Max Planck Institutes and Experts

Astronomers believe that matter in intergalactic space is distributed in a vast network of interconnected filamentary structures – the cosmic web. Nearly all the atoms in the Universe reside in this web, left over from the Big Bang. A team led by a team of the MPI for Astronomy has made the first measurements of small-scale fluctuations in the cosmic web just 2 billion years after the Big Bang. These measurements were enabled by a novel technique using pairs of quasars to probe the cosmic web along adjacent lines of sight. They promise to help astronomers reconstruct the epoch of reionization.

Astronomers from McMaster University and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy have completed calculations that lead to a consistent scenario for the emergence of life on Earth, based on astronomical, geological, chemical and biological models. In this scenario, life forms a mere few hundred million years after Earth’s surface was cool enough for liquid water; the essential building blocks for life were formed in space during the formation of the solar system, and delivered to warm little ponds on Earth by meteorites.

On 17 August 2017, two merging neutron stars were seen for the first time by their gravitational wave si  gnal as well as high-energy gamma radiation. Follow-up observations revealed optical emission powered by the radioactive decay of r-process elements - a so-called kilonova.

By using galaxies as giant gravitational lenses, an international group of astronomers including researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics have made an independent measurement of how fast the Universe is expanding. The newly measured expansion rate for the local Universe is consistent with earlier findings. These are, however, in intriguing disagreement with measurements of the early Universe. This hints at a fundamental problem at the very heart of our understanding of the cosmos.

In missionizing the New World, works of art propagated Catholic faith and served as examples for the right cult of images. When Rosa de Santa María from Lima was beatified in 1668 and canonized in 1671, her iconographic persona needed to be created and propagated. A painting by Lazzaro Baldi and a marble sculpture by Melchiorre Cafà show that the balance of power between papal Rome and Spanish Lima was negotiated by artistic means and that issues of materiality and idolatry were considered from a transcultural point of view.