09/12/2022 On a regular basis, "Exzellent erklärt – Spitzenforschung für alle" reports from one of the 57 clusters of excellence funded under the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments. In the ORIGINS episode "The ORIGINS of Life Lab: tracing the origin of life", podcaster Larissa Vassilian talks with Prof. Petra Schwille and Prof. Dieter Braun about the possible beginnings of life.

09/05/2022 Die vier Münchner Exzellenzcluster präsentieren sich am Maus-Türöffner-Tag, 03.10.2022 von 09:00 bis 17:00 Uhr, gemeinsam im neuen Science Congress Center Munich (GALILEO) am Garchinger Forschungszentrum. Am Gemeinschaftsstand gibt es für Kinder und Jugendliche spannende Experimente zum Selbermachen, viele Infos rund um die Cluster und ein spannendes Quiz mit tollen Preisen!

09/02/2022 With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international research team, including scientists from the University Observatory in Munich, has for the first time clearly identified carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. The result provides important insights into the composition and formation of the planet and marks the start of a large observation program with the JWST.

08/31/2022 Cluster-emeritus Prof. Dr. Harald Fritzsch passed away unexpectedly on August 16, 2022 at the age of 79. Fritzsch was a theoretical particle physicist who was already closely interwoven with the research activities of the Excellence Cluster Universe (2006 – 2018) as a founding member. Even after his retirement, he remained connected to the Cluster as Emeritus and was part of the selection committee of the "ORIGINS PhD Awards".

08/24/2022 The German Astronomical Society announced that ORIGINS Scientist Hans-Thomas Janka from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) will receive the Karl Schwarzschild Medal, the most prestigious prize in Germany in the field of astronomy and astrophysics. The medal honours his research on the core-collapse supernova mechanism, explosive nucleosynthesis, and supernova neutrino physics

08/01/2022 The astrophysicist Prof. Dr. Kevin Heng will lead the Chair of Theoretical Astrophysics of Extrasolar Planets at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU) on 01 August 2022 and will become ORIGINS PI. His focus is the theory of exoplanet atmospheres.

07/27/2022 Thanks to the first scientific image released this month by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) has built an improved model for the mass distribution of the galaxy cluster SMACS J0723 .3−7327. As a gravitational lens, this galaxy cluster multiplies and magnifies images of background galaxies. A family of such multiple images belongs to a galaxy that the new model estimates to be 13 billion light-years away. If confirmed, it underscores the importance of accurate gravitational…

06/27/2022 From June 24 to 26, 2022, FORSCHA and the Munich Science Days offered visitors an adventurous journey through the fascinating worlds of research. ORIGINS was there and inspired young and young at heart science enthusiasts with findings from astrophysics, biophysics and particle physics.

06/22/2022 After 60 years of unsuccessful searches, an international research team has discovered a neutral nucleus for the first time - the tetra-neutron. The collaboration succeeded in creating an isolated four-neutron system with low relative kinetic energy in a volume equivalent to an atomic nucleus. The researchers overcame the experimental challenge by using a new method: a radioactive neutron-rich ⁸He beam and a fast high-energy reaction with a proton.

06/15/2022 Our Sun counts more than 400 stars and an ever-growing number of exoplanets among its immediate neighbours within ten parsecs (or 33 light-years). Now, two new Super-Earths are added to the list that are just at the edge of the solar neighbourhood and in the fourth closest stellar system. They were recently discovered by an international team of researchers, including Dr. Karan Molaverdikhani from ORIGINS PI Prof. Barbara Ercolano's research group. Life is unlikely on these two exoplanets, but they are among the best candidates for the observations by the James Webb Space…