Stanford researchers manage to put a particle accelerator on a silicon chip

In scientific pursuits, like the search for dark matter, researchers sometimes use high-power particle accelerators. But these giant machines are extremely expensive and only a handful of them exist, so teams must travel to places like the SLAC Natio...

X-ray lasers can spot elusive electron motion

Scientists can track the movements of an atom's nucleus relatively easily, but electrons have proven elusive -- they move so fast that they tend to be reduced to blurs. Now, however, those movements could be crystal clear. Researchers at the SLAC Nat...

This four-inch antenna could let you text from deep underground

There's a reason that scuba divers use sign language and that caves and tunnels create radio dead zones. The laws of physics prevent radio signals from penetrating materials like water, soil and stone, and that's been a frustrating limitation of mode...

Stanford’s new lab could make particle accelerators 1,000 times smaller

Particle accelerators have proven vital to understanding subatomic physics, but current technology tends to make them... rather large. And Stanford is determined to address that. SLAC has started assembling a new location, FACET-II (Facility for Adva...

Researchers look deeply within batteries to see why they explode

High-energy batteries, like the ones in your laptop and smartphone, can fail, which can cause them to overheat and even catch fire. A team of researchers used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) , a technique that won the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry...

Optical laser uses shockwaves to peer inside distant planets

Scientists at SLAC's National Accelerator Laboratory are able to peer even further into space thanks to an improved optical laser. The laser uses shockwaves to create high pressure conditions in materials, and the material's response is then captured...

ICYMI: The balloon bot that can actually stand upright

Today on In Case You Missed It: A scientist at UCLA's Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory is experimenting with a way to get around the fact that robots have a difficult time maintaining a high center of gravity, aka they always fall down; so he...