Max Planck Institutes and Experts

A combination of the Herschel Space Observatory with the submillimeter telescope APEX leads to the discovery and characterization of the youngest known protostars yet: stellar embryos still deeply embedded in unexpectedly dense dust cocoons.

Pinpointing the positions of more than 100 of the most fertile star-forming galaxies with the compound telescope ALMA clears up a mystery about these objects' observed productivity – and shows that previous studies had frequently mis-identified such galaxies.

Neutron stars are born as extremely hot and dense objects at the centers of massive stars exploding as supernovae. They cool by intense emission of neutrinos. Three-dimensional supercomputer simulations at the very forefront of current modelling efforts reveal the stunning and unexpected possibility that this neutrino emission can develop a hemispheric (dipolar) asymmetry. If this new neutrino-hydrodynamical instability happens in nature, it will lead to a recoil acceleration of the neutron star and will have important consequences for the formation of chemical elements in stellar explosions.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics propose a crucially improved distance measurement. They use a strong gravitational lens system with a time-varying source (e. g. a quasar) to measure the angular diameter distance to the lens.

Biomolecular systems are often challenging to model, because they are inherently multiscale, i.e. small differences in the molecular building blocks can result in significant changes of the larger scale properties. Natural Polysaccharides for instance are typically assembled from a small number of basic sugar types, yet they can display a wide range of exceptional material properties, which derive from their spatial organization. Suitable models need to combine atomistic resolution with coarser representations retaining as much of the characteristics of the highly resolved system as possible.