Solar activity fluctuates in a rhythm of about eleven years, which is reflected among other things in the frequency of sunspots. A complete magnetic period lasts 22 years. Scientists have long been puzzling over what causes this cycle. It must be related to the conditions beneath the "skin" of our star: A layer of hot plasma - electrically-conductive gas - extends from the surface to 200,000 kilometers below. The plasma within this convection…

The nearest exoplanets to us provide the best opportunities for detailed study, including searching for evidence of life outside the Solar System. In research led by the University of Göttingen, the RedDots team of astronomers has detected a system of super-Earth planets orbiting the nearby star Gliese 887, the brightest1 red dwarf star in the sky. Super-Earths are planets which have a mass higher than the Earth’s but substantially below those of…

The Japanese space agency JAXA has officially approved the space mission Solar-C. The research satellite is scheduled to lift off in the mid-2020s and study the Sun with a high-resolution spectrometer, which analyzes extremely energetic ultraviolet light. In this way, Solar-C will provide the most accurate measurement data from the hot, outer layers of the Sun to date. The Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany has been…

Forests, especially in the tropics, are home to the world's greatest biodiversity, but are threatened by increasing land use. An international research team with participation of the University of Göttingen has investigated how high the proportion of forest in cultivated landscapes must be in order to protect the greatest number of animal and plant species that depend on this habitat. The proportion of forest must be at least 40 percent: around…

The cultivation of coffee, cocoa and vanilla secures the income of many small-holder farmers and is also a driver of land-use change in many tropical countries. In particular, cultivation in agroforestry systems, in which these crops are combined with trees that provide shade, is often considered to have great potential for ecologically sustainable cultivation. Researchers at the University of Göttingen are now showing that the land-use history…

In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are facing great challenges because they have to reorient, interrupt or even cancel research and teaching. A team of international scientists with participation from the University of Göttingen published an international appeal which highlights the precarious situation of many scientists and calls for a collective effort by the entire scientific community, especially those in leadership…

Individual boulders on steep slopes and cliffs can slide, roll, and bounce into the valley below, a process known as rockfall. This happens with boulders on Earth – and on the Moon. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany and ETH Zurich have analyzed an archive of more than two million images of the lunar surface and present the first global map of rockfalls on the Moon in today’s edition of Nature…

Im Kampf gegen das neue Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 setzt die Universitätsmedizin Göttingen (UMG) auf einen elektronischen Helfer: Über das Computer-basierte Frühwarnsystem SmICS lassen sich Infektionen, Verdachtsfälle und mögliche Übertragungswege im Klinikbetrieb aufspüren und so frühzeitig eindämmen. Die von Forscher*innen an der UMG mitentwickelte Software wird seit Mitte Mai 2020 im Rahmen einer ersten Pilotphase eingesetzt. Bundesweit ist das…

The star Kepler-160 is probably orbited by a planet less than twice the size of the Earth with a star-planet distance that could permit planetary surface temperatures conducive to life. The newly discovered exoplanet, which was found by a team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen is more than just another potentially habitable world. One of the key properties making it resemble the Sun-Earth…