The Moon is apparently quite reluctant to reveal its age. Attempts to uncover its secret have yielded estimates that lie several hundred million years apart: While some researchers suggest that our cosmic companion was formed 4.35 billion years ago, others date its birth to 4.51 billion years ago. One of the most striking inconsistencies is of a stony nature: almost all lunar rock samples point to the younger age. But a few rare crystals of…

How can milk production be made more sustainable? And how does feeding concentrates influence sustainability? Researchers at the University of Göttingen and the Kassel Institute for Rural Development have investigated protein utilisation on dairy farms and shown that grass-based and low-concentrate feeding of dairy cows ultimately produces more protein for human consumption. It also reduces the environmental impact by minimising excess nutrients…

ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, has awarded Viola Priesemann with the 2024 Madame de Staël Prize for European Values in recognition of her remarkable scientific achievements in the field of physics, her exceptional leadership and her profound commitment to fostering international scientific collaboration in response to the challenges generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. "Global challenges like the outbreak…

The University of Göttingen is one of the 15 best universities in Germany according to the DFG Funding Atlas 2024. From 2020 to 2022, it acquired a total of 232.5 million euros in research funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG). The life sciences were once again particularly successful, taking fifth place in Germany. The subjects with the highest DFG ratings at the University of Göttingen include Agricultural Sciences, Forest Sciences,…

The German Research Foundation (DFG) will fund a new Collaborative Research Centres (CRC) led by the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) from 1 April 2025. The new CRC 1690, entitled “Disease Mechanisms and Functional Restoration of Sensory and Motor Systems”, will receive more than twelve million euros for an initial funding period of just under four years. MBExC spokesperson Prof. Dr. Tobias Moser, Director of the Institute for Auditory…

New images of the Sun’s visible surface released today show the entire solar disk in unprecedented detail. They were created by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany from observational data obtained by Solar Orbiter’s Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) from March 22 of last year. At that time, Solar Orbiter was cruising just outside Mercury’s orbit and from there had an unobstructed view of…

When active filaments are exposed to localized illumination, they accumulate into stable structures along the boundaries of the illuminated area. Based on this fact, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) developed a model that can be used to simulate the self-organization of thread-like living matter. This model provides important insights for potential technical applications in the formation of…

For his research findings on the historical activity of the Sun, the European Space Weather and Space Climate Association has honored Dr. Theodosios Chatzistergos from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany with the Alexander Chizhevsky Medal. The award was presented yesterday during the European Space Weather Week in Coimbra, Portugal. In his research, the scientist looks into the past of our star and uses historical…

The path to climate-compatible flying involves energy-efficient aircraft, low-emission engines and optimised flight paths. Digitalisation can accelerate these developments, for example by simulating the airflow around an aircraft – requiring high-performance computers to process vast quantities of data. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) has now demonstrated how machine learning and artificial…

This year, the German University Medicine Award goes to a research team for a globally unique approach: the ‘heart patch’ – a therapy using stem cells to repair the heart muscle and strengthen the heart permanently.The study is a prime example of translational research, from the laboratory to clinical application, and takes a completely new approach to the treatment of one of the most common heart diseases: Patients with heart failure were…