Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Scientists Get Real-Time Look Inside Spacecraft Heat Shields During Extreme Heat Conditions

Through a decade-long partnership between the ALS and NASA, researchers are studying how heat shield materials called superlight ablators degrade, informing NASA spacecraft design. Research at the ALS ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

A New Close-Up View of Electrons Inside Semiconductors

Researchers developed a powerful new methodology that combines direct imaging of electrons and defects in 2D semiconductors with theory-driven simulations that predict electron behavior and explain ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

LZ Sees Surprising Result in Search for Dark Matter

Dark matter is the mysterious substance that accounts for the vast majority of matter in our universe. LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a world-leading dark matter detector and specializes in searching for WIMPs, ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Planning a New Era of Discovery with the Upgraded Advanced Light Source

Scientists around the world use the focused beams of light generated by the Advanced Light Source (ALS) synchrotron to study molecules and materials with atomic precision — yielding fundamental ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Brighter Light, Sharper Science: Inside Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source Upgrade

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab) Advanced Light Source produces bright beams of light used to study materials and molecules down to the atomic level. A state-of-the-art upgrade ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Scientists Release Biggest 2D Map of the Universe

The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys combined more than 263,000 telescope exposures to make the largest 2D map of the universe in visible and near-infrared light. Astronomers can pair the Legacy Surveys ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Ice Ice Maybe: New Ways to Search for Frozen Water on the Moon

The new work presents an approach to find ice deposits hidden in the moon’s subsurface. The team studied the physics underlying how moon rocks respond to seismic waves. Their experiments showed a ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

New Electron Microscopy Tech Breaks into the Elusive Realm of Small Molecules

Adapted from an article by Robert Sanders at UC Berkeley. Nearly 100 years ago, a discovery revolutionized light microscopy. The introduction of the phase-contrast microscope, which garnered a Nobel ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Stacking Up for the Future: How Researchers Are Building Next-Gen Quantum Computers

Quantum computers have the potential to transform science, accelerating breakthroughs in drug development, cosmology, materials science, nuclear physics, and more. To make this future a reality, ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

DESI Completes Planned 3D Map of the Universe and Continues Exploring

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, one of the most extensive surveys of the cosmos ever conducted, finished all observations for its originally planned 3D map of the universe. Scientists use ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

How Researchers Are Driving Advances for Data Centers

Today’s technologies depend increasingly on computers and artificial intelligence — largely powered by data centers, which have become essential U.S. infrastructure. Over the past two decades, data ...
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

New Technique Sheds Light on Chemistry at the Bottom of the Periodic Table

Scientists at Berkeley Lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron developed a new technique for atom-at-a-time chemistry that opens up the next generation of heavy- and superheavy-element studies. This is the first time ...