Accelerators are far from achieving the highest energies their builders aspire to, but size and cost may limit the kinds of facilities funding agencies can support. In the future, new kinds of machines will be needed to make further progress. Perhaps the most promising is the laser plasma accelerator. Berkeley Lab’s BELLA project is the most advanced laser wakefield accelerator now under development.

From their humble beginnings as offshoots of the ordinary electric light bulb, particle accelerators have evolved in surprising directions. Among the most productive and promising developments have been light sources, first in the form of electron storage rings — of which the Advanced Light Source is the world’s premier source of soft x-rays — and increasingly as versatile and sophisticated free electron lasers, the next generation of light sources now being studied at Berkeley Lab.

At Berkeley Lab’s National Center for Electron Microscopy it was revealed that single-stranded DNA can disperse bundles of single-walled carbon nanotubes into individual tubes and serve as guideposts for synthesizing platinum nanoparticles onto these tubes

A first-of-its-kind computer simulation that mirrors real-world observations of methane bubbling up from a seabed in the Arctic Ocean provides further evidence that warming oceans may unleash vast quantities of methane trapped in hydrate deposits buried beneath the seafloor.

The Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment II (NDCX-II) now under construction at Berkeley Lab is an accelerator designed to create warm dense matter. The job required extensive computer modeling, including the animated simulations shown in this feature story.

Berkeley Lab scientists and engineers have helped build and successfully test a powerful new superconducting magnet for focusing intense proton beams during the next design phase of the Large Hadron Collider.

Scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry imaged the growth of protein-studded mineral surfaces with unprecedented resolution and provided a glimpse into how living systems engineer key structural materials.

Greenhouse gas measurements taken from aircraft and towers will help improve inventories of California’s emissions, which will help scientists verify the reductions mandated by ambitious legislation passed by California in 2006 to slash the state’s greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020.

In the span of a few minutes, scientists at Berkeley Lab’s National Center for X-ray Tomography can produce three-dimensional CAT scans of entire cells. The facility promises to expedite drug discovery and biofuels research.

As part of a Homeland Security study on the spread of airborne contaminants released in subway systems, Berkeley Lab researchers are measuring the flow of gas throughout tunnels and cars.