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.

Together with two long-time collaborators, he is recognized for work that helps us understand the strong nuclear force.

A man standing in front of a chalkboard.

By tinkering and troubleshooting, Aalayah Spencer helps turn researchers’ ideas into state-of-the-art science experiments.

Aalayah Spencer inside the Linac Coherent Light Source at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Spencer is a science and engineering associate in Experiment Control Systems at LCLS.
Scientists already knew the atoms in  perovskites,  a promising class of solar cell materials, react favorably to light. Now they can see precisely how those atoms move. A breakthrough in visualization supports their efforts to squeeze every possible drop of...
MeV-UED
News Feature · VIA Stanford Report

David Goldhaber-Gordon named AAAS Fellow

The SIMES investigator was cited for his singular contributions to quantum materials science.

Headshot of David Goldhaber-Gordon

If scaled up successfully, the team's new system could help answer questions about certain kinds of superconductors and other unusual states of matter.

A grayscale image showing the outlines of a complex electrical device.

Researchers discover that electrons play a surprising role in heat transfer between layers of semiconductors, with implications for next-generation electronic devices.  

UED electronic bridge
Chi-Chang Kao, a noted X-ray scientist and director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, recently announced that he will step down and return to research. We asked him to look back on his decade as director...
A man in a blue shirt and gray suit poses in front of a large scientific apparatus.

Researchers used cryo-EM (left) to discover how a chamber in human cells (right) directs protein folding. 

A pom-pom like object with curly tangles in purple and blue shades and yellow tangles at center, reminiscent of a zinnia blossom.

A polymer-based electrolyte makes for batteries that keep working – and don’t catch fire – when heated to over 140 degrees F. 

A white disc of battery material catches fire.

Once built, the system could produce fast X-ray pulses ten times more powerful than ever before.

illustration of an electron beam traveling through a niobium cavity – a key component of SLAC’s future LCLS-II X-ray laser.