https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory An instrument that uses high-energy electrons to take "snapshots" of ultrafast chemical processes at the atomic and molecular level just got a major upgrade. Researchers have conducted the first experiment using a new detector, installed in the megaelectronvolt ultrafast electron diffraction (MeV-UED) instrument, at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-detector-triples-electron-camera-enabling.html General Physics Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:00:03 EDT news694684441 In new research, scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers at Harvard University and Brigham Young University, used the Stanford-SLAC Cryo-EM Center to capture, for the first time, the formation of an immune signaling complex inside intact human cells. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-03-scientists-capture-early-stages-immune.html Tue, 31 Mar 2026 18:00:01 EDT news694191606 Researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and collaborating institutions recently built a generative AI model that can recreate molecular structures from the movement of the molecule's ions after they are blasted apart by X-rays, a technique called Coulomb explosion imaging. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-ai-rebuilds-molecules-fragments.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:00:05 EDT news693062161 To unlock materials of the future, including better photocatalysts or light-switchable superconductors, researchers need to understand how the valence electrons within materials respond to light at the atomic scale. Materials are made of atoms, and an atom's outer electrons, or valence electrons, are responsible for chemical bonding as well as a material's thermal, magnetic, and electronic properties. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-rays-optical-track-speedy-electrons.html Condensed Matter Wed, 11 Mar 2026 09:20:01 EDT news692437561 How do you keep a copper catalyst from losing its oomph? Just add a dusting of platinum, says a new study published in Nature Materials. A team of researchers, including scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, investigated a class of metal nanoparticles used as catalysts in major industrial processes. They found that adding a trace amount of platinum to copper nanoparticles greatly reduced an effect known as "sintering," which causes these catalysts to degrade over time. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-catalyst-atom.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 02 Mar 2026 19:00:01 EST news691685702 Harnessing the power of the sun holds the promise of providing future societies with energy abundance. To make this a reality, fusion researchers need to address many technological challenges. For example, fusion reactions occur within a superheated state of matter, called plasma, which can form unstable structures that reduce the efficiency of those reactions. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-ray-platform-images-plasma-instability.html General Physics Fri, 13 Feb 2026 12:57:49 EST news690209822 As the Dark Energy Survey (DES) releases its final results, we caught up with two physicists who've been involved in the project from its early days. In this Q&A, Josh Frieman, DES co-founder and associate laboratory director for fundamental physics at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Risa Wechsler, director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, discuss what the decade-long effort taught us and how it prepares us for the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory's 10-year mission to explore some of the universe's biggest mysteries. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-universe-experts-mysterious-cosmic-history.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Jan 2026 21:10:01 EST news688664261 Exciting electronic characteristics emerge when scientists stack 2D materials on top of each other and give the top layer a little twist. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-2d-materials-ultraclean-scalable-future.html Nanophysics Mon, 19 Jan 2026 16:12:30 EST news688061521 Taking images of tiny structures within cells is tricky business. One technique, cryogenic electron tomography (cryoET), shoots electrons through a frozen sample. The images formed by the electrons that emerge allow researchers to reconstruct the internal architecture of a cell in 3D with near-atomic resolution. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-tightening-focus-subcellular-snapshots-combined.html Cell & Microbiology Sat, 17 Jan 2026 15:20:01 EST news687712695 Superionic water—the hot, black and strangely conductive form of ice that exists in the center of distant planets—was predicted in the 1980s and first recreated in a laboratory in 2018. With each closer look, it continues to surprise researchers. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-simultaneous-superionic-ice-giant-magnetic.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:50:03 EST news687105907 Researchers from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), have designed innovative technology that can generate both high-energy and high-brightness electron bunches in an accelerator that is a fraction of the size of current particle accelerators. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-plasma-boosts-electron-energy-brightness.html General Physics Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:18:34 EST news686913481 Warm dense matter is a state of matter that forms at extreme temperatures and pressures, like those found at the center of most stars and many planets, including Earth. It also plays a role in the generation of Earth's magnetic field and in the process of nuclear fusion. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-materials-hotter-sun-surface-electricity.html Plasma Physics Fri, 19 Dec 2025 10:32:24 EST news685362721 Water is all around us, yet its surface layer—home to chemical reactions that shape life on Earth—is surprisingly hard to study. Experiments at SLAC's X-ray laser are bringing it into focus. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-enigmatic-surface-ray-snapshots-reveal.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 12 Dec 2025 10:58:14 EST news684759481 Viruses and their hosts—whether bacteria, animals, or humans—are locked in a constant evolutionary arms race. Cells evolve defenses against viral infection, viruses evolve ways around those defenses, and the cycle continues. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-newly-viral-enzymes-molecular-scissors.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 02 Dec 2025 15:20:02 EST news683910691 Soon, researchers may be able to create movies of their favorite protein or virus better and faster than ever before. Researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have pioneered a new machine learning method—called X-RAI (X-Ray single particle imaging with Amortized Inference)—that can "look" at millions of X-ray laser-generated images and create a three-dimensional reconstruction of the target particle. The team recently reported their findings in Nature Communications. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-11-machine-algorithm-rapidly-reconstructs-3d.html Computer Sciences Thu, 20 Nov 2025 16:49:23 EST news682879741 Alexander Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin in 1928 changed the world: Once-common bacterial infections, sometimes deadly, were treatable, and a slew of antibiotics followed. But bacteria have proven a wily adversary, adapting to resist antibiotic treatment. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-synchrotron-rays-candidate-antibiotic-resistance.html Biotechnology Mon, 15 Sep 2025 13:30:03 EDT news677159873 Valence electrons, located in the outermost shell of an atom, play an important role in driving chemical reactions and forming bonds with other atoms. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-ultrafast-ray-laser-tracks-motion.html Analytical Chemistry Thu, 21 Aug 2025 10:20:58 EDT news674990454 A team led by scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have generated a highly exotic type of light beam, called a Poincaré beam, using the FERMI free-electron laser (FEL) facility in Italy, marking the first time such a beam has been produced with a FEL. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-laser-advance-stage-ray-science.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 14 Aug 2025 11:15:03 EDT news674388901 With a suite of reimagined instruments at SLAC's LCLS facility, researchers see massive improvement in data quality and take up scientific inquiries that were out of reach just one year ago. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-ray-laser-toolkit-nature-mysteries.html General Physics Fri, 08 Aug 2025 11:16:17 EDT news673870572 Serendipitously and for the first time, an international research team led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory formed solid binary gold hydride, a compound made exclusively of gold and hydrogen atoms. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-scientists-gold-hydride-combining-hydrogen.html Materials Science Tue, 05 Aug 2025 07:35:06 EDT news673598099 Nematic materials are made of elongated molecules that align in a preferred direction, but, like in a fluid, are spaced out irregularly. The best-known nematic materials are liquid crystals, which are used in liquid crystal display (LCD) screens. However, nematic order has been identified in a wide range of systems, including bacterial suspensions and superconductors. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-nematic-magnetic-helices-echoing-liquid.html Condensed Matter Thu, 31 Jul 2025 14:19:29 EDT news673190364 Researchers taking the first-ever direct measurement of atom temperature in extremely hot materials inadvertently disproved a decades-old theory and upended our understanding of superheating. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-superheated-gold-entropy-catastrophe-method.html Condensed Matter Wed, 23 Jul 2025 12:25:24 EDT news672492313 Copper has many uses—in electrical wires, plumbing and even coins. With its abundance and relatively low price tag, copper has also long been used as a catalyst to speed up chemical reactions—notably water and carbon dioxide electrolysis, where copper serves as an electrode and catalyst for using electricity to produce fuels. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-ray-technique-durable-copper-capable.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 02 Jun 2025 08:47:05 EDT news668072816 Strontium titanate was once used as a diamond substitute in jewelry before less fragile alternatives emerged in the 1970s. Now, researchers have explored some of its more unusual properties, which might someday be useful in quantum materials and microelectronics applications. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-strained-strontium-titanate-membrane-ferroelectric.html Condensed Matter Thu, 29 May 2025 15:55:04 EDT news667752901 Catalysts facilitate crucial chemical reactions in nature and industry alike. In a subset of them, catalytic activity is triggered by light. For example, when iron pentacarbonyl—a molecule in which a central iron atom is surrounded by five carbon monoxide groups—is exposed to light, the iron sheds its carbon monoxide groups one after another, creating spots for other molecules to dock onto during a catalytic reaction. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-ultrafast-rays-capture-atomic-movements.html Analytical Chemistry Fri, 23 May 2025 09:43:04 EDT news667212182 Mitochondria turn the food we eat into the energy our cells can use. But when stress hijacks the process they use to maintain their quality, they get snipped into useless fragments and go into a tailspin that spreads from cell to cell and triggers a wide range of human diseases. As researchers learn more about the health impacts of rogue mitochondria, they've been searching for ways to prevent or treat them. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-sp11-molecule-reverses-mitochondrial-fragmentation.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 22 May 2025 11:29:04 EDT news667132141 Arianna Gleason is an award-winning scientist at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory who studies matter in its most extreme forms—from roiling magma in the center of our planet to the conditions inside the heart of distant stars. During Fusion Energy Week, Gleason discussed the current state of fusion energy research and how SLAC is helping push the field forward. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-qa-fusion-energy-power-grid.html Plasma Physics Thu, 08 May 2025 09:46:05 EDT news665916362 Ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules may be best known for their job ferrying the genetic information encoded in DNA to a cell's protein factories, but these molecules aren't just a middleman for protein production. In fact, some RNA molecules don't code for proteins at all and serve various other important functions in cells, such as regulating gene expression and catalyzing chemical reactions. However, the functions of many non-coding RNAs remain mysterious. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-large-protein-free-rna.html Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 06 May 2025 13:30:07 EDT news665756534 Copper is the most promising catalyst for turning carbon dioxide into valuable chemical feedstocks and liquid fuels through reactions that are driven by electricity. But those reactions are not as efficient or selective as they need to be, and the electrochemical reactors where they take place aren't sturdy enough for deployment on an industrial scale. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-04-evolution-copper-catalyst-co8322-valuable.html Energy & Green Tech Wed, 30 Apr 2025 11:06:04 EDT news665229961 Catalysts make our modern lives possible. By reducing the start-up energy needed for chemical reactions, they facilitate the production of fuels, plastics and textiles as well as vital water treatment processes. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-dedicated-beamline-slac-catalysis-community.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 22 Apr 2025 08:47:05 EDT news664530422