Four years ago, several red giant stars were discovered to pose a paradox: even though they are built from very old stellar material, their large masses indicate a clearly younger age. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Germany), Aarhus University (Denmark), and Ohio State University (USA) have now solved the apparent contradiction. For the first time, they investigated the abundances of carbon, nitrogen, and…

Declining biodiversity due to man-made habitat destruction and climate change means that information about plant diversity and its distribution across the planet is now crucial for biodiversity conservation. With the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits (GIFT), a team of researchers from the Department of Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography at the University of Göttingen has taken an important step forward in documenting and…

The Swiss-German economist Professor (HSG) Sascha Spoun will become President of the University of Göttingen in 2020. This was agreed on Thursday 20 June 2019 by the University Senate with a large majority. The University Foundation Committee has already confirmed the election. Spoun succeeds Professor Ulrike Beisiegel, who has been in office since 1 January 2011. Spoun advised the Findungskommission of the Senate and the University Foundation…

An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has discovered two new Earth-like planets near one of our closest neighboring stars. "Teegarden’s star" is only about 12.5 light years away from Earth and is one of the smallest known stars. It is only about 2,700 °C warm and about ten times lighter than the Sun. Although it is so close to us, the star wasn’t discovered until 2003. The scientists observed the star for about three…

The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and five European companies have teamed up in the RETro Propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies (RETALT) project to jointly advance the research and development of key technologies for European vertical-landing launch vehicles. The consortium will spend three years examining the aerodynamics, aerothermodynamics – that is, in-flight surface temperatures – flight dynamics…

The chemist Theofanis Kitsopoulos, MPI for Biophysical Chemistry, will receive an ERC Advanced Grant endowed with 2.5 million euros. Another ERC Advanced Grant goes to Stefan Jakobs for a project at the UMG Clinic for Neurology, where he is appointed as professor. He further leads a research group at the MPI. The European Union awards the funding to top researchers who have already achieved scientific breakthroughs and would like to tackle a…

For a long time, ecologists have relied on their senses when it comes to recording animal populations and species diversity. However, modern programmable sound recording devices are now the better option for logging animal vocalisations. Scientists lead by the University of Göttingen have investigated this using studies of birds as an example. The results were published in the journal Ecological Applications. "Data collection by people is less…

Reliably evaluating walking and gripping movements of patients is essential for the diagnosis and therapy of movement disorders, for example after a stroke or in Parkinson's syndromes. However, the success of this challenging diagnostic procedure depends to a large extent on the experience and skills of the attending physician. This is where the "Deep Movement Diagnostics" project, coordinated by Alexander Gail, scientist at the German Primate…