News
CHEOPS has arrived in Kourou
Last station before launch! The CHEOPS satellite has arrived by plane on 16 October 2019 at Europe’s Spaceport Kourou in French Guiana. Now CHEOPS is being prepared to launch into space soon with Soyuz VS23. Once in orbit around the Earth, it will begin to measure the exact radii of planets in distant solar systems […]
Continue Reading
“They both live on another planet now.”
Willy Benz is particularly pleased about this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for the Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. He was Michel Mayor’s first PhD student at the University of Geneva. Today he is Professor at the University of Bern, Director of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS and President […]
Continue Reading
Liquifying a rocky exoplanet
A hot, molten Earth would be around 5% larger than its solid counterpart. This is the result of a study led by researchers at the University of Bern. The difference between molten and solid rocky planets is important for the search of Earth-like worlds beyond our Solar System and the understanding of Earth itself. Rocky […]
Continue Reading
Congratulations to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded with one half jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star”. Michel Mayor is member of the Advisory Board of the NCCR PlanetS, Didier Queloz is member of the NCCR. Congratulations! In the video you find out […]
Continue Reading
Bench2biz workshop: call for application
Are you wondering if your invention/research is commercialisable? Do you need to get a clear picture on how to pursue your business idea? Would you benefit from personalised guidance from experts? Bench2biz Zurich 2019 workshop for aspiring entrepreneurs in science & technology is launching a call for applications to all idea champions. Designed for high-technology […]
Continue Reading
A planet that should not exist
Astronomers detected a giant planet orbiting a small star. The planet has much more mass than theoretical models predict. While this surprising discovery was made by a Spanish-German team, researchers at the University of Bern studied how the mysterious exoplanet might have formed. The red dwarf GJ 3512 is located 30 light-years from us. Although […]
Continue Reading
Hints of a volcanically active exomoon
A rocky extrasolar moon (exomoon) with bubbling lava may orbit a planet 550 light-years away from us. This is suggested by an international team of researchers led by the University of Bern on the basis of theoretical predictions matching observations. The “exo-Io” would appear to be an extreme version of Jupiter’s moon Io. Jupiter’s moon […]
Continue Reading
Observing planets as they form
By Christoph Mordasini Astrophysics – the branch of physics that aims at explaining astronomical observations – differs from most other branches of physics by the comparatively minor availability or sometimes even absence of laboratory experiments. While crucial laboratory experiments do exist for several physical systems and processes that are relevant in astrophysics and in particular […]
Continue Reading
“Now CHEOPS is ready for transport to Kourou”
The space telescope CHEOPS is foreseen to launch in the last quarter of 2019. “In July, we carried out the final tests on the instrument at Airbus in Madrid,” says project manager Christopher Broeg: “Now CHEOPS is ready for transport to Kourou.” PlanetS: The work on the CHEOPS space telescope was actually completed months ago […]
Continue Reading
More than 1800 planetologists expected in Geneva
While the EPSC (European Planetary Science Congress) and the meeting of the Division of Planetary Science (DPS, USA) are planetology congresses that take place every year on their respective continents, the conference that brings together the two entities, the EPSC-DPS joint meeting, takes place every four years alternately in the USA and Europe. This year, […]
Continue Reading
