SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Tangled magnetic fields may power jets from supermassive black holes

14 December 2018 Astronomy Now

New computer simulations show tangled magnetic fields in jets streaming away from supermassive black holes may be creating powerful electric fields and currents accelerating particles to enormous energies

Funding approved for sensitive dark matter detector

8 May 2018 Astronomy Now

The U.S. Department of Energy has approved funding for construction of the most sensitive detector ever built, located in a Canadian mine a mile down, to search for evidence of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, a leading dark matter candidate.

Fermi satellite observes billionth gamma ray

16 May 2017 Astronomy Now

Imagine you had superhero vision and could see a whole new world of fascinating phenomena invisible to the human eye. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope gives astrophysicists analogous powers. It captures images of the universe in gamma rays, the most energetic form of light.

Fermi space telescope expands its search for dark matter

14 August 2016 Astronomy Now

Dark matter, the mysterious substance that constitutes most of the material universe, remains as elusive as ever. Although experiments on the ground and in space have yet to find a trace of dark matter, six or more years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has broadened the mission’s dark matter hunt using some novel approaches.

World’s most powerful telescope digital camera gets green light for construction

1 September 2015 Astronomy Now

The U.S. Department of Energy has approved the start of construction for a 3.2-gigapixel digital camera — the world’s largest — at the heart of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Assembled at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the camera will be the eye of LSST, revealing unprecedented details of the universe and helping unravel some of its greatest mysteries.

Dark energy survey finds eight more galactic neighbours

18 August 2015 Astronomy Now

Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey, using one of the world’s most powerful digital cameras, have discovered eight more faint celestial objects hovering near our Milky Way galaxy. Signs indicate that they, like the objects found by the same team earlier this year, are likely dwarf satellite galaxies — the smallest and closest known form of galaxies.