09/16/2026 For the eighth time, the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS is conferring the ORIGINS PhD Awards. The awards recognise two outstanding dissertations from the Cluster’s research areas. Interdisciplinary work that connects several ORIGINS research areas is particularly welcome. The application deadline is 30 November 2026.

09/07/2026 eROSITA has discovered a population of black holes with extreme mass. In a 140-square-degree region of the sky, an international research team – including several ORIGINS researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) – has identified eight active black holes whose masses account for at least five percent of the total stellar mass of their host galaxies. In the nearby universe, this proportion is typically around half a percent. The observation challenges the widespread notion that black holes and galaxies are always closely coupled and grow…

09/04/2026 The Belle II experiment has recorded the world’s largest dataset of entangled B-meson pairs. ORIGINS scientists Prof. Thomas Kuhr and his team at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, together with the group led by Prof. Stephan Paul at the Technical University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Physics, are among the researchers involved in this effort. This record-breaking dataset surpasses that of the predecessor Belle experiment and enables precision measurements at an unprecedented level of accuracy.

08/10/2026 Was geschah nach dem Urknall? Wie entstanden die ersten Galaxien, Sterne und die großräumigen Strukturen des Kosmos? Und wie rekonstruieren Forschende die Entwicklung des Universums über 13,8 Milliarden Jahre? Diesen Fragen geht die Planetariumsshow „Ausgerechnet! Unser Universum“ nach, die ab September regelmäßig im Planetarium der ESO Supernova zu sehen sein wird. Entwickelt wurde die Planetariumsshow von Forschenden des Exzellenzclusters ORIGINS.

07/30/2026 Tracing a cosmic imbalance: LEGEND 1000 aims to shed light on the role neutrinos may have played in leaving matter behind after the Big Bang – making stars, planets, and life possible. The German Science and Humanities Council has now recommended implementation of this research infrastructure, which is jointly led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) with strong participation from researchers of the Cluster of Excellence ORIGINS. The Council recognizes the project’s outstanding scientific significance for…

06/23/2026 Two leading researchers from the ORIGINS Cluster of Excellence have each been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), as the ERC announced today. This funding will enable them to pursue their ambitious projects. Eiichiro Komatsu, director at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), will investigate possible New Physics in the “NewPhysCMB” project using the polarized light of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Sherry Suyu, who is also a professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), is investigating the Hubble constant,…

03/09/2026 Liquid water is considered essential for life. Surprisingly, however, stable conditions that are conducive to life could exist far from any sun. A research team from the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS at LMU and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) has shown that moons around free-floating planets can keep their water oceans liquid for up to 4.3 billion years by virtue of dense hydrogen atmospheres and tidal heating – that is to say, for almost as long as the Earth has existed and sufficient time for complex life to develop.

02/19/2026 That the Universe is expanding has been known for almost a hundred years now, but how fast? The exact rate of that expansion remains hotly debated, even challenging the standard model of cosmology. A research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) and the Max Planck Institutes for Astrophysics (MPA) and for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) has now imaged and modelled an exceptionally rare supernova nicknamed SN Winny that could provide a new, independent way to measure how fast the Universe is expanding. The project was…

02/12/2026 During the past Antarctic summer season, a team of 51 scientists and technicians – including two members of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) – installed more than 600 new sensors at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. The upgrade represents a major scientific and engineering achievement, realized through close collaboration with German and international partners.

02/05/2026 Cosmic rays are messengers from space that scientists use to study the Universe. ORIGINS scientist Francesca Capel and ORIGINS doctoral student Nadine Bourriche from the Max Planck Institute for Physics have investigated one of the most energetic cosmic rays ever observed: the Amaterasu particle, named after the Japanese sun goddess. Their work marks an important step toward solving the puzzle of its origin, providing a new analytical approach to tracing the possible sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.