05/08/2025 An international team, including ORIGINS researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), has discovered a new island of asymmetric nuclear fission on the chart of nuclides. A narrow range of krypton isotopes (Z=36) drives a mode of asymmetric nuclear fission for nuclei in the region of mercury isotopes (Z=80). The results improve our understanding of the origin of elements in the Universe, as well as processes in terrestrial energy production and reactor safety.

04/11/2025 The international KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino Experiment (KATRIN) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has once again surpassed its own achievements. The latest data, recently published in Science, establish an upper limit of 8 x $10^{-37}$ kg (or in scientific language 0.45 eV/$c^2$) for the neutrino mass. With this result, KATRIN, which measures neutrino mass in the laboratory using a model-independent method, has once again set a world record. The KATRIN team of the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS and the Collaborative Research Center 1258 at the Technical…

02/05/2025 Filaments are slender, thread-like structures of dark matter, gas and galaxies, forming a complex network known as the cosmic web. Theoretical models predict that they attract and channel cold gas to fuel star formation in galaxies. An international team led by ORIGINS researchers from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität of Munich (LMU), the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has now, for the first time, discovered a dozen massive hydrogen clouds along a filament. The filament is also very unusual: it consists of an…

09/06/2024 Researchers from LMU, the ORIGINS Excellence Cluster, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), and the ORIGINS Data Science Lab (ODSL) have made an important breakthrough in the analysis of exoplanet atmospheres. Using physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), they have managed to model the complex light scattering in the atmospheres of exoplanets with greater precision than has previously been possible. This method opens up new opportunities for the analysis of exoplanet atmospheres, especially with regard to the influence of clouds, and could…

08/02/2024 The origins of life remain a major mystery. How were complex molecules able to form and remain intact for prolonged periods without disintegrating? A team at ORIGINS, a Munich-based Cluster of Excellence, has demonstrated a mechanism that could have enabled the first RNA molecules to stabilize in the primordial soup. When two RNA strands combine, their stability and lifespan increase significantly.

07/31/2024 Researchers at LMU, the ORIGINS Excellence Cluster, and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) have developed a new model to explain the formation of giant planets such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The model furnishes deeper insights into the processes of planet formation and could expand our understanding of planetary systems.

05/07/2024 On Thursday, 13 June 2024 a new series of lectures will be launched in the planetarium: „Kosmisches Kino“ combines planetarium visualisations with live lectures by researchers.

04/04/2024 Scientists at the ORIGINS Ice, Dust, and Sequencing Lab (IDSL) have demonstrated how heat flows through rock fissures could have created the conditions for the emergence of life.

03/20/2024 A new study by researchers from the team of ORIGINS scientist Dieter Braun shows how the chemical properties of RNA molecules could have facilitated the emergence of complex life.

02/20/2024 The Radcliffe Wave is the largest coherent, wave-shaped gas structure ever observed in our Milky Way. It consists of interconnected star-forming regions and extends over 40 per cent of Orion's spiral arm in the vicinity of the Sun. An international team, including ORIGINS scientists at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, could show that this is a travelling wave: the Radcliffe Wave oscillates around the galactic plane and, at the same time, slowly drifts away from the galactic centre.