Berkeley Lab scientists and their colleagues in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have used visual data from nearly a million galaxies to derive the most accurate calculation yet of how matter clumps together – from a time when the universe was only half its present age until now. The results yield cosmic rulers to measure how the universe has expanded and to determine how much dark matter, dark energy, and even hard-to-detect neutrinos it contains.

Two teams at Fermilab and Berkeley Lab have independently made the largest direct measurements of the invisible scaffolding of the universe, using the gravitational lensing effect known as “cosmic shear” to build maps of the distribution of dark matter. Their methods show that surveys with ground-based telescopes can measure cosmic shear with enough accuracy to aid in better understanding the mysterious space-stretching effects of dark energy.

At Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, scientists seeking ways to use cement more efficiently and reduce the carbon emissions associated with its manufacture have revealed new properties of the mineral tobermorite. Using x-ray-diffraction to probe the crystalline structure of Portland cement’s most important component, they squeezed the mineral in a diamond anvil cell to pressures equivalent to 100 miles deep in the Earth.

A special accelerator being constructed at Berkeley Lab will be used to study the physics of warm dense matter, which occurs in such astrophysical phenomena as the cores of giant planets and dwarf stars. The necessary techniques for producing warm dark matter on Earth are directly applicable to the accelerators and beam physics essential to heavy-ion fusion, a promising approach for electrical power production and long the choice of Berkeley Lab accelerator physicists. This is the second of two features on current research and the road ahead.

Heavy-ion fusion, a special approach to creating fusion for electrical power production, has long been the choice of Berkeley Lab accelerator physicists. Now the near prospect of “burn and gain” at the National Ignition Facility plus a forthcoming National Academies report on inertial confinement fusion energy have spurred new interest in heavy-ion fusion. This is Part I of a two-part overview of current research and the road ahead.

Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Physics Division and the University of California at Berkeley has won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae. Perlmutter, a founder of the Supernova Cosmology Project at Berkeley Lab, shares the prize with Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, members of the High-z Supernova Search Team who made the same discovery.

President Obama has named two Berkeley Lab researchers, Christian Bauer of the Physics Division and Feng Wang of the Materials Sciences Division, among the 13 Department of Energy scientists who are recipients of the 2011 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. This year’s 94 winners were nominated by 14 government agencies. In addition to a plaque and citation, the awards continue research funding for up to five years and are considered the U.S. government’s highest honor to young scientists.

Laser plasma accelerators could create powerful electron beams within a fraction of the space required by conventional accelerators and light sources – and at a fraction of the cost. But fulfilling the promise of “table-top accelerators” requires the ability to tune stable, high-quality beams through a range of energies. Berkeley Lab scientists have demonstrated a two-stage, tunable laser plasma accelerator that meets the goal.

Berkeley Lab physicists have played a leading role in designing and building the international Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in southern China, which has just begun collecting data on the elusive final measurement needed before the masses of the different kinds of neutrinos can be determined.

Berkeley Lab scientists and their colleagues have discovered a new relation among electric and magnetic fields and differences in temperature, which can form swirling vortices of electrons and holes in semiconductor devices and emit sideways magnetic fields. Understanding the unusual new effect may lead to more efficient thermoelectric devices, which convert heat into electricity or electricity into heat.