News archive

Browse the full collection of SLAC press releases and news features and stay up to date on the latest scientific advancements at the laboratory.

X-rays Pinpoint Drug Target for Bacteria that Affect Hundreds of Millions Worldwide

Image - Diagram of protein overlayed on microscope im...

Menlo Park, Calif. — An international group of scientists working at the Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has mapped a weak spot in the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness, pinpointing a promising new target for treating...

Image collage of Protein structure, diffraction pattern and tsetse fly involved in story

Menlo Park, Calif. — Time marches relentlessly forward for you and me; watch a movie in reverse, and you’ll quickly see something is amiss.

Illustration - Big letter "B"s change color to represent transforming B mesons

Menlo Park, Calif. — Researchers using the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have found a way to strip most of the electrons from xenon atoms, creating a “supercharged,” strongly...

Photo of the CAMP Chamber at LCLS

Astronomers using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have made the most accurate measurement of starlight in the universe and used it to establish the total number of stars that have ever shone, accomplishing a primary mission goal.

Image - Plot of blazars on top of a Fermi gamma-ray sky map

Chi-­Chang Kao, an associate laboratory director at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has been named as the lab's fifth director, Stanford University President John Hennessy announced today.

Headshot of Chi-Chang Kao

'Self-seeding' promises to speed discoveries, add new scientific capabilities

LCLS Self-Seeding Hardware Panorama (Photo by Matt Beardsley)

Menlo Park, Calif. — 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.

LCLS Charts Extreme Plasma Environments (Image courtesy of Sam Vinko, University of Oxford)

Laser probes microscopic components of air pollution

Simulated Soot Particles (Image by Duane Loh and Andy Freeberg, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

Menlo Park, Calif. — Recently analyzed data from the BaBar experiment may suggest possible flaws in the Standard Model of particle physics, the reigning description of how the universe works on subatomic scales.

Concept Art: B to D-Star-Tau-Nu