news 2020

How stars form in galaxies remains a major open question in astrophysics. A new UZH study sheds new light on this topic with the help of a data-driven re-analysis of observational measurements. The star-formation activity of typical, nearby galaxies is found to scale proportionally with the amount of gas present in these galaxies.

An international research team led by the University of Bern has discovered an exotic binary system composed of two young planet-like objects, orbiting around each other from a very large distance. Although these objects look like giant exoplanets, they formed in the same way as stars, proving that the mechanisms driving star formation can produce rogue worlds in unusual systems deprived of a Sun.

Humans have taken spiders into space more than once to study the importance of gravity to their web-building. What originally began as a somewhat unsuccessful PR experiment for high school students has yielded the surprising insight that light plays a larger role in arachnid orientation than previously thought.

The galaxies in the early universe are much more mature than astrophysicists first thought: their existence at such an early stage is due to their interactions with the cosmos. The first galaxies were formed 200 million years after the birth of the universe. These galaxies accumulated the vast majority of the stars, dust particles and metals they consist of between one and three billion years after the Big Bang, a crucial period for our understanding of how the galaxies were formed.

The -SAINT-EX- Observatory, led by scientists from the National Centre of Competence in Research NCCR PlanetS of the University of Bern and the University of Geneva, has detected two exoplanets orbiting the star TOI-1266. The Mexico-based telescope thus demonstrates its high precision and takes an important step in the quest of finding potentially habitable worlds.

An international team of researchers led by the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS of the University of Bern and the University of Geneva studied the atmosphere of the ultra-hot exoplanet WASP-121b. In it, they found a number of gaseous metals. The results are a next step in the search for potentially habitable worlds.

On Earth, auroras, also called northern lights, have always fascinated people. An international consortium involving the University of Bern has now discovered such auroras in the ultraviolet wavelength range at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Chury for short. This phenomenon was detected thanks to the analysis of data from the European Space Agency ESA's Rosetta mission.

NASA's InSight mission provides data from the surface of Mars. Its seismometer, equipped with electronics built at ETH Zurich, not only records marsquakes, but unexpectedly reacts to solar eclipses as well. When the Martian moon, Phobos moves directly in front of the sun, the instrument tips slightly to one side.

Researchers at the University of Bern are the first in the world to succeed in determining the distance to a space debris object using a geodetic laser in daylight. The distance was determined on June 24, 2020 at the Swiss Optical Ground Station and Geodynamics Observatory Zimmerwald. The number of measurements can be multiplied thanks to the new possibility of observing space debris during the day.

The discovery of the first galaxy emitting "extreme" ultraviolet radiation could help to better understand how the cosmic era known as the "Dark Ages" came to an end more than 13 billion years ago. Thanks to the Indian satellite AstroSat, an international team, including astronomers from the University of Geneva, has detected the first galaxy, called AUDFs01, emitting "extreme" ultraviolet radiation, i.e. highly energetic (with a wavelength of about 60 nanometres, or billionths of a metre).

Researchers at the University of Bern have developed the highly sensitive instrument ORIGIN for future space missions, which can detect minute traces of life. Space agencies such as NASA have already expressed interest in testing ORIGIN for future missions. For example, the instrument could be used for missions to the icy moons Europa (Jupiter) and Enceladus (Saturn).

One way to determine whether there is life on another planet is to look for biosignatures in the light that is scattered off its atmosphere. Scientists at EPFL and University of Rome Tor Vergata have developed an original model that interprets the results of that analysis. Is there life on a distant planet? One way astronomers are trying to find out is by analyzing the light that is scattered off a planet's atmosphere.

An international collaboration between ground-based and orbiting telescopes is shedding light on one of the mysteries of the universe. The alert was issued by ESA's Integral Space Observatory, whose scientific data are processed at the University of Geneva. An international network of telescopes, of which Integral, the high-energy space observatory of ESA (European Space Agency), is a part, has detected a unique mixture of radiation from a dead star in our galaxy.

An international consortium of scientists has analyzed, as part of a vast program of cosmological surveys, several million galaxies and quasars, thus retracing a more continuous history of the Universe and offering a better understanding of the mechanisms of its expansion. The latest 6 year-long survey called eBOSS was initiated, and led in part, by EPFL astrophysicist Jean-Paul Kneib.

Researchers led by the University of Warwick have discovered the first exposed core of an exoplanet, which provides an unprecedented glimpse inside the interior of a planet. Christoph Mordasini from the University of Bern is leading the theoretical interpretation of this discovery. The newly discovered exoplanet TOI 849 b offers the unique opportunity to peer inside the interior of a planet and learn about its composition.

When analyzing data from the XENON1T detector for dark matter, a signal excess was observed. The UZH researchers do not yet know for sure where this unexpected signal comes from. They say the origins could be relatively banal, but they could also indicate the existence of new particles or hitherto unknown properties of neutrinos.

A research team from ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen counted over 136,000 rockfalls on the moon caused by asteroid impacts. Even billions of years old landscapes are still changing. In October 2015, a spectacular rockfall occurred in the Swiss Alps: in the late morning hours, a large, snow-covered block with a volume of more than 1500 cubic meters suddenly detached from the summit of Mel de la Niva.

The existence of an Earth-sized planet around the nearest star in the solar system, Proxima Centauri, has been confirmed by an international team of scientists including researchers from the University of Geneva. The results, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, reveal that the planet in question, Proxima b, has a mass of 1.

The international T2K Collaboration has published results showing the strongest evidence to date implying the breaking of the symmetry between matter and antimatter in so-called neutrino oscillations. This is a major step towards the understanding of the dominance of matter over antimatter in the Universe.

The CHEOPS space telescope has exceeded scientists' expectations for accuracy. CHEOPS has reached its next milestone: Following extensive tests in Earth's orbit, some of which the mission team was forced to carry out from home due to the coronavirus crisis, the space telescope has been declared ready for science.