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A team of scientists including researchers from the University of Bern, the University of Geneva and the NCCR PlanetS used the ESPRESSO Spectrograph to discover a sub-Earth mass exoplanet orbiting Barnard's star, the second-closest star system to the Sun. This discovery helps to understand planetary formation around red dwarfs and provides insights into the diversity of planetary systems in our cosmic neighbourhood.

ETH spin-off Terensis is able to forecast the harvest yield and climate risks such as droughts and frost with the help of satellites.

An international team, including UNIGE, unveiled the "Neptunian Ridge", an overdensity of Neptunes nestled between the Neptunian Desert and the Neptunian Savanna. Astronomers have uncovered the ''Neptunian Ridge'', a newly identified feature in the distribution of exoplanets. This discovery, led by an international team including members of the University of Geneva, The NCCR PlanetS and the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), highlights the complex dynamics within the Neptunian Desert, a region with a scarcity of hot Neptunes, and the Neptunian Savanna, where these planets are more commonly found.

The SLF is researching permafrost and snow in Bhutan at an altitude of over 5000 meters and, together with the local population, is developing measures to reduce climate-related risks in the mountains. The Swiss National Science Foundation is funding the Cryo-Spirit project. This text was automatically translated.

An AI-powered tool developed at EPFL can distinguish dark matter's elusive effects from other cosmic phenomena, which could bring us closer to unlocking the secrets of dark matter. Image: Still image from simulation of the formation of dark matter structures from the early universe to today. Gravity makes dark matter clump into dense halos, indicated by bright patches, where galaxies form.

An international team, including the University of Geneva, has discovered that iron winds are blowing on the day side of the planet WASP-76 b. An international team of astronomers, including scientists from the University of Geneva and the PlanetS National Centre of Competence in Research, has identified the presence of iron winds in the atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-76 b. This planet with its extreme conditions - over 2

Most of a planet's water is generally not on its surface but hidden deep in its interior. This affects the potential habitability of distant worlds, as shown by model calculations of researchers at ETH Zurich and Princeton University. We know that the Earth has an iron core surrounded by a mantle of silicate bedrock and water (oceans) on its surface.

Previously thought to be negligible, the Sun-s magnetic activity is influencing the determination of its seismic age, as shown by a study published by an international team led by a researcher from the University of Geneva. An international team of astronomers, led by a researcher from the University of Geneva , has shown that the Sun-s magnetic activity has a significant influence on its seismic characterisation, contrary to predictions in the literature.

An international team of astrophysicists with participation of the University of Zurich proposes a novel method to detect pairs of the biggest black holes found at the centers of galaxies by analyzing gravitational waves generated by binaries of nearby small stellar black holes. The origin of supermassive black holes found at the centers of galaxies, is still one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the Australian National University have re-determined the half-life of samarium-146 with great precision. The result fits perfectly with the data astrophysicists and geochemists have obtained from extraterrestrial samples. The study appears today in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

An international team of researchers led by the University of Bern has used observation-based computer modelling to find an explanation for how macromolecules can form in a short time in disks of gas and dust around young stars. These findings could be crucial for understanding how habitability develops around different types of exoplanets and stars.

A team including researchers from the Laboratory for High Energy Physics at the University of Bern has successfully measured the interaction rates of neutrinos at unprecedented energies using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. A better understanding of these elusive elementary particles can help answer the question of why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.

When the Earth's ice masses melt, the way the planet rotates also changes. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now been able to show how climate change is altering the Earth's axis of rotation and the length of the day. The speed of rotation, which was hitherto mainly influenced by the moon, will now also depend much more on the climate.

An international team of researchers combine orbital imagery with seismological data from NASA's Mars InSight lander to derive a new impact rate for meteorite strikes on Mars. Seismology also offers a new tool for determining the density of Mars' craters and the age of different regions of a planet.

An international team has shown the existence of two distinct populations of sub-Neptunes, resolving a debate in the scientific community. The majority of stars in our galaxy are home to planets. The most abundant are the sub-Neptunes, planets between the size of Earth and Neptune. Calculating their density poses a problem for scientists: depending on the method used to measure their mass, two populations are highlighted, the dense and the less dense.

Scientists, through the VELOCE project, have clocked the speed of Cepheid stars - "standard candles" that help us measure the size of the universe - with unprecedented precision, offering exciting new insights about them. Photo: RS Puppis , one of the most luminous Cepheid variable star s, rhythmically brightens and dims over a six-week cycle.

For the first time, water frost has been detected on the colossal volcanoes on Mars, which are the largest mountains in the Solar System. The international team led by the University of Bern used high-resolution color images from the Bernese Mars camera, CaSSIS, onboard the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft.

Artist's concept of the exoplanet SPECULOOS-3 b orbiting its ultra-cool red dwarf star. The planet is as big as Earth, while its star is slightly larger than Jupiter, but much more massive. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech An international team of astronomers - including members of the NCCR PlanetS , the University of Geneva and the University of Bern (UNIBE) - has discovered, for only the second time, an Earth-sized exoplanet (SPECULOOS-3 b) around an ultra-cool Red Dwarf star.

Researchers using NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope may have detected an atmosphere surrounding 55 Cancri e, a rocky exoplanet 41 light-years from Earth. This is the best evidence to date for a rocky planet atmosphere outside our solar system. Brice-Olivier Demory, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Bern and member of the the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, was part of the international research team that just published the results in Nature.

Thanks to ESA satellites, an international team including researchers has detected a giant eruption coming from a magnetar, an extremely magnetic neutron star. While ESA's satellite INTEGRAL was observing the sky, it spotted a burst of gamma-rays - high-energy photons - coming from the nearby galaxy M82.