A study at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory suggests for the first time how scientists might deliberately engineer superconductors that work at higher temperatures.
Scientists have demonstrated that a promising technique for accelerating electrons on waves of hot plasma is efficient enough to power a new generation of shorter, more economical accelerators.
A comprehensive look at how tiny particles in a lithium ion battery electrode behave shows that rapid-charging the battery and using it to do high-power, rapidly draining work may not be as damaging as researchers had thought – and that the benefits of slow draining and charging may have been overestimated.
Scientists have married two unconventional forms of carbon – one shaped like a soccer ball, the other a tiny diamond – to make a hybrid that could channel electron flow in molecular electronic devices.
An experiment revealed a well-organized 3-D grid of quantum "tornadoes" inside microscopic droplets of supercooled liquid helium – the first time this formation has been seen at such a tiny scale.
Scientists have found a way to estimate uncertainties in computer calculations that are widely used to speed the search for new materials for industry, electronics, energy, drug design and a host of other applications.
DNA’s molecular building blocks absorb ultraviolet light so strongly that sunlight should deactivate them – yet it doesn’t. A new SLAC study reveals details of a “relaxation response” that protects these molecules and the genetic information they encode.
Scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have made the first structural observations of liquid water at temperatures down to minus 51 degrees Fahrenheit, within an elusive “no man’s land” where water’s strange properties are super-amplified.
By finding surprising similarities in the way immune system defenders bind to disease-causing invaders, a new study may help scientists develop new treatments.
Scientists have discovered a potential way to make graphene – a single layer of carbon atoms with great promise for future electronics – superconducting, a state in which it would carry electricity with 100 percent efficiency.
Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration have announced the first direct evidence supporting the theory of cosmic inflation. Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang."
An electrode designed like a pomegranate – with silicon nanoparticles clustered like seeds in a tough carbon rind – overcomes several remaining obstacles to using silicon for a new generation of lithium-ion batteries, say its inventors at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.