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,…
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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.
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