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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.

Climate change is particularly intense in the Arctic. To assess its consequences and determine what role this region plays in global warming, two teams of scientists from EPFL have visited the area. One to gain a better understanding of the region's air composition, the other to quantify the greenhouse gases sequestered in Greenland fjords sourced by glacial water.

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.

Catastrophic volcanic eruptions that warmed the planet millions of years ago shed new light on how plants evolve and regulate climate. Researchers reveal the long-term climate effects of disturbed natural ecosystems - its implications both in geological history and for today. Scientists often seek answers to humanity's most pressing challenges in nature.

An international research team led by Silvia Spezzaferri from the University of Freiburg has discovered why the Antarctic polar ice cap is melting faster on the western side of the continent than on the eastern side. New drillings and sophisticated modeling have shown that this phenomenon can be traced back to the original formation of the ice sheet 34 million years ago .

As part of the GreenFjord project, prof. Samuel Jaccard from the University of Lausanne and five other scientists board the sailing vessel Forel to carry out a sampling and analysis campaign in SW Greenland.

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.

By analysing 56-million-year-old sediments, a team from the University of Geneva has measured the increase in soil erosion caused by global warming, synonymous with major flooding. 56 million years ago, the Earth experienced a major and rapid climate warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, probably due to volcanic eruptions.

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.

Researchers at the University of Bern have for the first time been able to pin down a prehistoric settlement of early farmers in northern Greece dating back more than 7,000 years to the year. For this they combined annual growth ring measurements on wooden building elements with the sudden spike of cosmogenic radiocarbon in 5259 BC.

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.

In order to understand the Earth's resilience, researchers at ETH Zurich are modelling climate changes from times long past. And they show: Plants are not simply victims of circumstances, but have helped to shape climate conditions on Earth. Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, Earth has lived through a series of climatic shifts, shaping the planet as we know it today.

Icebergs on the Bosporus and a frozen Black Sea: an international study by the University of Bern with the participation of the Austrian Academy of Sciences shows how volcanic eruptions on Iceland influenced the European climate in the early Middle Ages and led to severe winter cooling anomalies. It was one of the coldest winters the region has ever experienced: In 763, large parts of the Black Sea froze over and icebergs were sighted on the Boporus.

Microplastic particles can be found in the most remote ocean regions on earth. In Antarctica, pollution levels are even higher than previously assumed. This is one finding of a recent study involving researchers from the University of Basel. It's not the first study on microplastics in Antarctica that researchers from the University of Basel and the Alfred-Wegener Institute (AWI) have conducted.

More than 300,000 meteorites lie on the Antarctic ice. They contain an unprecedented wealth of information about our solar system. With every tenth of a degree of global warming, thousands of meteorites sink. Researchers from WSL and ETH recommend that their collection be promoted. The Antarctic holds a valuable treasure of around 300,000 meteorites lying on the surface of the ice.

New observations from the space telescope point to the existence of a 'glory' in the atmosphere of WASP-76b, a luminous phenomenon like a rainbow. The CHEOPS space telescope, whose scientific operations centre is based at the University of Geneva , is providing new information on the mysterious exoplanet WASP-76b.

Researchers at ETH Zurich led by Robert Boes are developing specific solutions to optimise electricity production from Swiss hydropower plants. This will ensure that hydropower remains the backbone of Switzerland's electricity supply in the future. "Although Swiss hydropower is a proven technology, we must constantly work on optimising it.

Environmental scientist Alice Pradel cultivates ice cores in the lab to investigate the transport and accumulation of microand nanoplastics. Her aim in doing so is to better understand material flows in the Arctic ice. "Beat the Microbead" is the name of a campaign launched in 2012 with the aim of reducing the use of microplastics in cosmetic products in order to minimise negative effects on the environment and people.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in detecting heavy precipitation events directly with GPS data. The results of their study could significantly improve meteorological monitoring and forecasting. An exceptionally severe storm swept over Zurich on 13 July 2021 shortly before 2 a.m.: howling squalls, constant lightning and torrential rain woke people up with a start.

An artificial intelligence system developed at EPFL can produce 3D maps of coral reefs from camera footage in just a few minutes. It marks a major leap forward in deep-sea exploration and conservation capabilities for organizations like the Transnational Red Sea Center (TRSC). Corals often provide a colorful backdrop to photographs of shimmering fish captured by amateur divers.