Astronomy

EPFL officially joined the Multi Spectroscopic Telescope (MUST) project, led by China’s Tsinghua University, as a founding member. This flagship project will enable scientists to better understand the young universe, dark energy and dark matter.

An international team of researchers combine orbital imagery with seismological data from NASA’s Mars InSight lander to derive a new impact rate for meteorite strikes on Mars. Seismology also offers a new tool for determining the density of Mars’ craters and the age of different regions of a planet.

With its secretariat hosted at EPFL, the Square Kilometer Array Switzerland (SKACH) consortium is celebrating two years’ membership of a global project to develop the largest scientific facility ever built by humankind.

A team of astronomers has used asteroseismology, or the study of stellar oscillations, to accurately measure the distance of stars from the Earth. Their research examined thousands of stars and checked the measurements taken during the Gaia mission to study the near Universe.

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.