Our Future

SLAC is poised to welcome a frontier of discovery unlike any other in our 50-year history.

Our areas of exploration include:

* Designing new materials for alternative energy.

Scientists at SLAC are focusing on the atomic-scale design of materials for energy production and storage. Examples of SLAC research critical to future energy technologies are the use of catalysts to create cleaner fuels and to develop sustainable processes for the production of chemicals and materials, ans making materials for better, more efficient batteries for energy storage.

*Developing smaller and more powerful accelerators.

SLAC is at the forefront of experiments aimed at improving the power and efficiency of particle accelerators used in basic research, medicine, industry and other areas important to society. By inducing electrons to "surf" on waves of plasma, researchers have accelerated these particles to 1,000 times greater energies over a given distance than ever before.

* Pursuing dark matter and dark energy.

SLAC is leading the construction of the world's biggest digital camera for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which will undertake the widest and deepest sky survey ever, providing a "movie" of the transient universe and allowing precise probes of dark energy. It will also fabricate the super-cooled crystals at the heart of the next-generation Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment.

* Making molecular movies.

The ultra-fast, ultra-bright X-rays of SLAC's LCLS are giving researchers an unprecedented  view of the atomic world. Advanced instrumentation and expertise at the facility will soon enable the creation of the world's first "molecular movies", revealing chemistry behind the processes of life.