SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Solid gold, interstellar comets, first science and magnetic forces. These are just some of the stories of SLAC this past month that you can catch up on in our monthly newsletter, Signals - out now! https://bit.ly/46yhUms

Using X-rays from SLAC and Berkeley Lab light sources, a team of researchers has discovered a new type of magnetic order that is inspiring new ideas for microelectronics. Nematic materials are made of elongated molecules that align in a preferred direction. The best-known nematic materials are liquid crystals, like those used in liquid crystal display (LCD) screens. But here, the alignment, or nematic phase, was found in special films of iron germanide. Results obtained with SLAC’s X-ray laser show how tiny magnetic coils can align over a surprisingly broad timescale. While this new exotic order needs further study, but the discovery could lead to future technology based on these tiny magnetic helices rather than conventional liquid crystals: https://lnkd.in/ge5teuGx

www.Happy #WorldWideWebDay! 🌐 The World Wide Web was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 at @CERN, as a way to make physics more accessible. But did you know America’s first web browser was hosted at SLAC? The U.S. web began here in 1991, on this computer. Originally purchased to run accelerator simulations, it started with a database of high-energy physics results and a SLAC phone and email directory. The computer was built by NeXT, a company launched by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

How do you intern? We have over 250 interns at SLAC this year, including 60 Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships! This #NationalInternDay we are recognizing our interns for everything they help us do.

Our LSST Camera, still in its commissioning phase, caught the interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS back in June - several days before its discovery was announced! This early testing data showcases the unprecedented observing power of the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

How did we build the world’s largest digital camera? 📷 Lead mechanical engineer for camera integration and testing, Travis Lange, explains as we pivot to operations at the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Join us at the upcoming #SLACPublicLecture August 7 at 7 p.m. PDT https://lnkd.in/gBGUuDhM

“I actually met Teller when I was a post-doc at Livermore… He took the time to attend a summer student seminar, something like a three-hour seminar, to hear from the students. Many people don’t know him for this.” Congratulations Siegfried Glenzer, winner of the 2025 Edward Teller Medal Award from the American Nuclear Society! The award recognizes his leading role in advancing capabilities that enabled the National Ignition Facility to successfully demonstrate fusion gain, as well as mentorship of the next generation of scientific leaders. He continues this work as the director of SLAC’s High Energy Density Division and in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “We want to develop fusion further, and support going to higher gain. In 10 years, we need to have the technology understood for a new fusion power plant. That’s a big ask, but we like the challenge.”

Upgraded X-ray Laser Science: Medical Applications SLAC is home to the world’s most advanced X-ray laser, and following its recent upgrades, scientists are now able to see how molecules evolve at the smallest, fastest scales imaginable better than ever before. Markus Guehr and his team are looking at xanthone — a powerful, versatile catalyst capable of activating bonds in chemical reactions and even selectively altering DNA. Until last year, our Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser produced 120 pulses of light per second, but after a groundbreaking upgrade we are working toward firing X-ray pulses up to 1 million pulses per second to generate enough data to capture movies of molecular transformations in unprecedented detail. When it comes to xanthone, it could lead to medical applications, including innovative cancer therapies. https://lnkd.in/gVGri4MJ

Happy Birthday Vera C. Rubin! ✨ The namesake for the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory was born #OTD in 1928. The observatory houses the world’s largest digital camera, built at SLAC. Vera Rubin’s photo was one of the first objects projected on the camera’s finished focal plane.

Researchers rapidly superheated solid gold (in trillionths of a second), which allowed the sample to maintain a solid state at more than 14 times its melting point. While it didn’t quite break the Second Law of Thermodynamics, their findings disproved a decades-old theory and upended our understanding of superheating: https://lnkd.in/g7drrvpS