News archive

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

The team watched how a strained strontium titanate membrane crossed into ferroelectric – and quantum – territory. 

A gold beam bounces off an atomic lattice made of red and blue spheres.

He met with SLAC staff and toured the lab’s cutting-edge facilities, diving into world-leading research in X-ray and ultrafast science, artificial intelligence, astrophysics and more.

Secretary Wright Visit LCLS

Researchers aim to refine control room tools, improve training, and pave the way for smarter cooperation between humans and machines by studying how operators think and act under pressure.

Human in the loop

Leading researchers met at SLAC on Pellegrini’s 90th birthday to honor his ongoing scientific legacy and to explore the future of X-ray free-electron laser science.

An image of Claudio Pellegrini beside a schematic showing magnets in orange and an electron beam in green creating a blue beam of X-rays.

Using SLAC’s X-ray laser, the method revealed atomic motions in a simple catalyst, opening the door to study more complex molecules key to chemical processes in industry and nature.

Three molecules on a streaky red and blue background.

Oxidizing chemicals break this cellular power plant into useless bits, leading to  Parkinson’s disease, ALS, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and more. A small molecule could block the process.

Purple dots arranged in bunches.

A look inside the data processing infrastructure built by the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory to handle the Universe’s greatest data challenge.

Computer code, circles and data overlaid on an image of a red-orange nebula.

Rubin will observe more variable stars than ever before, enabling investigations into what drives their variation and mapping the outer limits of our galaxy.

An illustration of computers monitoring the output of a large telescope.

In this Q&A, Arianna Gleason discusses the technologies needed to make commercialized fusion energy a reality and how SLAC is advancing this energy frontier. 

Headshot of Arianna Gleason with graphic representation of a laser shot

Cryogenic electron microscopy showed for the first time that large RNA complexes can assemble without the help of proteins. 

Three complex, rainbow-colored molecules of various shapes.