SLAC Public Lectures Series

Black holes and galaxies: A love-hate relationship

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 7:30 PM

Black holes do not spend their lives alone in empty space. It is now known that at the center of almost every galaxy there is an enormous black hole, with a mass billions of times the mass of the sun. This black hole pulls in and sweeps away gas from the center of the galaxy. This coupling of the black hole and the galaxy causes the pair to evolve hand in hand. In the right circumstances it liberates huge amounts of energy, giving rise to the brightest objects in the universe. In this lecture, SLAC astrophysicist Silvia Bonoli will describe the torrid relationship of black holes and galaxies as each shapes the life of the other.

A Blueprint for New Fuel Cell Catalysts

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 7:30 PM

Glaciers are shrinking, gas prices are rising - so is our energy-hungry way of life doomed? We believe, no. Every day our sun provides us with more than enough energy, if only we can catch it and make it available. For cars of the future, fuel cells will be an essential part of the story, since they can generate electricity for super-efficient motors from clean fuels such as hydrogen or methanol. Current fuel cells must be improved, since they need too much of an expensive platinum catalyst to split oxygen molecules to burn the fuel. SLAC scientist Daniel Friebel has been shining brilliant X-rays from SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at platinum surfaces to understand their interaction with oxygen. He will explain how bond-breaking and bond-making in chemical reactions are facilitated by catalysts and how X-ray spectroscopy can probe these chemical processes. His experiments, together with quantum chemistry computations done at the SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, were used to create a blueprint for a new, highly active fuel cell catalyst that uses very small amounts of platinum in special atomic configurations.

Quantum Lightswitch: A New Direction in Ultrafast Electronics

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 at 7:30 PM

As electronics become faster and more powerful and the components of integrated circuits shrink, scientists are bumping up against the limitations imposed by fundamental physics, forcing them to invent new technologies. Today computer hard drives store information in tiny magnets, essentially, in the direction in which electrons spin. But there is a limit to how fast the spins of electrons can be flipped to process data. In a future generation of electronics, information could instead be stored and retrieved by changing how electrons orbit within the atoms of the material. In this lecture, SLAC's Dr. Joshua Turner will explain this concept of orbital electronics. He will discuss what electron orbitals are and how they might be used to access information in special materials. He will then describe experiments at SLAC X-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source, which will be able to demonstrate this idea, writing and reading out information thousands of times faster than what is possible with computers. Finally, he will explain the potential path from these fundamental experiments to technologies for a new class of electronic devices.

Supernova Shock Waves: Powerhouses of the Galaxy

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 7:30 PM

An exploding star, or supernova, is one of the most violent events in the universe, giving off a billion stars' worth of light. Even thousands of years later, the remnants of these explosions are among the most beautiful and mysterious objects in the cosmos--enormous balls of high-energy particles and strong magnetic fields, confined by the expanding shock wave from the original explosion. To understand the true nature of supernova remnants, scientists examine them in a wide range of wavelengths, from visible light to radio waves, X-rays and gamma rays. New observations with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope show how supernova remnants act as giant particle accelerators--much more powerful than the biggest ones on Earth--to produce the high-energy cosmic rays that fill the galaxy.

Saving the Mary Rose: Synchrotrons and the Preservation of a Tudor Warship

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at 7:30 PM

The Mary Rose, built in 1511, was the flagship of King Henry VIII. She sank in 1545 while en route to confront the French fleet in battle. The ship lay undersea for 440 years before being raised in 1985. The restored Mary Rose is being constantly treated to preserve the wood structure, but in 2002 a new problem arose that began rapidly destroying the ship. Studies of the relevant sulphur chemistry using X-rays from SLAC's SSRL synchrotron diagnosed the problem and suggested methods for its solution. One of these, tested by experiments at SSRL, involves specially made nanoparticles that attack the causes of the acid production. This lecture will present the amazing story of archeology, chemistry, and physics that preserves this precious artifact and gives us a glimpse back into Tudor times.

About the Speaker: Ritimukta Sarangi is a staff scientist in the Structural Molecular Biology group at SSRL, a subdivision of SLAC. She has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from St Xavier college in Kolkata, India, an MS in Chemistry from IIT Kanpur in India and a PhD in Chemistry from Stanford University. Her expertise is in hard X-ray spectroscopy. Her research focuses on understanding the geometric and electronic structure of metal sites in proteins. She is also deeply interested in applying X-ray spectroscopy to understand chemical processes involving sulphur compounds in biological and other complex materials.

In the Shadow of the HIGGS!

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 at 7:30 PM

This has been an exciting summer for particle physicists who have collectively spent the last forty years hunting for the Higgs boson. Last year, ATLAS and CMS, the two largest experiments analyzing collisions produced by the Large Hadron Collider, observed tantalizing hints of this elusive particle. On July 4th, the two collaborations unveiled their latest data and announced the independent discovery of a particle. It could be the Higgs, which has long cast its shadow, but never been seen. Has the Higgs particle finally been found? Are we just seeing fluctuations of the quantum foam, or perhaps another particle not yet anticipated? What will we learn from additional data in the coming years? In this talk Emanuel will provide context for the amazing interest which these questions have generated, and where we go from here.

About the Speaker:
Emanuel Strauss is an oft transplanted native of NYC. He joined SLAC as a Research Associate in 2009 after obtaining his PhD from the Stony Brook University. The research for his thesis, probing Electroweak interactions and searching for the Higgs, was performed with data from the now defunct Tevatron outside of Chicago, IL. Since 2010 he has been living in France, with a line of sight view of the complex where CERN smashes high-energy protons together. He is heavily involved in the operation of the trigger and data-acquisition system of the ATLAS experiment, and spends what time he has outside of the control room searching for the Higgs and atypical signatures of new physics.

Magnetic Movies: Watching Memory Bits Dance

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 7:30 PM

Movies allow us to experience and understand worlds we may never be able to visit. During this presentation Bill Schlotter will explain how to make movies of magnetic storage bits, which reside in our laptops and internet data centers and contain the world of information. Since these nanoscale bits switch from 0 to 1 and back again in millionths of a nanosecond, recording their activity requires the fastest movies ever made. We make these movies with ultrashort pulses of X-rays generated by the world's first hard X-ray laser at SLAC. Understanding what happens in magnetic storage devices becomes increasingly urgent as our appetite for smaller, faster mobile devices pushes the physics of data storage to its limits. Beyond magnetism, these movie-making capabilities will help us visit other important ultrafast scientific processes, such as solar energy conversion and chemical reactions.

Engineering Human Touch

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 7:30 PM

We humans interact with our physical environment through our senses of touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing. One of the great challenges in developing artificial intelligence and natural interfaces between humans and machines is finding ways to emulate those senses through electrical circuits. Great advances have been made in creating sensors that recognize sight and sound, but the sense of touch remains difficult to mimic. A realistic electronic skin must detect stimuli ranging from the gentlest touch to a firm grip, and do this with fine spatial resolution. After introducing the challenges of the field and reviewing current approaches, SLAC physicist Stefan Mannsfeld will describe a novel approach for making thin, flexible plastic pressure sensors with unprecedented sensitivity and responsiveness. He will show how the sensors are fabricated and how they work, and the prospect they give for creating an artificial sense of touch.

Printing Solar Cells for Greener Energy

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 7:30 PM

One of the greatest challenges humanity faces is finding a way to provide the world's population with clean energy. Since sunlight is our most abundant source of energy, solar cells, which absorb sunlight and create electricity, will become increasingly important over the next several decades. There have been great advances recently using silicon and thin films of semiconductors to make solar cells and solar electricity is just starting to become economically competitive. It is still important, however, to drop the costs further so that it will be possible to utilize even more solar energy. After providing an overview of the solar cell technologies that are currently commercially available, Professor McGehee will describe a relatively new approach that could make it possible to print solar cells in roll-to-roll coating machines similar to those used to make newspapers. Professor McGehee will show how solar cells can be made with organic semiconductors and explain how these cells work.

Chasing Super Bugs with Smarter Drug Design

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 7:30 PM

When our grandparents were young, there was no such thing as an antibiotic. Diseases like tuberculosis were invariably fatal. In the twentieth century, the fortuitous discoveries of penicillin from a mold and streptomycin from soil made a revolution in medicine. Today, we have even more powerful antibiotics, but also more powerful bugs evolving to outwit them. The large pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars seeking new antibiotics through trial and error searches. Now, at SLAC's X-ray source SSRL and other X-ray labs, we are learning to take the next step in drug discovery. With X-rays, we can see the structure of the proteins by which killer bugs do their damage. We can insert fragments of potential drugs and literally watch these grab the atoms by which the proteins act. And now, at SSRL, we can put this process into an assembly line to screen thousands of possible combinations of drug components. This lecture will describe these tools and the route they will give us to more powerful and effective medicines.

Deep Science: Mining for Dark Matter

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 7:30 PM

Astronomers infer that the universe contains huge amounts of a mysterious, invisible substance called "dark matter". To account for the structure of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the universe must contain six times more dark matter than ordinary atomic matter. We do not know what this stuff is made of. It should be composed of particles of some kind, and, if so, we should be able to see those particles streaming in from space. However, the particles must be very weakly interacting, so exotic methods are needed to make them visible. In this lecture, Sunil will present the evidence for dark matter. He will then describe some of the technologies that are now being used to search for dark matter particles. Among these, Sunil will present his own search experiment, one of the world's most sensitive, which uses ultra-pure crystals maintained at cryogenic temperatures in a deep underground laboratory.

Particle Accelerator on a Chip

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 7:30 PM

Accelerators are huge, expensive tubes sometimes miles long that produce high energies for smashing protons or making intense X-ray light. 21st-century technology has taken us from the room-sized ENIAC to microprocessors that fit in your pocket. Can the same be done for particle accelerators? Fiber optics or silicon crystals could be used to build particle pathways, with high-power lasers as the driver. In this lecture, Christopher McGuinness shows how scientists are using nanotech fabrication techniques at SLAC to build an accelerator on a chip.

Life Redefined: Microbes Built with Arsenic

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 7:30 PM

Life can survive in many harsh environments, from extreme heat to the presence of deadly chemicals. However, life as we know it has always been based on the same six elements -- carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulfur and phosphorus. Now it appears that even this rule has an exception.

In the saline and poisonous environment of Mono Lake, researchers have found a bacterium that can grow by incorporating arsenic into its structure in place of phosphorus. X-ray images taken at SLAC's synchrotron light source reveal that this microbe may even use arsenic as a building block for DNA. Please join us as we describe this discovery, which rewrites the textbook description of how living cells work.

Archaeopteryx: Bringing the Dino-Bird to Life

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 7:30 PM

Some 150 million years ago, a strange creature died in a tropical lagoon that today is located in Bavaria, Germany. In 1861, a single feather of this creature was discovered. Not long afterward, a complete fossil was found with the same bird-like feathers but dinosaur-like anatomical features. Darwin had just published "On the Origin of Species"; could this be the missing link that Darwin's supporters hoped to find? Recently, two of the now eleven discovered Archaeopteryx fossils, and that first feather, were brought to SLAC, where, using the intense X-ray beam, researchers searched for the chemical remains of the original living creatures. Please join us for this lecture, which will explain how the studies attempt to bring the original dino-bird back to life.

Smashing Protons: First Physics at the LHC

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 7:30 PM

The Large Hadron Collider, at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, is the largest scientific instrument ever built. For nearly a year now, we have been smashing protons into each other with unprecedented energy, allowing us to peer into nature's most intimate depths. The world's largest and most complex cameras take snapshots of these collisions millions of times per second. These pictures reveal the smallest components of the universe - the quarks and gluons - and, someday, we hope, the elusive Higgs boson. Why do we need to build such an enormous machine in order to study particles more than a million times smaller than a speck of dust? This lecture will explain how the LHC and its detectors work, what the pictures from the LHC are telling us now, and how we will use this technology to explore the deepest secrets of the universe.

Leading the Charge:Exotic New Materials for Future Devices

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 7:30 PM

How will we improve computer technology to create chips that are smaller, faster, and more efficient? For leaps in performance, we need to create new types of semiconductors. In this lecture, the speaker will describe a new class of materials -- the "topological insulators" -- that achieve robust performance by tying the paths of electrons in knots. These materials arose from a bold theoretical proposal that was recently verified by X-ray experiments at SLAC. THe speaker will describe the special properties of these materials and the promise for their applications.

Ultimate Atomic Bling: Nanotechnology of Diamonds

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 7:30 PM

Diamonds exist in all sizes, from the Hope Diamond to minuscule crystals only a few atoms across. The smallest of these diamonds are created naturally by the same processes that make petroleum. Recently, researchers discovered that these "diamondoids" are formed in many different structural shapes, and that these shapes can be used like LEGO blocks for nanotechnology. This talk will discuss the discovery of these nano-size diamonds and highlight current SLAC/Stanford research into their applications in electronics and medicine.

Deep Secrets of the Neutrino: Physics Underground

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 7:30 PM

Among the many beautiful, unexpected and sometimes revolutionary discoveries to emerge from subatomic physics, probably none is more bizarre than an elementary particle known as the "neutrino". More than a trillion of these microscopic phantoms pass unnoticed through our bodies every second, and indeed, through the entire Earth - but their properties remain poorly understood. In recent years, exquisitely sensitive experiments, often conducted deep below ground, have brought neutrino physics to the forefront. In this talk, we will explore the neutrino - what we know, what we want to know, and how one experiment in a New Mexico mine is trying to get there.

Molecules in the Spotlight

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 7:30 PM

SLAC has just unveiled the world's first X-ray laser, the LCLS. This machine produces pulses of X-rays that are ten billion times brighter than those from conventional sources. One of the goals of this machine is to make movies of chemical reactions, including reactions necessary for life and reactions that might power new energy technologies. This public lecture will show the first results from the LCLS. As a first target, we have chosen nitrogen gas, the main component of the air we breathe. Using the unprecedented power of the LCLS X-rays as a blasting torch, we have created new forms of this molecule and with unique electronic arrangements. Please share with us the first insights from this new technology.

ZAP! The X-Ray Laser is Born

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 7:30 PM

SLAC has converted its giant particle accelerator into the world's first X-ray laser. By a billion fold the world's brightest X-ray source, the laser packs a trillion photons into pulses as short as a millionth of a billionth of a second. The ultra-bright, ultra-short X-ray pulses will drive a wide range of new experiments, as scientists strip electrons from atoms, photograph single molecules and make movies of chemical reactions.

How has SLAC accomplished such feats of X-ray wizardry? Attend this public lecture to learn about the basics of an X-ray laser, the technologies at SLAC that make it possible, and the exciting new experiments now underway.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 7:30 PM

The deeper we go into the Earth, the higher the pressure. At the pressures found within the center of our planet, minerals do not simply compress. Pressure dramatically alters all materials properties, in the process creating numerous novel phases not found on the surface. This lecture will describe how we simulate the conditions found in planetary interiors in the lab, what kinds of new behavior we find, and how these observations can explain what is going on within the Earth. High pressure explorations also lead to discoveries of novel materials with potential for practical applications in our low-pressure, environment.

Cosmic Accelerators: Engines of the Extreme Universe

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 7:30 PM

The universe is home to numerous exotic and beautiful phenomena, some of which can generate almost inconceivable amounts of energy. While the night sky appears calm, it is populated by colossal explosions, jets from supermassive black holes, rapidly rotating neutron stars, and shock waves of gas moving at supersonic speeds. These accelerators in the sky boost particles to energies far beyond those we can produce on earth. New types of telescopes, including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbiting in space, are now discovering a host of new and more powerful accelerators. Please come and see how these observations are revising our picture of the most energetic phenomena in the universe.

Angels and Demons: The Science Behind the Scenes

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 7:30 PM

Does antimatter really exist? How and why do scientists produce and use it? Does CERN exist and is there an underground complex deep beneath the Swiss/French border? Is truth stranger than fiction? Find out at the coming public lecture.

On Tuesday, May 12, SLAC physicist Norman Graf will discuss the real science behind Angels & Demons, Dan Brown's blockbuster novel and the basis of an upcoming Tom Hanks movie. Graf's' talk is one in a series of public lectures across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico to share the science of antimatter and the Large Hadron Collider, and the excitement of particle physics research.

Black Holes, the Brightest Objects in the Universe

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 7:30 PM

Black holes are everywhere in the Universe. They form when massive stars end their life in a simultaneous violent collapse and energetic explosion. Galaxies end up littered with small black holes, each roughly the mass of ten Suns. Nearly every galaxy center ends up with a single huge black hole, with the mass of a million to a billion Suns. During their lifetimes, black holes chew up their surroundings and spew out ultra-energetic beams of radiation and matter that are visible from across the Universe. In this lecture, I will discuss how black holes form, outline how we detect them, and show movies that illustrate how they work according to Einstein and state-of-the-art computer simulations. We will see that these blackest of all objects in the Universe actually shine the brightest.

Water: The Strangest Liquid

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 7:30 PM

Water, H2O, is familiar to everyone - it shapes our bodies and our planet. But despite its abundance, water has remained a mystery, exhibiting many strange properties that are still not understood. Why does the liquid have an unusually large capacity to store heat? And why is it denser than ice? Now, using the intense X-ray beams from particle accelerators, investigations into water are leading to fundamental discoveries about the structure and arrangement of water molecules. This lecture will elucidate the many mysteries of water and discuss current studies that are revolutionizing the way we see and understand one of the most fundamental substances of life.

Big Machines and Big Science: 80 Years of Accelerators at Stanford

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 7:30 PM

In this public lecture, longtime SLAC physicist Greg Loew will present a trip through SLAC's origins, highlighting its scientific achievements, and provide a glimpse of the lab's future in "Big Machines and Big Science: 80 Years of Accelerators at Stanford."

ANTIMATTER: What is it and where did it go?

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 at 7:30 PM

In this public lecture we will explore the mystery of antimatter: Where did it go? Why is the universe made up of only matter, with no observable antimatter? And why does the universe have any matter left in it anyway? The SLAC "B"-Factory was built to answer these questions. Over the last decade, almost a billion "B"-mesons were created and studied at the B-Factory to search for subtle differences between matter and antimatter, differences that lie at the heart of the antimatter mystery. We will explain the matter-antimatter discoveries made at the B-Factory, and their connection to this year's Nobel prize in physics. It does not matter if you have no prior knowledge of Antimatter; just bring your curiosity.

How Plants Do it: Light, Oxygen, Action!

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Plants have been doing it with ease for millions of years, and yet science has yet to fully comprehend how: Photosynthesis. It's a fundamental process of all plant life on Earth, using the simple and abundant ingredients of water and light to create food and enrich the planet's atmosphere with life-giving oxygen. In this talk, Professor Yachandra discusses how understanding the process of photosynthesis holds the key to a whole new level of mastery of how energy is produced, with enormous implications for the economy and the environment.

The Mysteries of Diamonds: Bizarre History, Amazing Properties, Unique Applications

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Diamonds have been a prized material throughout history. They are scarce and beautiful, wars have been fought over them, and they remain today a symbol of wealth and power. Diamonds also have exceptional physical properties which can lead to unique applications in science. There are now techniques to artificially synthesize diamonds of extraordinarily high quality. In this talk, Professor Kagan will discuss the history of diamonds, their bizarre properties, and their manufacture and use for 21st century science.

Cosmic Dawn: The First Star in the Universe

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 7:30 PM

What was the first thing in the Universe? A black hole or a star? How did it form? Even our biggest and best telescopes cannot tell us. Direct calculation with supercomputers, however, can. The first luminous objects in the Universe were very massive stars shining one million times as brightly as our sun. They died quickly and seeded the cosmos with the chemical elements necessary for life. One star at a time, galaxies started to assemble just one hundred million years after the Big Bang, and they are still growing now. Join Dr. Abel in a fascinating journey through the early universe, where he uses the latest computer animations of early star formation, supernovae explosions and the buildup of the first galaxies.

From Atoms to Animals: The Vital Force in Biology

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Perhaps the most significant event in intellectual history has occurred over the past several decades, a convergence of the sciences, a blurring of the distinctions between disciplines, from physics to chemistry to biology. Fundamental questions about human existence have been answered in chemical terms. What brings matter to life? What are our origins? What is the basis of cognitive activity? These and related questions have been a fertile area for philosophy and nonscientific analysis. The long history of such alternative approaches persists to this day.

Life chemistry is explained by protein catalysts, in their simplest form known as enzymes, and in their full complexity, referred to as molecular machines. An example of great significance is the so-called transcription machinery, which reads out the genetic code, to direct the formation and function of all living things. The atomic structure of the transcription machinery was determined at Stanford, with the use of intense X-ray beams and facilities at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory at SLAC. The result is an image of this complex machinery in action, bringing genetic information to life.

Hunting the Elusive Higgs Boson and the Origin of Mass

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 7:30 PM

For over 40 years, physicists have been trying to track down a hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson. This particle could explain how known elementary particles like the electron can have mass, and also why one of the basic forces, the weak interaction, is in fact so incredibly weak. However, the Higgs boson has escaped detection so far, even at the most powerful particle accelerators. The next big chance to "bag" this particle will come when the Large Hadron Collider turns on next year. Will the Higgs boson finally be found? Or will an unexpected explanation for these mysteries be revealed?

Dark Energy. What the ...?

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 7:30 PM

What is the Universe made of? This question has been asked as long as humans have been questioning, and astronomers and physicists are finally converging on an answer. The picture which has emerged from numerous complementary observations over the past decade is a surprising one: most of the matter in the Universe isn't visible, and most of the Universe isn't even made of matter. In this talk, I will explain what the rest of this stuff, known as "Dark Energy" is, how it is related to the so-called "Dark Matter", how it impacts the evolution of the Universe, and how we can study the dark universe using observations of light from current and future telescopes.

The Dark Side of the Universe

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 7:30 PM

One of the greatest accomplishments in recent astrophysics is the creation of a model for the complete inventory of the Universe. All the observational data tells us with extremely high certainty that ordinary matter (every particle ever detected by every person who ever lived) makes up only one fifth of all the matter there is. The rest goes by the popular name of dark matter. Because it is dark, dark matter has been notoriously hard to detect; it doesn't emit or reflect radiation such as light or heat, and it can have only the feeblest of interactions with itself and ordinary matter. So how do we know it is there? In this talk, I will discuss how astronomers observe the invisible matter in one of the true gems on the sky: a giant cluster of galaxies.

The Large Hadron Collider: Redefining High Energy

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 7:30 PM

Particle physicists have a description of the forces of nature known as the Standard Model that has successfully withstood decades of testing at laboratories around the world. Though the Standard Model is powerful, it is not complete. Important details like the masses of particles are not explained well, and realities as fundamental as gravity, dark matter, and dark energy are left out altogether.

I will discuss gaps in the model and why there is hope that some puzzles will be solved by probing high energies with the Large Hadron Collider. Beginning next year, this machine will accelerate protons to record energies, hurling them around a 27 kilometer ring before colliding them 40 million times per second. Detectors the size of five-story buildings will record the debris of these collisions. The new energy frontier made accessible by the Large Hadron Collider will allow thousands of physicists to explore nature's fundamental forces and particles from a fantastic vantage point.

Robots: Fantasy and Reality

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at 7:30 PM

A irreverent non-technical review of the history of surprisingly animate machines, from ancient Egypt to current times. Areas include teleoperators for hazardous environments, assembly systems, medical applications, entertainment, and science fiction. The talk has over 100 slides, covering such varied topics as Memnon son of Dawn, Droz's automata, Vaucanson's duck, cathedral clocks, Von Kempelen's chess player, household robots, Asimov's laws, Disneyland, dinosaurs, and movie droids and cyborgs.

Hydrogen: Fueling the Future

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 7:30 PM

As our dependence on foreign oil increases and concerns about global climate change rise, the need to develop sustainable energy technologies is becoming increasingly significant. Worldwide energy consumption is expected to double by the year 2050, as will carbon emissions along with it. This increase in emissions is a product of an ever-increasing demand for energy, and a corresponding rise in the combustion of carbon containing fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas. Undisputable scientific evidence indicates significant changes in the global climate have occurred in recent years. Impacts of climate change and the resulting atmospheric warming are extensive, and know no political or geographic boundaries. These far-reaching effects will be manifested as environmental, economic, socioeconomic, and geopolitical issues.

Offsetting the projected increase in fossil energy use with renewable energy production will require large increases in renewable energy systems, as well as the ability to store and transport clean domestic fuels. Storage and transport of electricity generated from intermittent resources such as wind and solar is central to the widespread use of renewable energy technologies. Hydrogen created from water electrolysis is an option for energy storage and transport, and represents a pollution-free source of fuel when generated using renewable electricity. The conversion of chemical to electrical energy using fuel cells provides a high efficiency, carbon-free power source. Hydrogen serves to blur the line between stationary and mobile power applications, as it can be used as both a transportation fuel and for stationary electricity generation, with the possibility of a distributed generation energy infrastructure. Hydrogen and fuel cell technologies will be presented as possible pollution-free solutions to present and future energy concerns. Recent hydrogen-related research at SLAC in hydrogen production, fuel cell catalysis, and hydrogen storage will be highlighted in this seminar.

Making Molecular Movies: 10,000,000,000,000 Frames per Second

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 7:30 PM

Movies have transformed our perception of the world. With slow motion photography, we can see a hummingbird flap its wings, and a bullet pierce an apple. The remarkably small and extremely fast molecular world that determines how your body functions cannot be captured with even the most sophisticated movie camera today. To see chemistry in real time requires a camera capable of seeing molecules that are one ten billionth of a foot with a frame rate of 10 trillion frames per second! SLAC has embarked on the construction of just such a camera. Please join me as I discuss how this molecular movie camera will work and how it will change our perception of the molecular world.

The Violent Universe

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 at 7:30 PM

In this talk, Eduardo do Couto e Silva will explain that while the night sky appears calm, it is in fact populated by colossal explosions and cosmic conflagrations. In 1967, a US satellite monitoring nuclear explosions suddenly recorded a huge burst of energy coming from space. No one had any idea of what this could be, nothing like this had ever been seen before. The extraordinary power of this event, since named a gamma-ray burst, signaled that there were vast explosions taking place out in the universe and the hunt was on to find an explanation. Equally amazing in their power and their influence are supernova explosions. The collapse of massive stars make for some of the most dramatic of all events in our universe and Dr. do Couto e Silva will explain that not only are they dramatic but they have been essential to the creation of life on earth.

A Comet on Earth: Results from the Stardust Mission

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 at 7:30 PM

The Stardust mission returned from a 6-year voyage in January of 2006. During the mission it swept through the tail of comet Wild 2 (pronounced Vilt), collecting the microscopic particles streaming from it. These particles were collected in a very low density material called aerogel. The satellite then took 2 years to return to Earth. The payload, jettisoned from the satellite, re-entered the atmosphere and gently landed in the Utah desert. Since January researchers have started the process of extracting the particles from the aerogel and using an extensive array of techniques to measure such things as elemental and isotopic abundance, mineralogy and petrology. We at SLAC have been using an X-ray Microprobe to determine the amount of different elements that are present in these particles. Please join us for a preliminary look at the results of the Stardust mission.

Whispers of the Big Bang

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 at 7:30 PM

The faint radio signal that fills our universe is the echo of the beginning of the universe. This signal, called the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, was first detected by accident in 1964 but has since been measured in detail by a number of experiments. These measurements provide a rich information set that enables us to determine how the universe began, how galaxies formed and what the eventual fate of the universe might be. I will describe how these observations are made, what we have learnt from them and what we expect to learn from future experiments.

Space: The Hunt for Hidden Dimensions

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 7:30 PM

Extra dimensions of space may be present in our universe. Their discovery would dramatically change our view of the cosmos and would prompt many questions. How do they hide? What is their shape? How many are there? How big are they? Do particles and forces feel their presence?

This lecture will explain the concept of dimensions and show that current theoretical models predict the existence of extra spatial dimensions which could be in the discovery reach of present and near-term experiments. The manner by which these additional dimensions reveal their existence will be described. Searches for modifications of the gravitational force, astrophysical effects, and collider signatures already constrain the size of extra dimensions and will be summarized. Once new dimensions are discovered, the technology by which the above questions can be answered will be discussed.

Arsenic: The Silent Killer

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 7:30 PM

Andrea Foster uses x-rays to determine the forms of potentially toxic elements in environmentally-important matrices such as water, sediments, plants, and microorganisms. In this free public lecture, Foster will discuss her research on arsenic, which is called the silent killer because dissolved in water, it is colorless, odorless, and tasteless, yet consumption of relatively small doses of this element in its most toxic forms can cause rapid and violent death.

Arsenic is a well-known poison, and has been used as such since ancient times. Less well known is the fact that much lower doses of the element, consumed over years, can lead to a variety of skin and internal cancers that can also be fatal. Currently, what has been called the largest mass poisoning in history is occurring in Bangladesh, where most people are by necessity drinking ground water that is contaminated with arsenic far in excess of the maximum amounts determined to be safe by the World Health Organization.

This presentation will review the long and complicated history with arsenic, describe how x-rays have helped explain the high yet spatially variable arsenic concentrations in Bangladesh, discuss the ways in which land use in Bangladesh may be exacerbating the problem, and summarize the impact of this silent killer on drinking water systems worldwide.

Archimedes: Accelerator Reveals Ancient Text

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 at 7:30 PM

Archimedes (287-212 BC), who is famous for shouting 'Eureka' (I found it) is considered one of the most brilliant thinkers of all times. The 10th-century parchment document known as the "Archimedes Palimpsest" is the unique source for two of the great Greek's treatises. Some of the writings, hidden under gold forgeries, have recently been revealed at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory at SLAC. An intense x-ray beam produced in a particle accelerator causes the iron in original ink, which has been partly erased and covered, to send out a fluorescence glow. A detector records the signal and a digital image showing the ancient writings is produced. Please join us in this fascinating journey of a 1,000-year-old parchment from its origin in the Mediterranean city of Constantinople to a particle accelerator in Menlo Park.

Neutrinos Get Under Your Skin

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 at 7:30 PM

The enigmatic neutrinos are among the most abundant of the tiny particles that make up our universe. They are a billion times more abundant than the particles of which the earth and we humans are made. Thus, to understand the universe, we must understand the neutrinos. Moving ghostlike, almost invisibly, through matter, these particles are very hard to pin down and study. However, dramatic progress has recently been made.

In this lecture, the neutrinos will be introduced. Their behavior, so different from that of everyday objects, will be explained, and recent discoveries will be described. The open questions about neutrinos, forthcoming attempts to answer these questions, and the role of neutrinos in shaping the universe and making human life possible, will all be explained.

LCLS: Ultrafast Science

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, June 28, 2005 at 7:30 PM

Everyone knows that lasers can be bright. From Goldfinger to Star Wars, intense lasers carry a "death ray" reputation in popular culture. But what is intense light, anyway? How can you even make or direct something that will blast to smithereens any material that it encounters? And how can something as ephemeral as a ray of light turn into an irresistible force? Is there an ultimate intensity, a brightest light? We'll answer these questions, and more.

Smarter Drugs: How Protein Crystallography Revolutionizes Drug Design

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at 7:30 PM

According to Smith, protein crystallography allows scientists to design drugs in a much more efficient way than the standard methods traditionally used by large drug companies, which can cost close to a billion dollars and take 10 to 15 years. "A lot of the work can be compressed down," Smith said. Protein crystallography enables researchers to learn the structure of molecules involved in disease and health. Seeing the loops, folds and placement of atoms in anything from a virus to a healthy cell membrane gives important information about how these things work - and how to encourage, sidestep or stop their functions. Drug design can be much faster when the relationship between structure and function tells you what area of a molecule to target.

Smith will use a timeline to illustrate the traditional methods of drug development and the new ways it can be done now. "It is very exciting work. There have been some failures, but many successes too." A new drug to combat the flu was developed in a year or so. Smith will tell us how. He will also highlight drugs developed to combat HIV, Tuberculosis, hypertension and Anthrax.

Profiling the Invisible: Quantum Mechanics and the Unseen Universe

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 at 7:30 PM

When we explore Nature at distances much smaller than the size of an atom, we find new and mysterious physical principles. At such small sizes, particles are governed by "quantum theory". Quantum theory tells us that some aspects of particle motion cannot be known as a matter of principle. This is a challenge to those of us who would like to do experiments to understand how these particles behave. Fortunately, quantum theory, for all its uncertainty, has its own logic. It predicts patterns in the subatomic world that hold definite information and can be measured to high precision. In this lecture, I will explain how we use these patterns in experiments with high energy particles to learn about the nature of the subnuclear forces and about the structure of the universe.

Physical Attraction: The Mysteries of Magnetism

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 at 7:30 PM

Most people have intuitive associations with the word "magnetism" based on everyday life: refrigerator magnets, the compass, north and south poles, or someone's "magnetic personality". Few people, however, realize how complicated the phenomenon really is, how much research still deals with the topic today, and how much it penetrates our modern industrialized world - from electricity, wireless communication at the speed of light to magnetic sensors in cars and data storage in computers. Stohr's lecture will provide a glimpse at the magic and science behind magnetism: its long history, scientific breakthroughs in its understanding, and its use in our modern society. In the process Stohr will show how research at SSRL/SLAC is addressing some of the forefront issues in magnetism research and technology today.

The Runaway Universe

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 at 7:30 PM

The Universe appears to be flat, accelerating and lightweight. In this talk, I will explain what these terms mean, how we developed this view and its implications. I will also discuss the connection between cosmology and particle physics experiments being conducted at accelerators and in underground laboratories. I will conclude with a description of some proposed telescopes that will help us understand much more about the geometry, expansion and contents of our Universe.

Metals, Molecules, Life and Death

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 at 7:30 PM

In our normal everyday lives we are exposed to an incredibly complex chemical soup consisting of an enormous variety of different chemical compounds. Many of these compounds contain metal atoms which, once inside us, can either fulfill roles that are essential to health, or act as poisons. Studies at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) reveal the molecular details of metals in living systems; how they interact with one another, how they confer beneficial properties, and how they act as poisons.

Our Lopsided Universe: The Matter with Anti-Matter

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 at 7:30 PM

Half of our universe appears to be missing, and scientists at SLAC and all over the world are trying to understand why. Don't miss this talk in which Steve Sekula will explain the core issues surrounding matter and anti-matter.

Synchrotron Radiation: The Light Fantastic

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 at 7:30 PM

What happens when scientists and engineers suddenly have access to an x-ray source that is one million times more intense than anything they have used before? The answer is A REVOLUTION, much like that which resulted from the introduction of lasers and high speed computers. Herman Winick will discuss how such intense beams of short wavelength light, or x-rays, are produced by high energy electron accelerators at SLAC and 50 other laboratories around the world, and the profound impact that they are having on many areas of basic and applied research. Particular examples include the use of these x-rays to unravel the mysteries of protein function (leading to new drugs to combat disease) and understand the nature of toxic contaminants in soil and water (leading to remediation strategies).

All About SLAC: What Goes On In the World's Longest Building

Date of Lecture: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 at 7:30 PM

Ever wonder what goes on behind SLAC's doors? Here is your chance to find out what SLAC is all about: the research, the facilities, and the people that make this world-class research institute what it is today.