ETH News

Most of a planet’s water is generally not on its surface but hidden deep in its interior. This affects the potential habitability of distant worlds, as shown by model calculations of researchers at ETH Zurich and Princeton University.

The Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich has been renamed the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, abbreviated to D-EAPS, effective 1 August. Head of Department Johan Robertsson explains why the renaming was both logical and necessary.

It might be that what set prebiotic chemistry in motion and kept it going in the early days of the Earth was dust from outer space accumulating in holes melted into ice sheets. Researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Cambridge have used a computer model to test this scenario.

Physicists at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich wanted to know whether the planned LIFE space mission could really detect traces of life on other planets. Yes, it can. The researchers reached this conclusion with the help of observations of our own planet.

A new Master’s degree programme in Space Systems will be launched at ETH Zurich in autumn 2024. Interested parties can start applying in April.

Craig Walton is the first NOMIS Fellow at the Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life at ETH Zurich. With an unconventional idea, he wants to find out the conditions under which life originated on Earth.

Sascha Quanz searches for traces of life on extrasolar planets orbiting alien stars. The astrophysicist believes that gaining an understanding of life and its origin on Earth is an important stepping stone.

Mars’s liquid iron core is smaller and denser than previously thought. Not only is it smaller, but it is also surrounded by a layer of molten rock. This is what ETH Zurich researchers conclude on the basis of seismic data from the InSight lander.

With the return of the original telescope from 1864, the year the observatory was founded, ETH is taking a further step towards collecting, documenting and preserving its architectural and scientific heritage.

A strong quake in the last year of the NASA Mars InSight mission, enabled researchers at ETH Zurich to determine the global thickness and density of the planet's crust. On average, the Martian crust is much thicker than the Earth’s or the Moon’s crust, and the planet’s main source of heat is radioactive.

With a constellation of five satellites, the international LIFE initiative led by ETH Zurich hopes to one day detect traces of life on exoplanets. A laboratory experiment in the Department of Physics is now set to demonstrate the planned measurement method.

Life has existed on Earth for billions of years. Stabilising mechanisms have helped our planet remain habitable to this day.

Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? There’s a good chance it does – though it might look very different to life on Earth. Scientists may soon be able to offer a definitive answer.

The lander’s team has tried to contact the spacecraft twice without response, leading them to conclude it has run out of energy.

Nobel laureate and astrophysicist Didier Queloz and earth scientist Cara Magnabosco on the origin of life on Earth, complex life beyond our planet, and the inevitable end of every life.

Daniel Angerhausen believes that fundamental research is essential, especially in the current crisis. Still, he wonders if we shouldn’t extend the idea of sustainability into the infinite reaches of outer space.

Following two large meteorite impacts on Mars, researchers have observed, for the first time, seismic waves propagating along the surface of a planet other than Earth. The data from the marsquakes was recorded by NASA’s InSight lander and analysed at ETH Zurich in collaboration with the InSight Science Team. It provides new insights into the structure of the Martian crust.

Until now, Mars has been generally considered a geologically dead planet. An international team of researchers led by ETH Zurich now reports that seismic signals indicate vulcanism still plays an active role in shaping the Martian surface.

ETH Zurich is opening a new research and teaching centre with a focus on exploring the origin and prevalence of life on Earth and beyond. Under the leadership of Nobel Laureate Didier Queloz, more than 40 research groups from five departments will address the big questions posed by humankind.

With the help of artificial intelligence, an international research team led by ETH Zurich has explored the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions. The information they have obtained about the area’s surface properties will help to identify suitable locations for future lunar missions.

Researchers from ETH Zurich discover the first definitive proof that the Moon inherited indigenous noble gases from the Earth’s mantle. The discovery represents a significant piece of the puzzle towards understanding how the Moon and, potentially, the Earth and other celestial bodies were formed.

On 11 July, NASA published the first image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. ETH Zurich Astrophysicist, Adrian Glauser was also involved in the construction of one of the telescope's measuring instruments. In an interview, he explains what he thought and felt when he saw the image.

The InSight mission on Mars is running out of power and most of its functions could be shut down in the months to come. Some have already been deactivated. However, the attached seismometer, SEIS, will remain in operation for as long as possible. ETH Professor Domenico Giardini takes stock of three years of marsquake measurements.

What the “Night of Physics” really aims to do is make physics accessible to a broad audience in a way that’s entertaining. This event will be held on 17 June. Klaus Ensslin, Professor of Physics and co-initiator of the event, explains why it’s worth coming along to the Hönggerberg campus.

An international team of researchers led by the ETH Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS have reconstructed the early history of several asteroids more precisely than ever before. Their results indicate that the early solar system was more chaotic than previously thought.

The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope is set to take place in the coming days. For ETH Zurich physicist Adrian Glauser, who was involved in two unspectacular but vital contributions to this ambitious project, it will bring to an end a long period of anxious anticipation.

What secrets are held by the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way? Andrea Ghez, astronomer and Nobel Laureate in Physics, will discuss this question as part of next week’s Paul Bernays Lectures 2021. The honorary lecture series on the philosophy of the exact sciences will take place for the tenth time.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich have been able to use seismic data to look inside Mars for the first time. Marsquakes recorded by NASA’s InSight lander provided information about the structure of the planet’s crust, mantle and core.

Researchers at ETH Zurich working together with an international team have been able to use seismic data to look inside Mars for the first time. They measured the crust, mantle and core and narrowed down their composition. The three resulting articles are being published together as a cover story in the journal Science.

How is matter distributed within our universe? And what is the mysterious substance known as dark energy made of? HIRAX, a new large telescope array comprising hundreds of small radio telescopes, should provide some answers. Among those instrumental in developing the system are physicists from ETH Zurich.

Renowned planetary researcher and Nobel laureate Didier Queloz is moving to ETH Zurich, where he will be joining with other professors to study the origins of life in a new centre.

This episode of the podcast is all about astrophysics. The first Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier talks about his flights into space and astrophysicist Judit Szulágyi about her experiences at NASA.

Uranus and Neptune both have a completely skewed magnetic field, perhaps due to the planets’ special inner structures. But new experiments by ETH Zurich researchers now show that the mystery remains unsolved.

Phobos and Deimos are the remains of a larger Martian moon that was disrupted between 1 and 2.7 billion years ago, say researchers from the Institute of Geophysics at ETH Zurich and the Physics Institute at the University of Zurich. In collaboration with the U.S. Naval Observatory, they reached this conclusion using computer simulations and seismic recordings from the InSight Mars mission.

An international research team with members from ETH has developed a new method for directly imaging smaller planets in the habitable zone of a neighbouring star system. This opens up new possibilities in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Why is gravity the most mysterious force of nature? Lavinia Heisenberg studies how the universe was formed, and how it is changing. She has now been awarded the ETH Zurich Latsis Prize for her outstanding achievements in the field of theoretical physics.

NASA’s InSight mission provides data from the surface of Mars. Its seismometer, equipped with electronics built at ETH Zurich, not only records marsquakes, but unexpectedly reacts to solar eclipses as well. When the Martian moon, Phobos moves directly in front of the sun, the instrument tips slightly to one side. This miniscule effect could aid researchers in determining the planet’s interior.

ETH has once again been highly successful in the awarding of this year’s ERC Starting Grants for young researchers, with the European Research Council (ERC) approving a total of CHF 21.4 million in funding for 12 ETH project submissions.

A complex research experiment lasting several years shows that the electric dipole moment of the neutron is significantly smaller than previously assumed. It has thus become less likely that the existence of matter in the universe can be explained by precisely this dipole moment.

Fifteen months after the successful landing of the NASA InSight mission on Mars, first scientific analyses of ETH Zurich researchers and their partners reveal that the planet is seismically active. The recorded data enables a better understanding of the interior of Mars, the primary goal of the InSight mission.

Researchers determined the age of stardust from a meteorite to be seven billion years - the oldest solid material ever found on Earth.

Some of the Earth's building material was stardust from red giants, researchers from ETH Zurich have established. They can also explain why the Earth contains more of this stardust than the asteroids or the planet Mars, which are farther from the sun.

A team of physicists and computer scientists at ETH Zurich has developed a new approach to the problem of dark matter and dark energy in the universe. Using machine learning tools, they programmed computers to teach themselves how to extract the relevant information from maps of the universe.

Earth’s solid surface and clement climate may be in part due to a massive star in the birth environment of the Sun. Without its radioactive elements injected into the early solar system, our home planet could be a hostile ocean world covered in global ice sheets. This is the result of computer simulations of planet formation.

Astronomers capture images revealing a turbulent stellar relationship in the binary star system R Aquarii, 650 light years from Earth.

Scientists involved in NASA’s InSight Mars mission can breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate: yesterday evening at 20:53 Swiss time, the InSight lander touched down on Mars. The first signals and images from the lander have been received and the scientists will be testing the instruments intensively over the next few weeks.

Astrophysicists of the University of Zürich and ETH Zürich show how the icy moons of Uranus were born. Their result suggests that such potentially habitable worlds are much more abundant in the Universe than previously thought.

The observation of gravitational waves last year captivated professionals in the field. Experts, including at ETH Zurich, expected that this discovery would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Lavinia Heisenberg is a theoretical physicist. She is reluctant to accept that General Relativity can be used to describe the universe only on the assumption of exotic materials and energy sources. Her goal is thus to update Einstein’s theory.

Watching Star Trek as a child first inspired Judit Szulágyi’s fascination with planets and galaxies. Today Forbes ranks the astrophysicist among Europe’s 30 most influential scientists under the age of 30. Watch as she explains how she uses computer simulations to research the birth of giant planets – and how she decided on this career path in the first place.

Asteroids don’t hit our planet at regular intervals, as was previously thought. Earth scientists from ETH Zurich and Lund University in Sweden have reached this conclusion after analysing impact craters formed in the last 500 million years, concentrating on precisely dated events.

Young giant planets are born from gas and dust. Researchers of ETH Zürich and the Universities of Zürich and Bern simulated different scenarios relying on the computing power of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) to find out how they exactly form and evolve.

The European Space Agency (ESA) presented results from its LISA Pathfinder mission in Madrid. The measuring instruments and control electronics, developed for LISA Pathfinder by ETH Zurich Professor Domenico Giardini and his team, are even more precise than expected. The technology is ready for use on the LISA gravitational wave observatory.

ETH researchers studying how stars are formed in distant galaxies have made an unexpected discovery: a correlation that exists today between the proportion of heavy chemical elements in a galaxy and the rate at which new stars are formed in this galaxy did not apply 10 billion years ago. This observation helps scientists understand how galaxies with their stars and planets were formed over billions of years.

After the successful lift-off of the Vega rocket in French Guiana, the LISA Pathfinder satellite uncoupled from its booster rocket at approximately 7.00 a.m. this morning. The satellite will spend the next 9 months floating in space. There it will enable scientists to test key measurement techniques for the detection of gravitational waves, which Albert Einstein predicted about 100 years ago in his general theory of relativity.

A research team has observed structures racing out from the centre of a young star's debris disk at high speeds. It is still unclear what causes the phenomenon.

Black holes can be found at the centres of most galaxies. Most have little mass compared with their host galaxy. ETH researchers, however, have discovered a particularly massive black hole, which clearly grew so quickly that the host galaxy was not able to keep pace. This calls into question previous thinking on the co-evolution of galaxies and their central black holes.

Astronomers at ETH Zurich have confirmed the existence of a young giant gas planet still embedded in the midst of the disk of gas and dust surrounding its parent star. For the first time, scientists are able to directly study the formation of a planet at a very early stage.

Active galactic nuclei are the brightest objects in the universe. They are not lit up permanently, but rather ‘flicker’ extremely slowly. This insight helps ETH researchers better understand the influence these nuclei and black holes have on their host galaxy.

An international team of researchers led by ETH scientists has gained new insights into how once active giant galaxies came to rest and ceased to form new stars.

Two years ago, an international research collaboration set out to investigate the mysterious dark matter and dark energy in our universe. Now an ETH postdoctoral researcher has co-led a publication presenting the exciting first results. ETH professor Alexandre Refregier explains why this publication will have a high impact and whether it proves Albert Einstein wrong.

An international team of researchers has discovered something extraordinary in space: a new star system forming from parts of a filamentary gas cloud.

They are called CoRoT-4 b or OGLE-2005-BLG-390L b – exoplanets often have scientific designations that are impossible to pronounce. Now the International Astronomical Union (IAU), working in collaboration with the citizen science project Zooniverse, has announced a public competition in which the 30 most popular exoplanets from a list of 305 will be given new names.