Dark matter is one of the most mysterious components of the universe.  Yet it makes up 23 percent of the mass of the universe – six times the mass of ordinary, atomic matter.  Physicists have never observed dark matter particles...

It would have been hard to predict Google, Facebook and Twitter as results of the creation of the first transistor out of a chunk of silicon. Only when looking back do we see ages of stone and iron, technological revolutions...

Developing cheaper and more efficient devices to harvest energy from the sun is a major scientific challenge. One way to increase the efficiency of solar cells ­– and even make solar cells out of otherwise inactive materials – is by...

On September 14, 2015, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) made the first direct measurement of a gravitational wave coming from deep space. That wave was generated by the collision of two black holes about 1.3 billion light-years from...

Batteries are needed everywhere, for consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and large-scale energy storage on the electrical grid. All of these applications are limited by the capacity, lifetime and safety of current battery technologies. This lecture discusses new chemistries and materials...

Imagine taking a ball of hot plasma more massive than the sun and suddenly compressing it to a super-dense object the size of a city. This sounds like science fiction, yet it is exactly what happens in the centers of...

The universe is full of giant structures like galaxies and clusters of galaxies. What holds them together? Over the past century, many diverse observations indicate that the glue holding these objects together is the gravitational pull of an invisible, elusive...

Since it began operation in 2009, SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) has allowed scientists to make new types of X-ray measurements that were once thought unattainable by delivering one trillion X-ray photons ­– particles of X-ray light – in...

Catalysts are the unsung heroes of chemistry: Widely used in industry, they speed up chemical reactions used to make everything from fertilizers to fuels to consumer products, and they do this by making those reactions much more efficient. Many important...

In less than two decades, scientists have discovered more than a thousand planets orbiting other stars. Now we know that our solar system is not alone ­-- but we still do not know if it is rare or unique. Most...