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Harnessing advanced simulation tools, a team of scientists from UNIGE, Northwestern University and University of Florida shed light on the enigmatic nature of these celestial "beasts". Black holes, some of the most captivating entities in the cosmos, possess an immense gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape.

A team from the University of Geneva has developed the first method for testing together Einstein's and Euler's theories for the accelerating expansion of the Universe and dark matter. The cosmos is a unique laboratory for testing the laws of physics, in particular those of Euler and Einstein. Euler described the movements of celestial objects, while Einstein described the way in which celestial objects distort the Universe.

Scientists have managed to weigh - more precisely than any other technique - a galaxy hosting a quasar, thanks to the fact that it acts as a gravitational lens. Detection of strong gravitational lensing quasars is expected to multiply with the launch of Euclid this summer. A team of researchers from EPFL have found a way to use the phenomenon of strong gravitational lensing to determine with precision - about 3 times more precise than any other technique - the mass of a galaxy containing a quasar, as well as their evolution in cosmic time.

With the help of the CHEOPS space telescope an international team of European astronomers managed to clearly identify the existence of four new exoplanets. The four mini-Neptunes are smaller and cooler, and more difficult to find than the so-called Hot Jupiter exoplanets which have been found in abundance.

A strong quake in the last year of the NASA Mars InSight mission, enabled researchers at ETH Zurich to determine the global thickness and density of the planet's crust. On average, the Martian crust much thicker than the Earth's or the Moon's crust and the planet's main source of heat is radioactive.

Researchers have found strong evidence that supermassive stars can explain the anomalies observed in large clusters of stars. Globular clusters are the most massive and oldest star clusters in the Universe. They can contain up to 1 million of them. The chemical composition of these stars, born at the same time, shows anomalies that are not found in any other population of stars.

The search for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations has yet to yield evidence of alien technological activity. Research carried out at EPFL suggests we continue searching while optimizing the use of available resources. For over sixty years, amateur and professional astronomers have been monitoring the sky in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

With a constellation of five satellites, the international LIFE initiative led by ETH Zurich hopes to one day detect traces of life on exoplanets. A laboratory experiment in the Department of Physics is now set to demonstrate the planned measurement method. "It's an important step on a very long road," says Adrian Glauser, a senior scientist at the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics at ETH Zurich.

When it comes to measuring how fast the Universe is expanding, the result depends on which side of the Universe you start from. A recent EPFL study has calibrated the best cosmic yardsticks to unprecedented accuracy, shedding new light on what's known as the Hubble tension. The Universe is expanding - but how fast exactly? The answer appears to depend on whether you estimate the cosmic expansion rate - referred to as the Hubble's constant, or H0 - based on the echo of the Big Bang (the cosmic microwave background, or CMB) or you measure H0 directly based on today's stars and galaxies.

Neuroscientists at the University of Zurich have developed innovative objectives for light microscopy by using mirrors to produce images. Their design finds correspondence in mirror telescopes used in astronomy on the one hand and the eyes of scallops on the other. The new objectives enable high-resolution imaging of tissues and organs in a much wider variety of immersion media than with conventional microscope lenses.

For a long time it has been suspected that fullerene and its derivatives could form naturally in the universe. These are large carbon molecules shaped like a football, salad bowl or nanotube. An international team of researchers using the Swiss SLS synchrotron light source at PSI has shown how this reaction works.

A team including physicists of the University of Bern has for the first time detected subatomic particles called neutrinos created by a particle collider, namely at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The discovery promises to deepen scientists- understanding of the nature of neutrinos, which are among the most abundant particles in the universe and key to the solution of the question why there is more matter than antimatter.

After more than three years in orbit, the mission of the CHEOPS space telescope has just been extended. Led by the University of Bern in collaboration with the University of Geneva, CHEOPS is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland. On March 7th, ESA-s Science Programme Committee has confirmed its continued operations to 2026 and an indicative extension to 2029, contingent upon ongoing commitments from national contributors and partners.

A team from the University of Geneva and UNIBE reveals that the distribution of planets can be organised in four different ways around a star. Astronomers have long been aware that planetary systems are not necessarily structured like our solar system. Researchers from the Universities of Bern and Geneva, as well as from the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS, have now shown for the first time that there are in fact four types of planetary systems.

Interstellar molecular clouds are considered to be the birth sites of planetary systems. With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, an international research team including the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS discovered the deepest and coldest ice ever detected in such a molecular cloud.

A team from the University of Geneva reveals the eventful migration history of planets bordering the Hot Neptune Desert, these extrasolar planets that orbit very close to their star. All kinds of exoplanets orbit very close to their star. Some look like the Earth, others like Jupiter. Very few, however, are similar to Neptune.

Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? There's a good chance it does - though it might look very different to life on Earth. Scientists may soon be able to offer a definitive answer. Twenty-seven years ago, at the University of Geneva, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz - now a professor at ETH - discovered the first extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star.

The impact experiment conducted on the asteroid Ryugu by the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission which took place two years ago resulted in an unexpectedly large crater. With the use of simulations, a team led by the University of Bern and the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS has recently succeeded in gaining new insights from the experiment regarding the formation and development of asteroids.

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team including scientists is building a complete picture of the atmosphere of the planet WASP-39b. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and its unparalleled images of our Universe offer us a new first: by combining several instruments, it draws a molecular and chemical portrait of the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-39b.

With the use of a precision experiment developed at the University of Bern, an international research team has succeeded in significantly narrowing the scope for the existence of dark matter. The experiment was carried out at the European Research Neutron Source at the Institute Laue-Langevin in France, and makes an important contribution to the search for these particles, of which little remains known.