Lightsources
RSS Feed 
Scientists Make the First Molecular Movie of One of Nature’s Most Widely Used Light Sensors
The X-ray laser movie shows what happens when light hits retinal, a key part of vision in animals and photosynthesis in microbes. The action takes place in a trillionth of an eye blink.
X-Ray Laser Scientists Develop a New Way to Watch Bacteria Attack Antibiotics
The researchers observed how an enzyme from drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria damages an antibiotic molecule. The new technique provides a powerful tool to examine changes in biological molecules as they happen.
X-ray Laser Reveals Ultrafast Dance of Liquid Water
Water is more complicated than it seems. Now a study led by researchers at Stockholm University has probed the movements of its molecules on a timescale of millionths of a billionth of a second.
SLAC’s X-ray Laser Opens New View on Proteins Related to Alzheimer’s Disease
By placing the tiniest strands of proteins on one-atom-thick graphene, scientists capture promising X-ray laser images of these elusive biomolecules that play a key role in neurodegenerative diseases.
Scientists Find a New Way to Make Novel Materials by ‘Un-Squeezing’
Like turning a snowball back into fluffy snow, a new technique turns high-density materials into a lower-density one by applying the chemical equivalent of ‘negative pressure.’
X-Ray Scientists Create Tiny, Super-Thin Sheets of Flowing Water that Shimmer Like Soap Bubbles
The liquid sheets – less than 100 water molecules thick – will let researchers probe chemical, physical and biological processes, and even the nature of water itself, in a way they could never do before.
A SLAC Legend Gives the Lab His Lifetime Collection of Precious Foils
The foils, each made from a single chemical element, are used to calibrate X-ray equipment at SLAC’s SSRL synchrotron, and were donated by long-time user, Farrel Lytle.
SLAC Produces First Electron Beam with Superconducting Electron Gun
The new technology could allow next-generation instruments to explore the atomic world in ever more detail.
Tick, Tock on the ‘Attoclock’: Tracking X-Ray Laser Pulses at Record Speeds
When it comes to making molecular movies, producing the world’s fastest X-ray pulses is only half the battle. A new technique reveals details about the timing and energy of pulses that are less than a millionth of a billionth of a second long, which can be used to probe nature’s processes at this amazingly fast attosecond timescale.
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry Visits SLAC, Tours Site of X-ray Laser Upgrade
The DOE’s top official met with SLAC staff and toured the Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray laser, where a superconducting upgrade is underway.
