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Untangling a strange phenomenon that both helps and hurts lithium-ion battery performance

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

New research offers the first complete picture of why a promising approach of stuffing more lithium into battery cathodes leads to their failure. A better understanding of this could be the key to smaller phone batteries and electric cars that drive farther between charges.

Dark fiber lays groundwork for long-distance earthquake detection and groundwater mapping

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at Berkeley Lab have turned parts of a 13,000-mile-long testbed of 'dark fiber', unused fiber-optic cable, owned by the DOE Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) into a highly sensitive seismic activity sensor that could potentially augment the performance of earthquake early warning systems currently being developed in the western United States.

Machine-learning competition focuses on identifying sky objects for giant sky camera project

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

To help solve a big data program for a new telescope that will conduct a major sky survey of the from the high desert of Chile, a scientific collaboration launched a competition to find the best way to train computers to identify the many types of objects it will be imaging. Beat out researcher at Berkeley Lab beat out more than 1,000 participating teams to win the first phase of the competition.

How to escape a black hole: simulations provide new clues about powerful plasma jets

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New simulations led by researchers working at the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have combined decades-old theories to provide new insight about the driving mechanisms in plasma jets that allows them to steal energy from black holes' powerful gravitational fields and propel it far from their gaping mouths.

Journal: Physical Review Letters

Remastered 1964 films show origins of SLAC

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

A pair of 1964 films detailing the construction of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, later renamed SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, were recently remastered and are now available for viewing on YouTube thanks to a partnership between the films' producer, J. Douglas Allen, and the SLAC Archives, History & Records Office.

Berkeley lab pioneer in synchrotron techniques and tools receives DOE Secretary's Award

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Zahid Hussain, a longtime Berkeley Lab scientist, has received the DOE Secretary's Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his contributions to synchrotron science.

Scientists team up with industry to mass-produce detectors for next-gen cosmic experiment

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Chasing clues about the infant universe in relic light known as the cosmic microwave background, or CMB, Berkeley Lab scientists are devising more elaborate and ultrasensitive detector arrays to measure the properties of this light with increasing precision.

An effect that Einstein discovered offers new insight into a puzzling magnetic phenomenon

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Experiments at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have seen for the first time what happens when magnetic materials are demagnetized at ultrafast speeds of millionths of a billionth of a second: The atoms on the surface of the material move, much like the iron bar did. The work, done at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser, was published in Nature earlier this month.

Team discovers new way of switching exotic properties on and off in topological material

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

A weird feature of certain exotic materials allows electrons to travel from one surface of the material to another as if there were nothing in between. Now, researchers have shown that they can switch this feature on and off by toggling a material in and out of a stable topological state with pulses of light. The method could provide a new way of manipulating materials that could be used in future quantum computers and devices that carry electric current with no loss.

Study shows single atoms can make more efficient catalysts

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Scientists have their first direct, detailed look at how a single atom catalyzes a chemical reaction. The reaction is the same one that strips poisonous carbon monoxide out of car exhaust, and individual atoms of iridium did the job up to 25 times more efficiently than the iridium nanoparticles containing 50 to 100 atoms that are used today.

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