Events archive

Presented by Maria Elena Monzani. The nature and origin of dark matter are among the most compelling mysteries of contemporary science.

Presented by Sebastian Ellis. The nature of dark matter is one of the most captivating and fundamental open problems facing physicists today. Over many decades, we have collected overwhelming evidence for the existence of dark matter in the universe.

illustration bending a stream of dark matter

Particle accelerators are used every day in a wide range of scientific, medical and industrial applications. But did you know that the task of operating these machines is far from mundane? For example, for every experiment at SLAC’s X-ray laser...

stillframe public lecture super human operator

Giant planets can be up to 13 times the mass of Jupiter, while the least massive stars are about 80 times the mass of Jupiter. In between are objects called “brown dwarfs” – too massive to be called planets, but...

Presented by Sebastien Boutet. SLAC's X-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source, launched a new generation of light sources when it opened 10 years ago last month, with beams 10 billion times brighter than any before.

stillframe from public lecture video Seeing is Exploding

Presented by Christopher Tassone. Throughout human history, improvements in the structure of metals have been essential to the sharpness of swords and the strength of steel girders. Now we’d like to produce turbine blades and propellers with optimal shapes and...

Superconductors are materials in which electric current flows freely, without resistance. They are used to create the powerful magnetic fields needed to operate MRI machines and levitate high-speed trains, and have even served as building blocks for quantum computers. While...

At the center of the Earth, matter is crushed under pressures millions of times higher than we experience here on the surface. Pressures in the cores of stars and giant planets are even more extreme. To understand how the Earth...

stillframe for public lecture video about liquid diamonds

Presented by Wah Chiu. Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a revolutionary technology for making 3D images of the inner workings of cells in much higher resolution than ever possible before.

Presented by Eric Charles. A single gamma ray carries millions of times the energy of a single photon of visible light. This means that gamma rays are produced only in the most convulsive environments in the universe – pulsars spinning...

stillframe image from lecture titled 10 Years of Cosmic Fireworks with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

Who we are

SLAC science explained

Vera C. Rubin Observatory LSST

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Shocking to the Core: Adventures in Earth Science

A Sparkle in the Dark: The Outlandish Quest for Dark Matter

How to Bend a Stream of Dark Matter and Make it Shine

Super-Human Operator: Controlling Accelerators with Machine Learning

Brown Dwarfs: Failed Stars or Overachieving Planets?

Seeing is Exploding: Snapping Biological Images with X-ray Laser Blasts

3D Printing for Perfect Metal Parts

Making Waves in a Superconductor

Liquid Diamonds: New Materials at Pressures of the Earth’s Core

Cryo-EM: Amazing 3D Views of Life’s Molecular Machines

10 Years of Cosmic Fireworks with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope