Latest news with #SLAC
Gizmodo
6 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Physicists Blow Up Gold With Giant Lasers, Accidentally Disprove Renowned Physics Model
Scientists equipped with giant lasers have blown up gold at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, heating it to 14 times its boiling point. For a chilling second, they thought they broke physics, but they fortunately did no such thing. That said, they broke something else: a decades-long model in physical chemistry having to do with the fundamental properties of matter. In an experiment presented today in Nature, researchers, for the first time ever, demonstrated a way to directly measure the temperature of matter in extreme states, or conditions with intensely high temperatures, pressures, or densities. Using the new technique, scientists succeeded in capturing gold at a temperature far beyond its boiling point—a procedure called superheating—at which point the common metal existed in a strange limbo between solid and liquid. The results suggest that, under the right conditions, gold may have no superheating limit. If true, this could have a wide range of applications across spaceflight, astrophysics, or nuclear chemistry, according to the researchers. The study is based on a two-pronged experiment. First, the scientists used a laser to superheat a sample of gold, suppressing the metal's natural tendency to expand when heated. Next, they used ultrabright X-rays to zap the gold samples, which scattered off the surface of the gold. By calculating the distortions in the X-ray's frequency after colliding with the gold particles, the team locked down the speed and temperature of the atoms. The experimental result seemingly refutes a well-established theory in physics, which states that structures like gold can't be heated more than three times their boiling point, 1,948 degrees Fahrenheit (1,064 degrees Celsius). Beyond those temperatures, superheated gold is supposed to reach the so-called 'entropy catastrophe'—or, in more colloquial terms, the heated gold should've blown up. The researchers themselves didn't expect to surpass that limit. The new result disproves the conventional theory, but it does so in a big way by far overshooting the theoretical prediction, showing that it's possible to heat gold up to a jaw-dropping 33,740 degrees F (18,726 degrees C). 'We looked at the data, and somebody just said, 'Wait a minute. Is this axis correct? That's…really hot, isn't it?' Thomas White, study lead author and physicist at the University of Nevada, Reno, recalled to Gizmodo during a video call. To be fair, this superheated state lasted for a mere several trillionths of a second. Also, it blew up. But that's still 'long enough to be interesting,' White said, adding that 'if you could prevent it from expanding, [theoretically speaking] you could heat it forever.' To which he added: 'I'm very thankful that I get to blow stuff up with giant lasers for discoveries. And that's my job, you know.' This conjecture will have to withstand follow-up experiments with both gold and other materials, White noted. But from a practical standpoint, the superheated gold kept itself together long enough such that the team was able to directly capture its temperature using their new technique, Bob Nagler, study senior author and staff scientist at SLAC, explained to Gizmodo in a video call. 'Actually, it's a funny thing; temperature is one of the physical quantities that humans have known for the longest time—but we don't measure temperature itself,' Nagler said. 'We measure something that temperature influences. For example, a mercury thermometer measures how temperature changes the volume of a blob of mercury.' This could pose a problem when studying some real-life examples of hot, dense matter in extreme states, such as the center of a star, the nose cone of a spaceship, or the insides of a fusion reactor. Knowing the temperature—a fundamental physical property—of matter in such situations could greatly inform how we investigate or, for the latter two, manipulate them to our benefit. Often, however, these systems operate on temperature-dependent variables that are difficult to gauge, Nagler said. Technically, you could reproduce them in labs, but they'll 'very quickly explode,' he noted—notwithstanding the fact that you'd still have to know the real-life temperature of the system being replicated to ensure the experiments are valid. 'So you have a chicken-and-egg problem,' he said. That's why the scientists are eager to inspect how their new technique could help in this regard. 'That's the most exciting thing about this work—we now have a thermometer for all these crazy experiments we've been doing,' White said. For example, the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses a gold cylinder to contain their nuclear fusion experiments, firing X-rays at this cylinder to drive the fusion reactor, White explained. 'But we're also thinking of doing directly fusion-related experiments now,' he said. 'To recreate fusion conditions, or the materials that make the fusion reactors, and just measure their temperature—which, actually, has been a long-standing question [in physics].' The team is already applying the technique to other materials, such as silver and iron, which they happily report produced some promising data. The team will be busy over the next few months analyzing what these metals could be telling us, the scientists said. The project, for sure, is in full ignition.
Fox News
14-07-2025
- Science
- Fox News
World's most powerful digital camera captures historic first images
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has just released its first images, captured by the world's most powerful digital camera. Located on Cerro Pachón in Chile, this camera is set to transform how we see the universe. After years of planning and building, the observatory is ready to deliver stunning, ultra-detailed views of the night sky. Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy ReportGet my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you'll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide - free when you join my What makes this camera so special? It has a massive 3.2-gigapixel sensor made up of 201 individual imaging sensors. Each sensor captures 16-megapixel images, all combined to create incredibly detailed photos. The camera takes quick 15-second exposures every 20 seconds, capturing light from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths. This means it can see far beyond what previous telescopes could. The journey started more than 20 years ago, led by the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. After sharing early designs in 2015 and assembling the camera by 2020, the final build was completed in early 2025. The camera, roughly the size of a small car and weighing 6,600 pounds, was installed on the Simonyi Survey Telescope in March 2025. This marked a major milestone for the international team involved. The first images show breathtaking views of the Trifid Nebula and Lagoon Nebula, captured over a seven-hour period. These pictures reveal faint details that were previously invisible. In just 10 hours of testing, the observatory captured millions of galaxies, stars, and thousands of asteroids. This is just a preview of what's to come during the upcoming 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The Rubin Observatory isn't just about pretty pictures. It will collect more data in its first year than all previous optical telescopes combined. Scientists will use this data to study dark matter and dark energy, which make up most of the universe but remain mysterious. The observatory will also discover millions of new asteroids and comets, improving our understanding of the solar system and helping with planetary defense. This camera and observatory are transforming the field of astronomy. Because it can scan the entire Southern Hemisphere sky every few nights, scientists will soon have an incredibly detailed, time-lapse record of the universe. The wealth of data collected will drive discoveries for years to come, spark new research, and help us understand the cosmos in ways that were never possible before. The release of these first images is just the beginning. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's powerful camera will change how we explore space, uncovering secrets of the universe and potentially protecting Earth from asteroid impacts. Stay tuned as this exciting project continues to open new windows on the cosmos. If you had access to this groundbreaking camera, what moment in history would you capture, and why do you think it would change how we see the world? Let us know by writing to us at Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy ReportGet my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you'll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide - free when you join my Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
CBS News
24-06-2025
- Science
- CBS News
Telescope built in the Bay Area captures photos of space like never before
The first images of the universe from the world's largest digital camera were released on Monday. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park unveiled the never-before-seen images of our universe. The Rubin Observatory sits on the summit of Cerro Pachón in Chile with the digital camera scanning the sky to create an ultra-wide, ultra-high definition timelapse of our universe Phil Marshall is passionate about uncovering the secrets to our incredible universe. He is the Deputy Director of Operations at Rubin Observatory. Marshall has been waiting for years to see the very first images from Rubin Observatory's digital camera, capturing the cosmos in a way unlike anything else. "I think I described it as a dream come true," said Marshall. "I've been thinking about this for so long. It's kind of amazing that it's here now. On the other hand, this is just the beginning. It's very exciting to be at the start of the survey, just about able to do all the investigations of the universe that we've been planning for so long. These sharper, clearer images of our universe are like nothing we've seen before with millions of galaxies in each snapshot in amazing detail. "Honestly, it's just mind-blowing," said Risa Wechsler, Stanford & SLAC Director of Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. "It makes me very, very excited about the future of astrophysics. Previously, we've been able to see a lot of the sky or we've been able to go deep and what is really different about these images is that it's both. It really is sort of simultaneously a very wide area so that you can see many galaxies you know, millions and millions of galaxies in one snapshot and then also go really deep and going deep will do two things. One, for the nearby galaxies, you can really see all the way into the outskirts, and you can see all these incredible details of how they formed and then for the far away galaxies, you just get so many of them. " "We should be able to see the entire sky at that level of sensitivity, that level of spatial detail, and with that time resolution, to see how the university evolves, how variable stars are varying, how supernovae are exploding, how asteroids are moving within our own solar system," said Adam Bolton, SLAC Senior Scientist. "We have all that within a digital database that we can query in any way we could imagine. That's something that's never existed before." Every night at Rubin Observatory in Chile, the digital camera will scan the sky, capturing a new 3,200-megapixel image every 40 seconds, providing near-real-time, valuable data of our universe. "It really makes it clear that the universe is full of galaxies," said Marshall. "Our galaxy is full of stars and our universe is full of galaxies," said Marshall. "There's billions of them to be observed and you can see that in the images now, each one of those galaxies itself contains billions of stars, and so it's very humbling to see these images. It puts us right in our place, so to speak." Marshall said these first images are truly awe-inspiring as scientists move one step closer to unlocking the mysteries of our universe. The Rubin Observatory will continue capturing images of our universe in a 10-year scientific mission. The amount of data gathered by Rubin Observatory in its first year alone will be greater than that collected by all other optical observatories combined. NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory is jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the DOE.
San Francisco Chronicle
23-06-2025
- Science
- San Francisco Chronicle
Cutting-edge astronomy facility with Bay Area ties releases incredible space photos
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a cutting-edge astronomy facility with Bay Area connections, unveiled its first images taken with its record-setting camera in a presentation Monday, including pictures of swirling galaxies and nebulae. The snapshots are a preview of what will be a 10-year movie of the cosmos that scientists say will enable significant scientific advances, including an inventory of the solar system and insights into dark matter and dark energy. 'This observatory is the greatest astronomical discovery machine ever built,' said Željko Ivezić, director of the Rubin Observatory's construction, during the presentation. The observatory is located atop Cerro Pachón, a mountain in central Chile. But its car-sized camera, the largest digital camera ever built, was constructed at Stanford's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park. It would take 400 ultra-high definition TV screens to display a single image taken by the 3,200-megapixel camera. Employees and visitors eagerly watched the First Look briefing at a SLAC auditorium in Menlo Park on Monday morning, breaking out in applause when images of galaxies appeared on screen. The new camera will take images of the entire southern night sky every three nights, for 10 years. Scientists expect to detect wandering asteroids and comets, supernovae, variable stars and exotic events, like stars being torn apart by black holes. Cataloging galaxies in the night sky also will provide insight into dark matter, a mysterious substance that scientists can't see, but affects the distribution of galaxies in the universe. This continuous movie is 'an astronomer's dream come true," said Andrew Fraknoi, an astronomy professor at the University of San Francisco. The observatory is named for Vera Rubin, an American astronomer whose pioneering work provided evidence for the existence of dark matter. The Rubin Observatory is a joint initiative of the U.S. National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, and operated by SLAC and NSF NOIRLab. 'The movie has started, the camera is running and we're going to see our cosmos unfold before us,' said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright in a short video.
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
World's biggest camera will reveal its first-ever photos next week
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The world's biggest camera, capable of delivering 3200 megapixel image of the night sky, is about to show us its first-ever images. The camera, which is housed at the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile, is said to be able to see a golf ball from 15 miles away. On June 23 the first images from its ultra-definition sensor will be made public for the first time. This moment has been a long time coming. We started reporting on this monster camera back in 2019, when the giant lens for the camera, which measures 5 metres across, was being assembled at SLAC, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, in California. The camera will capture 1000 images a night over the next 10 years, with the project's mission being to catalog 20 billion galaxies. The First Look event at the observatory next week will unveil "of a set of large, ultra-high-definition images and videos that showcase Rubin's extraordinary capabilities to the world for the first time", we are told. "This will mark the beginning of a new era in astronomy and astrophysics". The event will be shown live on the Vera C Rubin Observatory's YouTube channel and on its website from 11am (Eastern Daylight Time) on Monday, June 23, 2025. Hundreds of venues around the world will also be hosting watch parties that include a public viewing of the live stream. Check out the Rubin First Look Watch Party website to find a location near you.
