News from the Göttingen Campus

In a brand-new paper that appeared in Nature Physics, a collaboration of the group of David Zwicker at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen and the group of Eric Dufresne at ETH Zürich demonstrate some surprising effects of polymer networks on droplet growth.
In a brand-new paper that appeared in Nature Physics, a collaboration of the group of David Zwicker at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen and the group of Eric Dufresne at ETH Zürich demonstrate some surprising effects of polymer networks on droplet growth. This work may provide new avenues for manufacturing micropatterns and it may shed light on how membrane-less organelles are controlled inside cells. In…
Over the next years, the ESA spacecraft will study the Sun from a completely new perspective.
The Solar Orbiter spacecraft has been successfully launched on its journey to the Sun. At 5.03 a.m. Central European Time, the probe took off today from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral (USA) on board an Atlas V 411 rocket. A little over an hour later, at about 6.25 a.m., the decisive signal was received: the two solar panels were successfully unfolded; the expedition to the Sun has begun. Over the course of the next seven years, Solar…
With the Solar Orbiter space probe, a new chapter in the exploration of the Sun begins
On 10 February, the Solar Orbiter solar mission is scheduled to launch into space. Equipped with 10 scientific instruments, the probe of the European Space Agency (ESA) will in the coming years venture to a distance of only 42 million km from the Sun. This is only a little more than one quarter of the distance between the Sun and the Earth. Solar Orbiter will also leave the orbital plane of the Earth and investigate the poles of the Sun for the…
Prof. Dr. Johannes Geiss, Honorary Director of the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern and External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), passed away on 30 January, 2020. He was 93 years old.
Johannes Geiss began his unprecedented scientific career at the University of Göttingen, where he received his doctorate in the early 1950s as a student of the later Nobel laureate Wolfgang Paul. After research stays at the University of Bern, the University of Chicago, and the University of Miami, he accepted a call to the University of Bern in 1960, where he established a laboratory for extraterrestrial research and operated it until his…
Researchers investigate relationship between economic value of ecosystems and biodiversity
Can the biodiversity of ecosystems be considered as a factor affecting production? In fact, can greater biodiversity increase the economic value of managed ecosystems? A research team with participation from the University of Göttingen has analysed the economic advantages farmers and foresters have when they focus on several species instead of just one. The researchers also looked at the benefits of biodiversity for society in an extensive…
Thanks to Jens Frahm and his team, magnetic resonance imaging examinations are carried out relatively quickly today.
The number is gigantic: About 100 million examinations are carried out with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) every year – and every scanner worldwide uses the technology developed by Jens Frahm with his team at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry. For his achievements, the physicist has now been awarded the Werner von Siemens Ring, one of the most important German technology prizes. Back in the early days of MRI in the 1980s,…
The role of temporal fluctuations for the swing feel in jazz music
In 1931, Duke Ellington and Irving Mills even dedicated a song to the phenomenon of swing which they called "It Don't Mean a Thing, If It Ain't Got That Swing". Yet, to this day, the question of what exactly makes a jazz performance swing has not really been clarified. A team drawn from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen and the University of Göttingen recently carried out an empirical study into the role…
Research team led by the University of Göttingen observes greater variation than expected
Graphene is often seen as the wonder material of the future. Scientists can now grow perfect graphene layers on square centimetre-sized crystals. A research team from the University of Göttingen, together with the Chemnitz University of Technology and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig, has investigated the influence of the underlying crystal on the electrical resistance of graphene. Contrary to previous assumptions, the new…
Research report paints gloomy picture of the protection of asylum seekers in Germany
The research report “Refugee Protection in Germany” by the EU project “Multilevel Governance of Migration (RESPOND)” paints a gloomy picture of the human rights protection for asylum seekers in Germany. Among other things, the authors speak of a “differential exclusion” of ever larger groups from German asylum law on the basis of more or less arbitrary criteria. Although the basic right to asylum in Germany is officially unaffected, the authors…
Research team led by the University of Göttingen investigates foraging behaviour in agricultural landscapes
Bees are pollinators of many wild and crop plants, but in many places their diversity and density is declining. A research team from the Universities of Göttingen, Sussex and Würzburg has now investigated the foraging behaviour of bees in agricultural landscapes. To do this, the scientists analysed the bees’ dances, which are called the “waggle dance”. They found out that honey bees prefer strawberry fields, even if they flowered directly next to…