X-ray Spectroscopy

Posted November 18, 2011

SLAC Research Cracks Puzzle of Enzyme Critical to Food Supply

If we could make plant food from nitrogen the way nature does, we’d have a much greener method for manufacturing fertilizer – a process that requires such high temperatures and pressures that it consumes about 1.5 percent of the world’s energy. Now, scientists working at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have taken an important step towards understanding how nature performs this trick.

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Posted November 14, 2011

Today: SLAC Colloquium to Focus on Coherent X-ray Diffraction

The SLAC Colloquium series presents Prof. Ian Robinson of University College London, who will speak about a new method of coherent X-ray diffraction, or CXD, that his group is developing to help image crystalline nanostrutures in three dimensions. Today's talk begins at 4:15 p.m. in Panofsky...

Posted June 30, 2011

X-rays Reveal Patterns in the Plumage of the First Birds

Scientists have taken a big step in determining what the first birds looked like more than 100 million years ago, when their relatives, the dinosaurs, still ruled the Earth. At the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, they discovered chemical traces of a pigment, an important component of color, that once formed patterns in the feathers of the fossilized birds.

The discovery, reported June 30 in Science Express, will help give textbook illustrators, diorama makers and Hollywood special-effects artists a more realistic palette for their depictions of ancient animals. Understanding these pigment patterns is important for science, too, since they play a role in a wide range of behaviors that are important in evolution such as camouflage, communication and selecting mates.