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A team of researchers led by the University of Bern has for the first time identified an unexpected richness of complex organic molecules at a comet. This was achieved thanks to the analysis of data collected during ESA-s Rosetta mission at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, also known as Chury. Delivered to the early Earth by impacting comets, these organics may have helped to kick-start carbon-based life as we know it.

Geneva, 4 July 2022. Ten years ago, on July 4 2012, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) announced the discovery of a new particle with features consistent with those of the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. The discovery was a landmark in the history of science and captured the world's attention.

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the world's first full-scale planetary defense test against potential asteroid impacts on Earth. Researchers of the University of Bern and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS now show that instead of leaving behind a relatively small crater, the impact of the DART spacecraft on its target could leave the asteroid near unrecognizable.

Liquid water is an important prerequisite for life to develop on a planet. As researchers from the University of Bern, the University of Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS report in a new study, liquid water could also exist for billions of years on planets that are very different from Earth.

Brown dwarfs, mysterious objects that straddle the line between stars and planets, are essential to our understanding of both stellar and planetary populations. However, only 40 brown dwarfs could be imaged around stars in almost three decades of searches. An international team led by researchers from the Open University and the University of Bern directly imaged a remarkable four new brown dwarfs thanks to a new innovative search method.

The InSight mission on Mars is running out of power and most of its functions could be shut down in the months to come. Some have already been deactivated. However, the attached seismometer, SEIS, will remain in operation for as long as possible. ETH Professor Domenico Giardini takes stock of three years of marsquake measurements.

An international team led by astronomers from the UNIGE has succeeded in developing a model to solve part of the 'solar problem'. All was amiss with the Sun! In the early 2000s, a new set of data brought down the chemical abundances at the surface of the Sun, contradicting the values predicted by the standard models used by astrophysicists.

Global biodiversity assessments require the collection of data on changes in plant biodiversity on an ongoing basis. Researchers from the universities of Zurich and Montréal have now shown that plant communities can be reliably monitored using imaging spectroscopy, which in the future will be possible via satellite.

The shape of galaxies and how they evolve depend on a web of cosmological filaments that run across the Universe. According to a recent study headed by EPFL's Laboratory of Astrophysics, this cosmic web plays a much bigger role than previously thought. Across the Universe, galaxies are distributed along what's called the cosmic web, a complex network of filaments made up of ordinary and dark matter.

Thanks to the ESPRESSO spectrograph developed at the University of Geneva, an international team has discovered an ultralight exoplanet in orbit around Proxima Centauri, our closest neighbour. An international team including researchers from the University of Geneva has detected a third candidate planet around our closest neighbor, the star Proxima Centauri.

An international team including researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Geneva as well as the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS analyzed the atmosphere of one of the most extreme known planets in great detail. The results from this hot, Jupiter-like planet that was first characterized with the help of the CHEOPS space telescope, may help astronomers understand the complexities of many other exoplanets - including Earth-like planets.

A research team involving the Universities of Bern and Geneva has identified the strong tidal influence on WASP-103b. With the help of the CHEOPS space telescope, an international team including researchers from the Universities of Bern and Geneva as well as the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, was able to detect the deformation of an exoplanet for the first time.

Led by the University of Bern, an international research team has discovered a sub-Neptune exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star. The discovery was also made thanks to observations performed by the SAINT-EX observatory in Mexico. SAINT-EX is run by a consortium including the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern and the National Center of Competence in Research NCCR PlanetS.

By implementing artificial intelligence techniques similar to those used in autonomous cars, a team from the UNIGE and the UniBE, in partnership with the company Disaitek, has discovered a new method for detecting exoplanets. The majority of exoplanets discovered to date have been discovered using the transit method.

Astronomers led by the UNIGE have discovered exoplanets that orbit in planes at 90 degrees from each other. When planets form, they usually continue their orbital evolution in the equatorial plane of their star. However, an international team, led by astronomers from the University of Geneva , Switzerland, has discovered that the exoplanets of a star in the constellation Pisces orbit in planes perpendicular to each other, with the innermost planet the only one still orbiting in the equatorial plane.

A compositional link between planets and their respective host star has long been assumed in astronomy. For the first time now, a team of scientists, with the participation of researchers of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS from the University of Bern and the University of Zürich, deliver empirical evidence to support the assumption - and partly contradict it at the same time.

Astrophysicists led by the UNIGE and the NCCR PlanetS have investigated the past of Venus to find out whether Earth's sister planet once had oceans. The planet Venus can be seen as the Earth's evil twin. At first sight, it is of comparable mass and size as our home planet, similarly consists mostly of rocky material, holds some water and has an atmosphere.

Scientists serendipitously discover two heavily dust-enshrouded galaxies that formed when the Universe was only 5% of its present age. While investigating the data of young, distant galaxies observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, Yoshinobu Fudamoto from Waseda University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan noticed unexpected emissions coming from seemingly empty regions in space that, a global research team confirmed, came actually from two hitherto undiscovered galaxies heavily obscured by cosmic dust.

Astronomers from the UNIGE have observed the composition of the gases in our galaxy and have shown that, contrary to the models established until now, they are not homogeneously mixed. In order to better understand the history and evolution of the Milky Way, astronomers are studying the composition of the gases and metals that make up an important part of our galaxy.

In 1998, the journal Nature published a seminal letter concluding that a mysterious signal, which had been recently discovered analysing the polarization of sunlight, implies that the solar chromosphere (a very important layer of the solar atmosphere) is practically unmagnetised, in sharp contradiction with common wisdom.