News
Getting ready for a tricky task
After ExoMars TGO has reached its Mars Capture Orbit, the intention is to switch on CaSSIS in the week from November 21 to 28 and acquire images of Mars for the first time. A media release is planned on 1 December 2016 when ESA’s Ministerial Council is being held in Lucerne. By Nicolas Thomas There […]
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Planetarium show about exoplanets
From the beginning of December the topic of exoplanets will inspire the audience of the planetarium of the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne. The new show titled “Out There” was written by the curator Marc Horat and was developed in close collaboration with the NCCR PlanetS. Recently, Marc Horat visited the University of Bern […]
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Gender bias in ERC grant evaluation
By Nadine Afram In the last edition of the InsiderS, I reported on two topics that are currently discussed in gender research. Here, I will focus on the gender bias in evaluating grant proposals. It is educative to see how selection criteria can be, albeit probably mainly unconsciously, cherry picked to be applied differently for […]
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PlanetS at ScienceComm 16
This year this important scientific communication event in Switzerland was held in Grandson, where 200 people gathered in an idyllic setting at the edge of Lake Neuchatel. ScienceComm 2016 was the fifth edition of a congress that takes more breadth year after year within the community of people in charge of communication in research institutes, […]
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What makes a good job application
By Nadine Afram The PlanetS Academic Platform carried out a survey with PlanetS professors to find out what – in their opinions – makes a good job application for a scientific research position in their group (experimental or theoretical). The survey questions were based on the input of young scientists at PlanetS and on feedback […]
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PlanetS at Swiss Fantasy Show
By Pierre Bratschi An unusual proposal arrived on the desk of the platform communication and outreach members of PlanetS to participate in the Swiss Fantasy Show, a convention bringing together thousands of sci-fi fanatics. “Okay,” Willy Benz finally declared after a long reflection tinged with skepticism, “but we are scientists who do science. Show that […]
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Facebook experiences
By Carsten Knigge After having launched the PlanetS Facebook profile last April and hence six months of running time so far, certain impressions and experiences shall be shared here with the PlanetS community. After certain technical difficulties in the beginning, the submission process by means of a dedicated form seems to work smoothly. The language […]
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Kepler-60
Kepler-60 is a system about 2200 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. It is made of a star a bit larger than the Sun (1.1 solar masses and 1.5 solar radii) and at least three planets. This system is peculiar since the three planets seems to be close to a Laplace-like resonance. Indeed, when the central planet (Kepler-60 c) revolves 4 times around the […]
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How planets like Jupiter form
Young giant planets are born from gas and dust. Researchers of ETH Zürich and the Universities of Zürich and Bern simulated different scenarios relying on the computing power of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) to find out how they exactly form and evolve. They compared their results with observations and were able to show […]
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Preferentially Earth-sized planets with lots of water
Computer simulations by astrophysicists at the University of Bern of the formation of planets orbiting in the habitable zone of low mass stars such as Proxima Centauri show that these planets are most likely to be roughly the size of the Earth and to contain large amounts of water. In August 2016, the announcement of […]
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