news 2021

Earth and Mars were formed from material that largely originated in the inner Solar System; only a few percent of the building blocks of these two planets originated beyond Jupiter's orbit. A group of researchers led by the University of Münster report these findings today in the journal "Science Advances".

What was previously identified as a gas and dust cloud at the centre of our galaxy actually consists of three very young stars. That is the result of a new study led by scientists from the University of Cologne's Institute of Astrophysics. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) - a telescope with mirror diameters of 8.20 metres on the summit of Cerro Paranal in Chile - provided the data for the study, which has appeared in The Astrophysical Journal .

While all atomic nuclei except hydrogen are composed of protons and neutrons, physicists have been searching for a particle consisting of two, three or four neutrons for over half a century. Experiments by a team of physicists of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) at the accelerator laboratory on the Garching research campus now indicate that a particle comprising four bound neutrons may well exist.

Researchers study cosmic expansion using methods from many-body physics / Article published in -Physical Review Letters- It is almost always assumed in cosmological calculations that there is a even distribution of matter in the universe. This is because the calculations would be much too complicated if the position of every single star were to be included.

Seismic data collected in Elysium Planitia, the second largest volcanic region on Mars, suggest the presence of a shallow sedimentary layer sandwiched between lava flows beneath the planet's surface. These findings were gained in the framework of NASA's InSight mission (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), in which several international research partners, including the University of Cologne, collaborate.

International research team of astronomers including Göttingen University use "dynamical method" to discover small black hole Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), astronomers including the University of Göttingen have discovered a small black hole outside the Milky Way by looking at how it influences the motion of a nearby star.

Planetologists from Münster investigate origin of heavy bombardment of the Moon 3.9 billion years ago / Publication in "Science Advances" The lunar surface is covered by numerous craters that date back to the impacts of asteroids. Age determinations on lunar rocks formed during these impacts show a surprising clustering at ages of about 3.9 billion years before present, or about 500 million years after the Moon was formed.

Research team including Göttingen University observes charged particles 70 percent faster than uncharged Solar prominences hover above the visible solar disk like giant clouds, held there by a supporting framework of magnetic forces, originating from layers deep within the Sun. The magnetic lines of force are moved by ever-present gas currents - and when the supporting framework moves, so does the prominence cloud.

Studies of the asteroid Vesta provide new findings on the formation of Earth-like planets The largest asteroid in our Solar System - Vesta - was exposed to an extensive series of impacts by large rocky bodies much earlier than previously assumed. Researchers of an international collaboration, including earth scientists of Heidelberg University and Freie Universität Berlin, reached this conclusion based on analyses of Vesta meteorites, numerical simulations, and observations carried out with the space probe Dawn in 2011 and 2012.

Geophysicists solve a key problem in physics and provide results that can be applied in such diverse areas as planetary research and 3-D printing / publication in 'PNAS' The prediction of the angle of repose for raised mounds of dry cohesive granular material is a long-standing problem in the natural sciences and in industry.

Although Dr. Christian Maas does his research only on the computer, it's sometimes as if he were standing in a laboratory. "I do experiments," he says. By means of his virtual experiments, geophysicist Maas is investigating a question that couldn't be answered in any lab in the world: the question of the how the Earth came into being.

Ten years of data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory combined with numerical models reveal the deep low musical notes of the Sun   (mps) A team of solar physicists led by Professor Laurent Gizon of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) and the University of Göttingen in Germany has reported the discovery of global oscillations of the Sun with very long periods, comparable to the 27-day solar rotation period.

07/19/2021 Centaurus A, one of the closest active galaxies to Earth, belongs to the brightest objects in the sky. An international team has now imaged the heart of Centaurus A in unprecedented detail. Scientists from the University of Würzburg were involved. An international team around the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, known for capturing the first image of a black hole in the galaxy M87, has now imaged the heart of the nearby radio galaxy Centaurus A in unprecedented detail.

The German-French Cooperation Programme GENESIS describes the complex structure of the interstellar medium using a new mathematical method / The dispersion of interstellar turbulence in gas clouds before star formation unfolds in a cosmically small space In interstellar dust clouds, turbulence must first dissipate before a star can form through gravity.

Experimental hints of possible new physical phenomena beyond the Standard Model Using data acquired on the worldwide biggest and strongest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN European particle physics laboratory in Geneva (Switzerland), scientists involved in the LHCb experiment have found hints of possible new physical phenomena.

Astronomers from the Netherlands, Belgium, Chile, the USA and Germany have imaged the newly discovered exoplanet "YSES 2b" right next to its host star Light An international research team with the participation of Dr Markus Mugrauer from the Astrophysical Institute of Friedrich Schiller University Jena has succeeded in the direct imaging of a young exoplanet.

Research team led by the University of Göttingen discovers crater floor sagging from bowl-shaped volcanic ash layer The almost 15-million-year-old Nördlinger Ries is an asteroid impact crater filled with lake sediments. Its structure is comparable to the craters currently being explored on Mars. In addition to various other deposits on the rim of the basin, the crater fill is mainly formed by stratified clay deposits.

Astrophysicists at the Universities of Göttingen and Auckland simulate microscopic clusters from the Big Bang The very first moments of the Universe can be reconstructed mathematically even though they cannot be observed directly. Physicists from the Universities of Göttingen and Auckland (New Zealand) have greatly improved the ability of complex computer simulations to describe this early epoch.

The Earth's gravity field as the basis for an International Height Reference System Maps generally indicate elevation in meters above sea level. But sea level is not the same everywhere. A group of experts headed by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), has developed an International Height Reference System (IHRS) that will unify geodetic measurements worldwide.

Research team including Göttingen University observe for the first time extremely faint filaments The Universe is criss-crossed by a cosmic web consisting of large filamentary gas structures in which galaxies should form. The existence of this network confirms the most important predictions about how the structure of the Universe changes.