It’s a billion-dollar tool that will help us go green.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and her staff were in Menlo Park Thursday to visit the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and get a better look at the world’s most powerful x-ray laser.
"This is a way of freeze-framing what's going on in our bodies,” said Mike Dunne, director of the Linac Coherent Light Source.
The billion-dollar investment from the Department of Energy — only recently fired up — takes images of chemical reactions at an atomic level. It’s aimed at helping us look deep at how we live and how we can eventually live cleaner and greener.
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"How can we change our planet in terms of sustainability, the materials we can get out of the ground, or the sources that power all of our daily lives, or the drugs that we use to cure disease?" said Dunne.
Scientists at SLAC told NBC Bay Area the goal is to use the laser to spur future developments in renewable energy.
