Dark matter is one of the most mysterious components of the universe. Yet it makes up 23 percent of the mass of the universe – six times the mass of ordinary, atomic matter. Physicists have never observed dark matter particles...
Imagine taking a ball of hot plasma more massive than the sun and suddenly compressing it to a super-dense object the size of a city. This sounds like science fiction, yet it is exactly what happens in the centers of...
Batteries are needed everywhere, for consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and large-scale energy storage on the electrical grid. All of these applications are limited by the capacity, lifetime and safety of current battery technologies. This lecture discusses new chemistries and materials...
In less than two decades, scientists have discovered more than a thousand planets orbiting other stars. Now we know that our solar system is not alone -- but we still do not know if it is rare or unique. Most...
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the giant particle accelerator at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, will restart operations in 2015, at higher energies and intensities than ever before.
Since it began operation in 2009, SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) has allowed scientists to make new types of X-ray measurements that were once thought unattainable by delivering one trillion X-ray photons – particles of X-ray light – in...
From social media to market analysis, people use pattern recognition and machine learning to sift through enormous amounts of data and reach new levels of understanding. Now scientists are using those same tools to track millions of individual molecules as...
Presented by Debbie Bard. One of the most surprising predictions made by Einstein's theory of relativity is that light doesn't travel through the universe in a straight line. The gravitational field of massive objects will deflect the path of light...
Spacetime and quantum mechanics are the pillars of our modern understanding of fundamental physics. But there are storm clouds on the horizon indicating that these principles are approximate, and must be replaced with something deeper. The union of quantum mechanics...
Division Director of Structural Molecular Biology (SMB), Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL)
Areas of research: structural biology; X-ray crystallography; synchrotrons and X-ray free-electron lasers; COVID-19 research and drug discovery; protein dynamics; experimental automation
