A study led by researchers at SLAC and the University of California, Los Angeles has demonstrated a new, efficient way to accelerate positrons, the antimatter opposites of electrons. The method may help boost the energy and shrink the size of future linear particle colliders – powerful accelerators that could be used to unravel the properties of nature’s fundamental building blocks.

In 2019, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will revolutionize our understanding of supernovae. LSST is designed to collect more light and peer deeper into space than ever before. It will move rapidly across the sky and take more images in larger chunks than previous surveys. This will increase the number of supernovae we see by hundreds of thousands per year. - from Symmetry

Scientists have revealed never-before-seen details of how our brain sends rapid-fire messages between its cells. They mapped the 3-D atomic structure of a two-part protein complex that controls the release of signaling chemicals, called neurotransmitters, from brain cells. Understanding how cells release those signals in less than one-thousandth of a second could help launch a new wave of research on drugs for treating brain disorders.

It is possible that many of these new objects could be satellite galaxies of these larger satellite galaxies, which would be a discovery by itself. “That result would be fascinating,” said Risa Wechsler of SLAC. “Satellites of satellites are predicted by our models of dark matter. Either we are seeing these types of systems for the first time, or there is something we don’t understand about how these satellite galaxies are distributed in the sky.”

Researchers from SLAC and Stanford University have developed a manufacturing technique that could double the electricity output of inexpensive solar cells by using a microscopic rake when applying light-harvesting polymers. 

A new scientific instrument at SLAC  promises to capture some of nature’s speediest processes. It uses a method known as ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) and can reveal motions of electrons and atomic nuclei within molecules faster than a tenth of a trillionth of a second – information that will benefit groundbreaking research in materials science, chemistry and biology.

CalCharge announced several new members including Bosch, who will be the first CalCharge member to conduct energy storage research at SLAC.

Graham George and Ingrid Pickering have worked for decades, much of that time at SSRL,  to understand how contaminants in water and soil are taken up by the body and affect human health. Now they are co-leading a new study in Bangladesh that is testing whether giving people selenium supplements can protect them from arsenic poisoning caused by naturally contaminated drinking water.

In the early 1900s, there was no such concept of the age of the universe, says Stanford University associate professor Chao-Lin Kuo of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. “Philosophers and physicists thought the universe had no beginning and no end.” - from Symmetry

SUNCAT and SIMES researchers have received funding from Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project to support research related to generating renewable fuels.

Accelerator technology pioneered at SLAC is on its way to powering X-ray science in South Korea. On August 6, the lab shipped one of its unique radio-frequency amplifiers – an XL4 klystron – to Pohang Accelerator Laboratory, where it will become a key component for the optimal performance of a new X-ray free-electron laser under construction.

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