Author Archive
EPSC-DPS 2019 in Geneva
About 1700 astronomers attended the planetology congress from 15th to 20th September organized jointly by the Europeans of the EPSC and the Americans of the DPS and which took place at the International Congress Center in Geneva. The Local Organizing Committee (LOC) partly funded by PlanetS, wanted the holding of this historic congress for the […]
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JURA 2019
From the 9th to the 11th of September 2019, 31 young researchers from Bern, Geneva, and Zürich gathered at the Flora Alpina hotel in Vitznau (Lake Lucerne, Switzerland) for the second edition of the NCCR Junior Research Assembly (JURA). The aim of the meeting was to bring together young researchers affiliated with the NCCR PlanetS […]
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The Red Planet in images
50 years of Mars exploration – public lecture in French Fifty years ago, exploration of Mars using robotic space probes began in parallel with human exploration of the Moon. Today, it is possible to take images that reconstruct the relief of the surface of Mars in a very precise way. Thanks to the data collected, […]
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“Fragile – collected, hunted, explored”
Exhibition in Winterthur From 10 November 2019 to 15 March 2020, the Naturmuseum Winterthur is showing its award-winning special exhibition “Fragile – collected, hunted, researched”. The exhibition, produced by Naturama Aargau, deals with quirky collectors, tough explorers, eccentric hunters and tireless researchers. The exhibition space becomes a collection depot. Well protected, each freight box contains […]
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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 […]
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“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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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