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An artist’s impression of the two merging central stars inside the planetary nebula Henize 2-428 | Image Credit: Nicole Reindl

All-clear in space – Cuddling inside a nebula does not have to end in a catastrophe

Contrary to results published previously, a careful re-analysis of the merging stars inside the planetary nebula Henize 2-428 shows that no supernova …
The Olorgesailie Basin in the Kenya Rift Valley, part of the Eastern Branch of the East African Rift System. In the background the high topography of the Rift’s border faults. | Photo: Corinna Kalich, University of Potsdam

Calculated – Why a whole region is rotating in the middle of Africa

For the first time ever, the causes for the strange motion of a tectionic plate have been identified by using three dimensional computer models. The …
Sea smoke in Antarctica is illuminated by the setting sun. | Photo: Winkelmann/Reese

Into the Eternal Ice – Ricarda Winkelmann is a climate researcher and junior professor at the University of Potsdam and the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research

Very few people have been here at all, to one of the world’s most inhospitable regions, where the temperature is below the freezing point even in …
Turbulence modes identified in the Cygnus X region plotted over the Fermi-LAT gamma-ray map. The color code for signatures: Green - alfvenic; Red - magnetosonic; and Blue - isotropic turbulence. The distance of the object is 1.4 kiloparsec. The radius of the eddy is ~ 15 parsec (1 parsec = 3.26 light years). | Image credit: Zhang et al. 2020 Nature Astronomy

Important new insights into plasma physics and astrophysical phenomena

The role of turbulence in various physical processes is a current hot topic of research. Prof. Dr. Huirong Yan and her team from the Institute of …
Eva Eibl documents the status of a station after recording overnight and before it is moved to a new location. The steam of the hot water in the pool is visible in the background. | Photo: Daniel Vollmer

Fire and Ice – why Eva Eibl does research in Iceland in the mid of winter

Iceland is worth a trip or two. Well known for its awesome landscape, its famous horses and its un-pronounceable volcanoes Iceland is flooded by …
Prof. Dr. Sascha Oswald. | Foto: Tobias Hopfgarten

Counting Neutrons for Environmental Research – Researchers measure soil moisture with the help of particles from space

They are super-fast, rich in energy and are created when particles from space hit the Earth - neutrons are omnipresent and usually penetrate matter …
Vittoria Sposini and Samudrajit Thapa in Venice. | Photo: Dr. Fereydoon Taheri

In My Little Chamber – The Difficult Task of Writing a Doctoral Thesis During the Corona Crisis

On the corona pandemic – contributions from the University of Potsdam

Vittoria Sposini from Italy and Samudrajit Thapa from India are PhD students in the Theoretical Physics Group of Prof. Ralf Metzler at the Institute …
Prof. Dr. Markus Gühr | Foto: Antje Horn-Conrad

Snapshots from the Nano Cosmos – How Markus Gühr uses flashes of light to probe the dynamics of molecules

Perhaps it was a sign: Markus Gühr grew up in Gießen. As a boy he used to play in the town’s old cemetery, very close to the place where Wilhelm …
Der Modellierungsansatz der Potsdamer Forscher erlaubt regionale Prognosen des Infektionsgeschehens der Covid-19-Pandemie - hier für Potsdam. | Quelle: https://engbertlab.shinyapps.io/covid19-dashboard/

Calculating the corona pandemic – Potsdam researchers develop modeling approach allowing for regional prognoses of infection development

How can the spread of the coronavirus be presented and predicted when, as in rural regions, there is only a limited number of cases? Physicists, …
In the laboratory. | Photo: Thomas Roese

When Plants Sound the Alarm – How genes and molecules protect plants from heat

Isabel Bäurle is a biologist who researches the heat stress memory of plants at the molecular level. Her findings could give fresh impetus to the …