The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Dr. Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta a Starting Grant of about 1.5 million Euros. Over the next five years, the MPS scientist will have the opportunity to pursue one of the great unsolved mysteries of solar research: How does our star heat its outer atmosphere, the solar corona, to unimaginable temperatures of up to 10 million degrees Celsius? With unprecedented observational data from ESA's Solar Orbiter…

Setting your own research priorities and pursuing them with a research group – the first step on the way to an independent research career – is supported by the European Research Council (ERC) with the annually awarded ERC Starting Grants. Successful applicants receive around 1.5 million euros over five years to pursue their research ideas independently of established professors. This year, neuroscientists Raymundo Báez-Mendoza and Michael Heide…

The Göttingen-based Max Planck Institutes (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry and Experimental Medicine have merged as of January 1, 2022. This will establish a new MPI, the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences. It will cover a much broader spectrum of research, thus promoting disciplinary diversity and collaboration. With a total of 16 departments and more than 25 research groups, the MPI for Multidisciplinary Sciences will be the…

The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is spreading at an alarming rate. It could soon replace the Delta variant, which at present dominates globally. However, little is known about whether currently available vaccines and drugs will be effective against the Omicron variant. To assess the efficiency of vaccines and therapeutic antibodies, a research team led by Stefan Pöhlmann and Markus Hoffmann from the German Primate Center - Leibniz Institute for…

Earth and Mars were formed from material that largely originated in the inner Solar System; only a few percent of the building blocks of these two planets originated beyond Jupiter's orbit. A group of researchers led by the University of Münster (Germany) reports these findings today in the journal “Science Advances”. They present the most comprehensive comparison to date of the isotopic composition of Earth, Mars, and pristine building material…

An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Göttingen and Hannover Medical School (MHH) has detected significant changes in the heart muscle tissue of people who died from Covid-19. Damage to lung tissue has been the research focus in this area for some time and has now been thoroughly investigated. The current study underpins the involvement of the heart in Covid-19 at the microscopic level for the first time by imaging and…

The Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen (Germany) has a new director. Cosmochemist and meteorite researcher Prof. Dr. Thorsten Kleine will continue the institute’s long tradition of planetary, cometary, and asteroid research and its contributions to international space missions, but will also add new research methods. He will carry out high-precision laboratory studies of meteorites as well as terrestrial and lunar…

Since 2014, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS) in Göttingen have been studying the behavior of tiny cloud droplets at the Schneefernerhaus Environmental Research Station (UFS). Their aim is to significantly improve the prediction of precipitation. The ‘Seesaw’ - a device equipped with the latest technology that records the drops three-dimensionally – was installed for this purpose. The results of the…

Three metres are not enough to ensure protection. Even at that distance, it takes less than five minutes for an unvaccinated person standing in the breath of a person with Covid-19 to become infected with almost 100 percent certainty. That's the bad news. The good news is that if both are wearing well-fitting medical or, even better, FFP2 masks, the risk drops dramatically. In a comprehensive study, a team from the Max Planck Institute for…

All land plants originated from a single evolutionary event when freshwater algae got a foothold on land, giving rise to an astonishing biodiversity of plants on earth. However, the group of algae that would later give rise to land plants had already been living and evolving in both freshwater and terrestrial habitats for over one billion years. There is a tiny group of these algae still living that are most distantly related to land plants. A…