of the subatomic world.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a way to triple the amount of power generated by the world’s most powerful X-ray laser. The new technique, developed at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), will enable researchers to observe the atomic structure of molecules and ultrafast chemical processes that were previously undetectable at the atomic scale.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are using X-ray light to observe and understand how the process of making metal parts using three-dimensional (3-D) printing can leave flaws in the finished product – and discover how those flaws can be prevented.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have seen for the first time how atoms in iron-platinum nanoparticles – a next-generation material for magnetic data storage devices – respond extremely rapidly to brief laser flashes. Understanding these fundamental motions could potentially lead to new ways of manipulating and controlling such devices with light.

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An area known for high-tech gadgets and innovation will soon be home to an advanced superconducting X-ray laser that stretches 3 miles in length, built by a collaboration of national laboratories. On January 19, the first section of the machine’s new accelerator arrived by truck at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park after a cross-country journey that began in Batavia, Illinois, at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

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Paul Dabbar, the Department of Energy Under Secretary for Science, visited SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Jan. 17 for a day of tours and discussions on how the lab is driving scientific innovation. His visit included meetings with SLAC and Stanford leadership, as well as researchers and scientists involved in the lab’s X-ray science, particle physics and astrophysics, technology innovation and applied energy programs.

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As the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory builds the next generation of powerful instruments for groundbreaking research in X-ray science, astronomy and other fields, its Computer Science Division is preparing for the onslaught of data these instruments will produce.

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When Sam Webb teaches, he shows that science is a part of everyday life. For him, it’s important that students learn science does not need to be intimidating. Webb is a staff scientist at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory. He started working at SSRL in the fall of 2001 as a postdoctoral researcher.

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Accelerator experts at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are developing ways to make the most powerful X-ray laser better than ever. They have created the world’s shortest X-ray pulses for capturing the motions of electrons, as well as ultra-high-speed trains of X-ray pulses for “filming” atomic motion, and have developed “smart” computer programs that maximize precious experimental time.

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Researchers from Stanford University, two Department of Energy national labs and the battery manufacturer Samsung created a comprehensive picture of how the same chemical processes that give cathodes their high capacity are also linked to changes in atomic structure that sap performance.

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A research team at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is using the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) to study an enzyme found in plants, bacteria and some animals that repairs DNA damage caused by the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) light rays.