Max Planck Institutes and Experts

We have identified rapidly moving stars in the Omega Centauri star cluster, indicating the presence of a black hole at its centre with a mass of at least 8,200 solar masses. While astronomers had long assumed such intermediate-mass black holes exist, there has been a lack of reliable observations to confirm it. This discovery also establishes that Omega Centauri is the core region of a galaxy absorbed by the Milky Way billions of years ago. Stripped of its outer stars, the galactic core has since undergone little further evolution.

Betelgeuse is a famous red supergiant in Orion. It has recently gained much attention—not only due to speculation about an imminent explosion but also because it appears to rotate faster than expected. An international team from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics questions this and proposes that the boiling surface is misinterpreted as rotation. Other astronomers are analyzing new data to test this hypothesis.

Our team presents a novel method that fully exploits all cosmological information in the distribution of galaxies. A first application shows that this new method has the potential to shed new light on gravity and the dark universe.

Proteins are built out of amino acid chains. To fulfill their various cellular functions, these chains must be folded into a specific, biologically active spatial structure. So-called molecular chaperones, themselves proteins as well, help to do this. Cellular stress or chaperone malfunction can lead to protein aggregation, which is associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. In two studies, we explore different mechanisms by which cells help proteins to adopt and maintain their functional form or shield them from aggregation under stress.

Windthrows are trees uprooted or snapped by strong winds. By comparing satellite images from subsequent years, we mapped windthrows ≥ 30 ha in size across the entire Amazon Basin for each year from 1985 to 2020.  We found a nearly 4-fold increase in windthrows over the past 35 years, providing evidence of increased storm activity with implications for forest structure and carbon storage.