Photos: Stanford's X-ray vision

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center is home to breakthroughs in particle physics and astrophysics, including the discovery of quarks, one of the two smallest known components of matter.

Six Nobel prizes have been won related to work done here, most recently by chemist Roger Kornberg for discovering how genetic instructions are carried out within cells.

Journalists attending the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Palo Alto, Calif., took a closer look at the Stanford University facilities on Saturday.

Caption text by Elsa Wenzel