Latest SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Stories

The first controlled studies of extremely hot, dense matter have overthrown the widely accepted 50-year old model used to explain how ions influence each other's behavior in a dense plasma. The results should benefit a wide range of fields, from research aimed at tapping nuclear fusion as an energy source to understanding the inner workings of stars. The study also demonstrates the unique capabilities of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser at the U.S. Department of Energy...

BELLA Laser Achieves One Pulse Per Second For World Record Power As Berkeley Lab’s laser plasma accelerator project BELLA nears completion, its drive laser has delivered one petawatt – a quadrillion watts – of peak power once each second, a world record for laser performance On the night of July 20, 2012, the laser system of the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA), which is nearing completion at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley...

Most electric cars, from the Tesla Model S to the Nissan Leaf, run on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries – a pricey technology that accounts for more than half of the vehicle's total cost. One promising alternative is the lithium-sulfur battery, which can theoretically store five times more energy at a much lower cost. But lithium-sulfur technology has a major drawback: After a few dozen cycles of charging and discharging, the battery stops working. "The cycle life of lithium-sulfur...

"For the first time we can actually see the structure of individual aerosol particles floating in air, their 'native habitat'," said DESY scientist Henry Chapman from the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) in Hamburg. "This will have important implications for various fields from climate modelling to human health." CFEL is a joint venture of Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, the German Max Planck Society and the University of Hamburg. Aerosol particles like soot play...

Laser probes microscopic components of air pollution Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have captured the most detailed images to date of airborne soot particles, a key contributor to global warming and a health hazard. The discovery reveals the particles' surprisingly complex nanostructures and could ultimately aid the understanding of atmospheric processes important to climate change, as well as the design of cleaner combustion...

For the first time, scientists have seen an X-ray-irradiated mineral go to two different states of matter in about 40 femtoseconds (a femtosecond is one quadrillionth of a second). Using the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray Free-Electron Laser (XFEL) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford, Stefan Hau-Riege of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and colleagues heated graphite to induce a transition from solid to liquid and to warm-dense plasma. Ultrafast phase...

Lee Rannals for RedOrbit.com The U.S. Department of Energy has given the go ahead for a proposed 3.4 billion pixel Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) to move on to the next step of development. Now that the project has received approval from the department, it will begin the engineering design, scheduling, and budgeting portion of the project. The telescope received a "Critical Decision 1" approval, making a big step toward being one of the widest, fastest and deepest view...

FAIRFAX, Va., April 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Analytic IT Services, LLC (GAITS) received an award from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory operated for the Department of Energy by Stanford University. The GAITS Team will provide Web Development and Technical Services at the SLAC lab in Menlo Park, CA. This marks the tenth DOE laboratory to which GAITS will provide quality IT services. The SLAC Web Development and Technical Services engagement is a firm-fixed price contract...

Researchers from Stanford University and the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created the first-ever system of "designer electrons" – exotic variants of ordinary electrons with tunable properties that may ultimately lead to new types of materials and devices. "The behavior of electrons in materials is at the heart of essentially all of today's technologies," said Hari Manoharan, associate professor of physics at Stanford and a member of SLAC's...

Discovery paves the way for new synthesis of antibiotics Researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used powerful X-rays to help decipher how certain natural antibiotics defy a longstanding set of chemical rules – a mechanism that has baffled organic chemists for decades. Their result, reported today in Nature, details how five carbon atoms and one oxygen atom in the structure of lasalocid, a natural antibiotic produced by...