The subatomic world just got a lot quieter for the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter experiment. The LZ collaboration has completed 1,200 tests that describe the levels of radioactive decay of the LZ detector components and help to ensure a low level of background “noise” from unwanted particle signals.

If you’ve eaten vegan burgers that taste like meat or used synthetic collagen in your beauty routine – both products that are “grown” in the lab – then you’ve benefited from synthetic biology. It’s a field rife with potential, as it allows scientists to design biological systems to specification, such as engineering a microbe to produce a cancer-fighting agent. Yet conventional methods of bioengineering are slow and laborious, with trial and error being the main approach.

Researchers at Berkeley Lab played a key role in an analysis of data from the world’s largest particle collider that found proof of rare, high-energy particle interactions in which matter was produced from light.

The Large Hadron Collider transforms matter into energy and then back into different forms of matter. But on rare occasions, it can skip the first step and collide pure energy – in the form of electromagnetic waves. Now, scientists have discovered particles of light merging and transforming into W bosons, confirming that at high enough energies, forces that seem separate in our everyday lives are united.

The largest collaborative undertaking yet to explore the relic light emitted by the infant universe has taken a step forward with the U.S. Department of Energy’s selection of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to lead the partnership of national labs, universities, and other institutions that will carry out the DOE roles and responsibilities for the effort. This next-generation experiment, known as CMB-S4, or Cosmic Microwave Background Stage 4, is planned as a joint DOE and NSF project.

View Berkeley Lab from the sky in this aerial video, which features drone footage taken earlier this year by Thor Swift, lead photographer in Berkeley Lab’s Creative Services office of the Information Technology Division. The video was produced by Marilyn Sargent, a multimedia producer in the Strategic Communications department.

The Berkeley Lab-led center will forge the technological solutions needed to harness quantum information science for discoveries that benefit the world. It will also energize the nation’s research community to ensure U.S. leadership in quantum R&D and accelerate the transfer of technologies from the lab to the marketplace.

Record drought and heat have some farmers worried about where and when crops can be grown in the future, even in California where unprecedented microclimate diversity creates ideal growing conditions for many of the most popular items in America’s grocery stores. A third of the vegetables and two-thirds of fruits and nuts consumed by Americans

U.S. Department of Energy awards announced in July will advance Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) R&D to develop a more effective and compact particle-beam system for cancer treatment, improve particle-beam performance using artificial intelligence, and develop a high-power, rapid-fire laser system for both tabletop and large-scale applications.

Researchers at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have demonstrated that a common material can be processed into a top-performing energy storage material. Their discovery could improve the efficiency, reliability, and robustness of personal electronics, wearable technologies, and car audio systems.