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…
more09/06/2024 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…
more08/02/2024 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.
more07/31/2024 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.
more05/07/2024 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.
more04/04/2024 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.
more03/20/2024 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.
more02/20/2024 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.
more01/31/2024 Today, the German eROSITA consortium released the data for its share of the first all-sky survey by the soft X-ray imaging telescope flying aboard the Spectrum-RG (SRG) satellite. With about 900,000 distinct sources, the first eROSITA All-Sky Survey (eRASS1) has published the most extensive X-ray catalogue. Based on just the first six months of observations, eROSITA has already detected more sources than previously known in the 60-year history of X-ray astronomy.
more07/03/2023 The ESA space telescope Euclid, with significant contributions by ORIGINS scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, was launched into space today, 1 July 2023 at 17:12 CEST on a Falcon 9 rocket by the US space company SpaceX. Once it arrives at its destination, the Lagrange Point 2 (L2) of Earth-Sun system, it will observe over a third of the entire sky for at least six years, mapping the spatial distribution of billions of galaxies and measuring their properties. Analysing this data, the six German institutes in the…
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