03/31/2020 The European Research Council today awarded ORIGINS researcher Dr. Klaus Dolag with an Advanced Grant. In his successfully submitted COMPLEX project, Dolag intends to combine large- and small-scale simulations of the universe. His goal: The identification of key processes responsible for the composition of the largest part of visible matter in our Universe.

01/17/2020 Forschen wie im richtigen Leben! In diesem Jahr finden in München gleich zwei Teilchenphysik-Kurse für Schüler*innen ab der 10. Klasse statt. An den beiden Tagen lernen die Teilnehmer Forschungsmethoden der Teilchenphysik kennen und identifizieren Elementarteilchen in Teilchenkollisionen. Organisiert werden die Kurse von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern des Exzellenzclusters „ORIGINS“, der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), des MPI für Physik (MPP) sowie der Technischen Universität München (TUM). Vorkenntnisse sind nicht erforderlich.

01/08/2020 Members of the H0LiCOW team led by ORIGINS Scientist Sherry Suyu at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and the Technical University of Munich used a number of telescopes and a technique that is completely independent of any previous method to measure the universe's expansion rate, a value called the Hubble constant. The researchers' result further strengthens a troubling discrepancy between the expansion rate calculated from measurements of the local universe and the rate as predicted from background radiation in the early universe. The new study adds evidence to the…

11/20/2019 The first Science Week of the ORIGINS Cluster will take place from December 2 to 5, 2019 in the New Seminar Room (1.1.18ab) at the Max-Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics. Cluster scientists and invited guests will present their current research work in the fields of astrophysics, cosmology, particle, nuclear physics and biophysics.

11/14/2019 Cluster emeritus Prof. Dr. Andrzej J. Buras from the Technical University of Munich is awarded the Max Planck Medal - the highest award of the German Physical Society (DPG) for theoretical physics. The DPG honors Buras' outstanding contributions to applied quantum field theory of fundamental interactions, especially in the field of so-called flavor physics and quantum chromodynamics.

10/14/2019 ESO astronomer and ORIGINS Scientist Dr. Leonardo Testi together with Patrick Hennebelle from CEA Paris-Saclay in France, Ralf Klessen from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and Sergio Molinari from the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Rome, Italy, were awarded with up to €12.6 million by the European Research Council (ERC) for the project "ECOGAL – Understanding our Galactic ecosystem: From the disk of the Milky Way to the formation sites of stars and planets". This project is one of only 37 synergy grants to be funded by the ERC in 2019 and the only one in the…

09/16/2019 Because of their extremely small mass, neutrinos play a key role in cosmology and particle physics. After evaluation of the first measurement results in the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment (KATRIN), it is now clear: The previously unknown mass of the neutrinos must be less than 1 electron volt. This result is more accurate than previous measurements and raises hopes of discovering new neutrino properties.

09/05/2019 In the quest to prove that matter can be produced without antimatter, the GERDA experiment at the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory is looking for signs of neutrinoless double beta decay. The experiment has the greatest sensitivity worldwide for detecting the decay in question. To further improve the chances of success, a follow-up project, LEGEND, uses an even more refined decay experiment.

08/22/2019 It is among the most spectacular events in the universe: a merger of neutron stars. An international team of researchers with strong representation from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has completed the first laboratory measurements of thermal electromagnetic radiation arising in such collisions. The resulting data enabled them to calculate the prevailing temperature when such stars merge.

04/29/2019 The Helmholtz Excellence Network “Munich Center for Plasma Astrophysics” headed by Professor Frank Jenko from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) and Principal Investigator of the Excellence Cluster Origins will commence its work on 1 May. The Center is being funded with around a million euros by the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres. The main objective will be to contribute to the excellence cluster ORIGINS through studies relating to plasma astrophysics.