News from the Göttingen Campus

Göttingen University researchers investigate the spread of weighing systems across Western Eurasia 4,000 years ago
Knowing the weight of a commodity provides an objective way to value goods in the marketplace. But did a self-regulating market even exist in the Bronze Age? And what can weight systems tell us about this? A team of researchers from the University of Göttingen researched this by investigating the dissemination of weight systems throughout Western Eurasia. Their new simulation indicates that the interaction of merchants, even without substantial…
New Max Planck Institute of Multidisciplinary Sciences combines natural sciences and basic medical research
The Max Planck Institutes (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry and for Experimental Medicine will merge. The decision-making bodies of the Max Planck Society (MPS) approved the plan submitted by the two institutes on March 12. Formally, both institutions will be closed and a new MPI will be founded, keeping the existing Göttingen sites in Hermann-Rein-Straße and at Faßberg. The future institute will bring together natural science and basic medical…
German Research Foundation funds new project at the University of Göttingen
The initial spread of the coronavirus in India led to the introduction of a national lockdown in March 2020. After the first wave of the pandemic had subsided and a nationwide vaccination campaign had begun, a mutation of the virus in the spring of 2021 caused infection and mortality rates to rise steeply again. The previous stages of the pandemic had led to severe social upheaval, the most visible sign of which was the return of hundreds of…
Research led by Göttingen University shows constructing microscope improves children’s understanding
Microscopy is an essential tool in many fields of science and medicine. However, many groups have limited access to this technology due to its cost and fragility. Now, researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Münster have succeeded in building a high-resolution microscope using nothing more than children’s plastic building bricks and affordable parts from a mobile phone. They then went on to show that children aged 9-13 had…
LoCaRe project
Aircraft are particularly loud during take-off and landing. The noise is generated not only by the engines, but also by airflow over the wings. One reason for this is the shape of the wings and the position of the high-lift devices, which vary according to the flight situation. To find out exactly where the greatest sources of noise are, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) has tested a model from aircraft…
The newly founded company EcoBus GmbH is developing software infrastructure that combines shuttle services and regular bus services to provide a sustainable public transport solution
Transporting people more efficiently and in a more environmentally friendly way – this is the goal of EcoBus GmbH. The newly founded company wants to achieve this goal by cleverly bundling journey requests from individual passengers. The basis for this is provided by software that combines small shuttle buses with existing regular bus services to form an overall system – and offers passengers a door-to-door service for the cost of a local public…
The National Academy of Sciences has admitted the geophysicist from Göttingen into its ranks.
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Christensen, director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, has been elected an international member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The association thus recognizes Christensen's significant contributions to the understanding of dynamical processes inside the Earth and other planets. Membership in the NAS is considered one of the highest honors for scientists. From 2002…
Researchers led by Göttingen University examine the long-term results of an experiment from more than 40 years ago
The fairy circles of the Namib are one of nature’s greatest mysteries. Millions of these circular barren patches extend over vast areas along the margins of the desert in Namibia. In 1979, G.K. Theron published the first research about their origin. His hypothesis was that poisonous substances from Euphorbia damarana leaves induced fairy circles. As part of a new study, scientists from the University of Göttingen and the Gobabeb Namib Research…
Super-resolution STED microscopy for the first time enables the long-term observation of synapses in the healthy and diseased brain
Nerve cells in the brain possess small protrusions, so called dendritic spines, to communicate with other nerve cells by forming a synapse. These contact sites can be both, short- or long-lived thereby existing for even up to an entire lifetime. Short-lived contact sites reflect an ever- adapting brain, which is necessary to process novel experiences. Long-lived, stable contact sites, on the other hand, form the basis of our memory. But even…
Holographic ‘movie’ of bubbles and high-pressure shockwave created by research team led by Göttingen University
Everyone is familiar with tiny gas bubbles gently rising up in sparkling water. But the bubbles that were created by intense focused lasers in this experiment were ten times smaller and contained water vapour at a pressure around a hundred thousand times higher. Under these conditions, the bubble expands at supersonic speed and pushes a shockwave, consisting of a spherical shell of highly compressed water, ahead of itself. Now the research team…