On Location

At 5100 meters above sea level the air is thin and dry as a bone – properties that astronomers greatly appreciate. Up here, observations are much less impeded by the dense aerial ocean of the Earth's atmosphere with its otherwise substantial water content. In a way, this wasteland therefore brings the researchers a lot closer to the stars. That’s why they have built an antenna on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes that goes by the name of Atacama Pathfinder Experiment, or APEX for short. The 12-meter dish detects millimeter and submillimeter-range radiation at the boundary between infrared light and radio waves.
Astronomers and technicians are currently upgrading the telescope: At the heart of the high-tech machine will be a camera with around 25,000 pixels that is intended to facilitate surveys of the heavens with unrivalled resolution. 25,000 pixels may seem to be quite few – compared to a camera in a smartphone, for example. However, these detectors have to operate at a temperature of minus 272.85 degrees, which is just above absolute zero. The field of view of the camera is half the apparent size of the full moon.
Talking about the Moon: the deployment range of APEX extends far beyond our solar system. The telescope primarily explores cooler regions, especially molecular clouds in interstellar space. In these cosmic nurseries, new stars are born out of gas and dust; these stellar embryos are mostly invisible in optical light, but APEX offers an excellent way to study the physical and chemical properties of the clouds. The furthest and therefore youngest galaxies are also in focus, as their light has been stretched due to the expansion of the universe and displaced to the submillimeter or millimeter range of the spectrum.
The APEX partners are the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Swedish Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), which operates the telescope on behalf of the consortium. Continued cooperation until the end of 2022 was recently agreed. This means that the dish on the Chilean high plateau will continue to deliver deep insights into the cold cosmos in the coming years.

Most of the vast expanse of space is extremely cold and empty. Nevertheless, chemical reactions take place there, too. These result in the formation of ions (electrically charged particles), small and large molecules, and interstellar dust. The dust clouds, in turn, give rise to stars and planets. The chemistry of interstellar space is therefore one of the most active research fields in astronomy.

With the new Cryogenic Storage Ring (CSR), scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics are bringing space into their lab. However, the level of technical complexity it requires is almost as extreme as the conditions in space: the temperature in the inner vacuum system of the CSR is just a few degrees above absolute zero, or minus 273 degrees Celsius; the pressure of less than10^-14 millibar is one hundred trillion times lower than normal air pressure. It is thus possible to keep even highly reactive, multiply charged molecular ions on the 35-meter circuit of the storage ring for several minutes – or sometimes even hours. As they circle at high speed, covering distances that correspond to many times the distance between the Earth and the moon, the ions cool down to temperatures that resemble those in interstellar clouds.

The ion beams are steered and focused by electric fields. The scientists can use these fields to bring about a reaction between the stored ions and electrons or neutral atoms, or to investigate them with laser beams. In this way, low-energy collisions, which are typical for the conditions in interstellar space, can be examined under controlled conditions in the laboratory.

Similar to a person who wears several layers of clothing to protect themselves against the cold, the cryogenic region of the storage ring has a number of shielding layers to insulate it against the ambient heat. Cooling down the apparatus takes more than three weeks – as does heating it up again after several months in measurement mode. The photo shows the storage ring when it was still open four months before it was cooled down for the first time.

Dusty, windy, desolate – “an end one would rather not see” is how Argentinian author Mempo Giardinelli describes the Patagonian mesetas. Yet Gerd Gleixner and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry specifically chose the region for one of their research expeditions: its vast, grassy, high plateaus of volcanic origin offer conditions that are hard to find anywhere else in the world.

The steep slopes of the Andes mean that the clouds arriving on westerly winds from the Pacific release their rain on the Chilean side of the mountain range. But the clouds carried over from the east also pass over the flat plateaus, the only significant rainfall in the region occurs near the mountains. These exceptional geographical circumstances of the mesetas make it possible to take soil and sediment samples over thousands of miles along a north-south route that always has identical precipitation conditions, thus affording a unique opportunity to investigate the effect of temperature on the soil’s carbon exchange rate isolated from the influence of rainfall.

Gleixner’s research group is particularly interested in how ecosystems react to climate change. By identifying resistant biomolecules and using them as biomarkers, the researchers are able to exploit the soil and sea sediments in the Argentinian mesetas as a climate archive. Gleixner’s team is reconstructing climatic events from the past 10,000 to 20,000 years in order to determine the capacity of organisms and ecosystems to adapt to future climatic changes.

For the scientists, the old refrigerator in the middle of this image, which someone disposed of in the grassy expanse of the plateaus, symbolized the need to find parameters that can help cool our planet’s climate systems down again.

When, on a clear night, you gaze at twinkling stars, glimmering planets or the cloudy band of the Milky Way, you are actually seeing only half the story – or, to be more precise, a tiny fraction of it. With the telescopes available to us, using all of the possible ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, we can observe only a mere one percent of the universe. The rest remains hidden, spread between dark energy and dark matter.The latter makes up over 20 percent of the cosmos. And it is this mysterious substance that is the focus of scientists involved in the CRESST Experiment. Behind this simple sounding name is a complex experiment, the “Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers.”

The site of the unusual campaign is the deep underground laboratory under the Gran Sasso mountain range in Italy’s Abruzzo region. Fully shielded by 1,400 meters of rock, the researchers here – from the Max Planck Institute for Physics, among others – have installed a special device whose job is to detect particles of dark matter. According to theory, these particles barely react with their environment. They can easily penetrate the various layers of lead, copper and polyethylene that shield CRESST from background radiation.

The detector can comprise up to 33 individual modules, each containing a 300-gram crystal made of calcium tungstate; the photo shows researchers who are in the process of fitting the measuring device with these. When a particle enters, it generates warmth. In addition, light results, which is then held in the enclosure and captured by a silicon wafer that also warms up in the process. To allow the thermometer to sense these inconceivably minimal temperature increases, CRESST works close to absolute zero at minus 273.15 degrees Celsius.

CRESST-III has been running since summer 2016 with 13 modules and heightened sensitivity. Yet dark matter is living up to its name: to date, there are no convincing findings that unequivocally prove its existence.

A modern metropolis in India: many different ethnic groups come together every day. A wide variety of languages can be heard, and very often, people who have no common language have to communicate with each other. People involuntarily resort to gesticulation, and their counterparts usually have no trouble understanding what is meant. But gestures can also be defined terms in a language of its own – the sign language of the deaf. Things get particularly interesting when sign language – here in its Indian form, of course – and spontaneous gestures are used in parallel and in combination. This is precisely what Annelies Kusters from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and her team are studying in the streets of Mumbai.

Kusters is interested in both the potential and the limitations of gesture-based communication. Being deaf herself, she makes it a point to involve deaf people into her research work. They can contribute greatly to these studies because they are very skilled in the creative use of gestures – both conventionalised and spontaneous– in conversations with hearing as well as with other deaf persons.

The researchers observe and document the experiences of both hearing and deaf participants in conversations combining oral, gestural and written communication. And they also study what role the various surroundings play. It makes a difference, of course, whether a conversation takes place at the market, in a loud street, or in a quiet environment. Here, two researchers from Kusters’ team watch a deaf businessman using facial expressions and gestures to negotiate with a hearing shop owner.

Sunshine, water, blue skies and a castle in the background – many people associate carefree vacation days with the lakes in and around Plön in the north of Germany. The scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology have also certainly not lost sight of the beauty of the landscape though their focus lies on one of the lakes’ inhabitants and its genes. The three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) feels very much at home along the shorelines of Great Plön Lake. And right here, in the middle of the natural nesting grounds of the small fish, are the open water research labs of the Institute.

In six large cages, the sticklebacks - bred in a lab and released into the lake in the spring - are able to claim territories in natural environments, build nests, and reproduce while at the same time being exposed to the parasites that are found there. What makes these fish special is that the specific, individual combination of immune genes of every single animal is known. This enables the researchers to observe which sticklebacks, in the never-ending competition with the parasites, are the most resilient and - as father and mother are determined for every single egg with the help of molecular genetic methods throughout the entire breeding season - how many progeny each fish has.

The most resistant fish pass on their immunocompetence to their numerous offspring. It appears that female sticklebacks prefer mating partners whose immune genes best complement their own - and which through their healthy coloration, prove that they possess the necessary genotypes against the currently prevalent parasites. The mother’s choice of partner thus has a direct advantage for her young.

Which male is worth considering for mating is identified by the females not only through coloration, but also by the odor of the potential partner, because odor is determined – as with humans by the way – by the composition of the immune genes.

The water on the shores of the island of Panarea in Southern Italy may not boil, but it fizzes. There – right next to Stromboli, Europe‘s most active volcano – large volumes of carbon dioxide flow from the sea bed directly into the water. And this is precisely what makes the area very interesting for researchers from a wide range of disciplines. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is one of the most important greenhouse gases. Since the early days of industrialization, the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere has increased continuously, particularly as a result of the intensive use of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas.

Reducing the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere thus plays an important role in all attempts to halt or decelerate climate warming. One of the solutions under discussion is a technical one: With carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), the aim is to capture the CO₂ from the air and store it in underground sites. Areas underneath the seabed might also be used to store carbon dioxide. This is already happening in some regions of Europe, for example on the Norwegian coast.

But what happens if the carbon dioxide escapes from such storage sites? How would the high concentrations of CO₂ affect the surrounding marine ecosystems and organisms? These are precisely the questions that the scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology are investigating in the sea off Panarea. Here, they can directly compare areas of the sea with strong carbon dioxide release and areas without degassing.

When it comes to music, tastes obviously differ. But why do people actually play and listen to music? Why do they still go to concerts when they have long been able to listen to everything on sound storage or digital media? What does a music experience consist of? The right place to look for the answers to these questions is the ArtLab of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt. Thanks to its special technical equipment, the Institute’s multifunctional event room is a concert hall and a laboratory rolled into one. Sounds, facial expressions, gestures, interpretations and various physiological data of the artists and, up to 46 listeners can be synchronously recorded and evaluated.

In May 2016, the vocal ensemble Cut Circle visited the Institute. The American octet and its conductor Jesse Rodin were available to the researchers in the ArtLab for three days. While the singers performed a very wide range of pieces from their vast repertoire of early music, comprehensive data, like EEG, ECG, respiratory rate, and the artists’ movement patterns was tracked.

At the final concert, however, it was the audience that was the focus of the research. While the concert goers listened to the performance, adhesive electrodes on their fingers measured their skin conductivity and an armband took their pulse. At the same time, self-reported information about the reception and assessment of the performance was recorded on tablets. Incidentally, the evening program, which was entitled “My Fair Lady,” referred to the strong veneration of the Virgin Mary in the 15th and 16th centuries, a phenomenon that is also reflected in the music of the period.

No – right in the middle is the place to be! Because both the global climate and local weather events are extremely dependent on the formation of clouds. Located just under the peak of the Zugspitze mountain, and very often cloaked in dense cloud, the Schneefernerhaus provides the perfect conditions for scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization to study clouds from a direct and immediate perspective. Operating as a hotel until the early 1990s, the Schneefernerhaus is now Germany’s highest environmental research station. Here, the researchers from Göttingen want to measure how, in the turbulent flows of a cloud, tiny droplets of water collide with one another before combining to form larger droplets and, ultimately, rain. Because it is precisely this phase of droplet formation that is very difficult to reproduce in laboratory conditions or to numerically simulate.

After four years of preparatory work, 6.5 tons of equipment were brought from Göttingen to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, at the foot of the Alps, and installed on the tower terrace of the Schneefernerhaus, using a special heavy-load helicopter. The heart of the measurement apparatus is the “seesaw,” which basically allows a sled to “ride along” in the main flow of a passing cloud. Four high-speed cameras photograph the cloud particles, which are illuminated with a powerful laser. This makes it possible to track the path of a single droplet over a relatively long interval of time.

In the high-pressure wind tunnel in the Göttingen-based laboratory, the scientists can generate models of virtually any type of turbulent flows, while their work on the Zugspitze allows them to precisely observe natural turbulences. The combination of these approaches will help to unlock the secret of clouds – for a better understanding of these nebulous beauties that are so important for the climate.

Its tip appears to reach all the way up to the stars. It may not be quite that tall, but the Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory, known as ATTO, is nonetheless a project of superlatives: 15,000 individual components, 24,000 screws and bolts, a total weight of 142 tons on a ground area of a mere 3 by 3 meters, all pretensioned using a total of 26 kilometers of steel cable. And at 323 meters, ATTO is taller than the Eiffel Tower. The structure, located 150 kilome- ters northeast of Manau in the middle of virtually impenetrable Amazonian rainforest, was erected in just one year.

However, it’s not only its height that makes ATTO so special; a crucial factor is the ecosystem that surrounds the tower: Like its counterpart, ZOTTO, the 304 -meter-tall measurement tower in the Siberian taiga, ATTO is far removed from the influence of civilization. Scientists can therefore expect it to be provided with largely unadulter- ated data on climate events in the atmosphere above the Earth’s largest uninterrupted expanse of forest.

Although all of the measurement equipment has not yet been installed in the tower, it will soon provide a con- stant stream of data about greenhouse gases, aerosol particles, cloud properties, boundary-layer processes and the transport of air masses. The researchers are particularly interested in the interaction between the rainforest and the masses of air streaming above it. After all, the Amazon region is of global importance for the climate, and too little is currently known about the role the rainforest plays in the formation of aerosol particles and thus cloud formation.

The Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena are partners in the joint German-Brazilian ATTO project. The measurement data recorded by ATTO flows into current models for forecasting climate development and will also soon help politicians develop environmental policy regulations and global climate goals.

Even on cloudy days, the sun shines in the greenhouse of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology: 520 high-pressure lamps with assimilation sodium vapor bulbs ensure that the plants have sufficient light and that the spectral distribution is right for photosynthesis. To simulate uniform irradiation, the lamps move back and forth automatically on tracks. The air conditioning is also computer controlled: temperatures remain at summer levels – but not too high – all year round.

Half of the 474-square-meter cultivation floor is usually sown with coyote tobacco (Nicotiana attenuata), a species of wild tobacco and the institute’s most important model plant. Along with rapeseed and pea plants and poplars, the greenhouse also boasts some more exotic inhabitants: pest-resistant bananas, noni trees and carnivorous pitcher plants. The latter are the main focus of interest for researcher Ayufu Yilamujiang. He studies the exact composition of the digestive fluid with which the plant digests the trapped insects.

Carnivorous plants grow in low-nutrient soils and obtain additional nutrition from their animal prey, mainly insects. To this end, they have developed special trapping and digestive mechanisms. In the case of the pitcher plant, sweet nectar lures the insects to the edge of the pitcher, which is basically formed from reshaped leaves. The animals slip off the edge of the pitcher and fall into the digestive fluid. The pitcher plants also find the occasional prey in the greenhouse, as parasites or beneficial organisms used to combat these – ichneumon wasps, for instance – occasionally fall victim to them. For experiments carried out under controlled conditions, the scientists feed the pitcher plants with fruit flies.

Around 7,000 languages are currently spoken worldwide. Quite a number of them are at severe risk of dying out though, as they are spoken by only a small number of people and are no longer being passed on to future generations. Scientists therefore anticipate that a third, at most – but perhaps only one-tenth – of the languages spoken today will still exist by the end of the 21st century. The significance people attach to their own language depends heavily on social and economic circumstances. Particularly under threat are the languages of population groups with a low social reputation. Even worse, with each language that disappears, cultural and intellectual identity is also being lost.

In order to at least document languages and dialects under threat and preserve them for posterity – and for future researchers – the DOBES Program was launched in 2000. As part of this project, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics are conducting research in many parts of the world. In northern Namibia, for example, they are focusing on the Khoisan language ǂAkhoe Haiǀǀom, which contains many click sounds. In standard orthography, these are represented by the symbols !, ǀ, ǀǀ and ǂ.

In preparation for a workshop on minority languages in southern Africa, one of the project’s local staff members, teacher Mariane Kheimses, interviewed Abakup ǀǀGamǀǀgaeb about his thoughts regarding his mother tongue. The members of the community couldn’t imagine allowing just a single representative to speak for everyone at the workshop. Instead, a series of video interviews was shown at the event, enabling all opinions to be represented.

The backdrop is the stuff of a Hollywood film. At any moment, James Bond could ski around the corner to again save the world from some villain or other. In reality, the people who normally spend their time up here – at an altitude of 2,550 meters – have utterly peaceful intentions. In keeping with the spacey ambience, their attention is directed, not at the breathtaking beauty of the French Alps, but at the farthest reaches of the icy-cold universe. Astronomers use the radio antennas on the Plateau de Bure to study interstellar molecules and cosmic dust, observe the birthplaces of stars, travel to distant galaxies or catch sight of black holes at the edge of space and time.

The IRAM observatory currently consists of seven antennas, each measuring 15 meters in diameter. The facility is one of the best and most sensitive radio telescopes worldwide, but that’s not enough for the researchers: in the years ahead, five additional 15-meter dishes will be built on the summit, new receivers will be designed and the track systems extended, allowing the telescopes to then be positioned up to 1.6 kilometers apart. The 45-million-euro project is called NOEMA: NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array. The facility is expected to open up a new window on space and scan the sky with ten times greater sensitivity and four times better spatial resolution than before.

To achieve all of this, the scientists plan to use the full extent of NOEMAs power. They will direct all of the antennas at an astronomical object and then superimpose the millimeter waves they receive. This will allow them to perceive details even from one ten-thousandth of the angle at which the full moon appears in Earth’s firmament, guaranteeing deep insights into the cosmic machinery.

The life of an avatar is dependent on technology, including even the very act of its birth. For the virtual figure to look true to life and move realistically in its computer world, its creators need to have detailed information about the body of the real-life model, as well as about its movement. This is precisely the data that the first four-dimensional full-body scanner provides. This device was developed by Michael J. Black, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, together with American company 3dMD.

With 22 stereo cameras and 22 color cameras taking 60 images per second, the scanner captures a person in various positions and activities that Javier Romero, a scientist at the institute, demonstrates here. For the scan, red and blue squares are printed on Nick Schill, a professional model, and then illuminated with a quickly pulsating spot pattern. The two patterns help the researchers reconstruct the three-dimensional surface of the body and the skin naturally. Not only can this method be used to create true-to-life figures for computer games and films, but it also offers interesting perspectives for research in psychology and medicine. In this way, it will soon be possible to use the realistic avatars in conducting perception experiments on body awareness – for instance to prevent eating disorders.

Galapagos – the name has a magical ring to it, and not just for biologists. A unique flora and fauna developed on this group of islands located some 1,000 kilometers off the coast of Ecuador. When Charles Darwin reached the archipelago in 1835, it was, besides the finches, above all the sub-species of giant tortoises, each specifically adapted to the ecological conditions of their individual island, that inspired his thoughts on the origin of species. But even then, many sub-species were already extinct: their ability to go for very long periods without food and water made the tortoises ideal provisions for seafarers. Today, there are still ten sub-species living on six of the islands. They are endangered primarily by non-native species, such as rats and goats, and human encroachment on their habitat.

The portly animals, which can weigh up to 300 kilograms, feed on shrubs, leaves and grasses, depending on the kind of vegetation available on their home island. Some tortoises undertake long voyages between the lowlands and the higher areas on the volcanic slopes, which are lush with vegetation even in the dry season; others spend the whole year in the lowlands, which can sometimes be very dry.

To learn more about these migrations, scientists working with Stephen Blake from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology attach GPS loggers and ultramodern 3-D accelerometers to the shells of some of the tortoises. This allows them to precisely track the animals over long periods and compare their observations with climate and vegetation data. Their findings were surprising: it is primarily adult males that walk up to ten kilometers in search of fresh, succulent food. But the researchers are still puzzled as to why the giant tortoises, which can go for months without eating, undertake these strenuous journeys.

Someone did quite a job tidying up here. Even the curtains are all pushed neatly to the same side. The blue of the individual image elements harmonizes almost too well. But wait: Couldn’t they have also set the chair backs at the same level? And why are the number signs on the booths so mixed up? Where are we, anyway? In a deserted call center? At a polling station? Is science being done here when no one is looking? Let’s reveal the secret: The image shows the oldest lab for experimental economic research in Europe, the BonnEconLab. Scientists have been studying human economic behavior here since as long ago as 1984. To date, nearly 30,000 people have participated in their experiments. The Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods also regularly uses the lab.

Research subjects with a penchant for experiment can earn money by “playing” the test games at the BonnEconLab. Whether as market participants, as bidders in an auction, or in negotiations: the test subjects continually make more or less successful decisions. Their success, on which the final reward for the individual participants depends, is influenced to a substantial degree by the decisions of their fellow players. Chance also plays a role – just like in real life.

Experimental economics was long a controversial subject within the field of economics. With game theory came the first economic experiments in the 1960s. But people were slow to realize that experimental findings must be used more and more as a basis for economic research. Today, experimentation is a recognized research method in economics – and German researchers were at the forefront right from the start.

… is not at all where the researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics want to be. The issue at hand is nothing less than the base of one of the pillars of our modern world view, the theory of general relativity. In 1915, Albert Einstein formulated, among other things, the theory that the accelerated movement of masses causes disturbances that move through space at the speed of light. He called these disturbances gravitational waves. The Earth, for instance, creates a bulge in space-time on its annual orbit around the Sun, emitting gravitational waves in the process. Given the enormous number of planets and binary stars, space must be utterly teeming with these waves. In most cases, however, the cosmic ripples are too weak to be detected with terrestrial detectors. Fortunately, there are far stronger tremors in the universe: the dance or collision of neutron stars with black holes, or the explosion of a massive sun into a supernova. Such violent events are what scientists around the world are waiting for – for example out in a field in Ruthe, near Hanover. This is where GEO600 stretches out its two 600-meter-long arms. The evacuated stainless steel tubes measure 60 centimeters in diameter and are corrugated to increase their stability. They house the second-longest laser beam interferometer in Europe. The measuring principle is based on the fact that gravitational waves alternately compress and stretch space. If they speed through GEO600, they will also change the paths of the laser beam that runs through the two perpendicularly arranged tubes. This tiny length difference on the order of 10-19 meters causes the light waves in the detector to fall out of step. A signal appears. Alarm! To date, however, there have been only test alarms. The researchers are working on continuously increasing the system’s sensitivity. When the cosmos quakes again, they want to finally capture the gravitational waves and thus open up a new window into space.

The gaping, terrifying jaws of hell in Rome’s Via Gregoriana: in Federico Zuccari’s day, the entryway led directly into the garden of the palazzo that the famous painter commissioned on Pincian Hill for himself and his family in the late 16th century. Long closed to the public, the gate was reopened at the beginning of the year and now serves as a portal to paradise for art historians and all who are interested in art history. Rising behind lofty heritage-protected walls and barely visible from the street, a compact yet finely wrought new building is home to a library containing almost 300,000 volumes and the photographic collection of the Bibliotheca Hertziana.

Bequeathed to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the early 20th century by patron Henriette Hertz, the Bibliotheca Hertziana is celebrating its centennial this year as the Max Planck Institute for Art History. In addition to the Palazzo Zuccari, the centerpiece of the institute, the current premises also include the neighboring Palazzo Stroganoff and the Villino Stroganoff on the opposite side of the street. Following the opening of the spectacular new library building designed by Spanish architect Juan Navarro Baldeweg after more than ten years in construction, the institute library – the only one of its kind in the world – is once again open to the public and to researchers from around the globe.

Five levels of tiered galleries are grouped around a trapezoidal inner courtyard, providing scholars with light-flooded working areas. In addition, the windows offer a generous view over the Eternal City: art historians thus have the object of their research directly before their eyes. A truly paradisiacal garden for academic pursuits.

Earth is subjected to continuous bombardment. At any point in time, somewhere in the depths of the universe, a star explodes or a black hole ejects gigantic gas clouds from the core of a distant galaxy. These aggressive events are heralded by gamma rays, which travel straight through the universe and eventually impact on the Earth’s atmosphere. But this is the end of the line – fortunately for all life, as the energy dose would be lethal in the long term. However, the gamma light doesn’t vanish completely into thin air – a lucky break for astronomers, who can then use it to investigate the cosmic messengers. The radiation leaves its traces in a cascade of particles high above the ground. In the process, a large number of elementary particles are created, which generate Cherenkov radiation – blue flashes that last only one billionth of a second and can’t be seen with the naked eye.

In order to record this celestial light, researchers built the four H.E.S.S. telescopes in the Khomas Highland in Namibia several years ago – and they are now converting this quartet into a quintet. H.E.S.S. II is the name of the new dish, which our picture shows bathed in moonlight as it stretches upward like a steel pyramid into the night sky. With a diameter of 28 meters, it roughly corresponds to the area of two tennis courts. And this giant weighs in at no fewer than 580 tons; its camera eye alone weighs three tons. The five scouts of the High Energy Stereoscopic System record the blue flashes with all the tricks of the astronomical observation trade. Securing the evidence in the data then leads to the scene of the crime, as it were: to the source of the radiation. Thus, the astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, which played an important role in the development and design of H.E.S.S. II as well as coordinating the installation work, also play the role of detectives. Their efforts will soon enable us to better understand the cosmic particle catapults, such as supernovae and black holes.

White caps above and below – it goes without saying that these are part of our image of the blue planet. But for how much longer? In the case of the North Pole, at least, whose cover consists entirely of sea ice, this is an essential question. After all, nowhere in the world is climate change as visible as it is in the Arctic. Never before, since reliable records have been available, was the September minimum – the expansion of the Arctic Sea ice at the end of the summer – as low as it was in 2012.

The Arctic ice is not only an indicator of climate change, but also an important factor in the climate system: the smaller the ice areas become in the Arctic summer, the less sunlight is reflected and the more is absorbed by the ice-free ocean. In winter, the ice insulates the relatively warm water from the much colder air; without this “cap,” the ocean would release gigantic volumes of heat into the atmosphere. The ice cover is therefore extremely important for the temperatures at the North Pole.

Dirk Notz from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg would like to explain the role of the sea ice, its complex internal structure, and thus also the conditions necessary for its formation and stability. To this end, he and his team measure, among other things, the thickness of the ice on the ice floes and its composition of pockets of freshwater ice, brine and gas. All of the data is included in complex numerical simulations.

The most important discovery to date: Contrary to what was originally feared, there doesn’t appear to be any tipping point in the climate system, after which it would be impossible to prevent the complete loss of the Arctic ice cap. According to the model calculations, the state of the sea ice is closely related to the prevailing climate conditions at all times. This also means that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at the current rate, then by the end of the century, the Arctic will be completely free of ice in September at the latest.

What makes humans human? How and when did we become what we are today? How did our ancestors live? These questions are of great interest to a lot of people. The scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology use different methods to investigate them systematically. One of these methods involves extracting DNA from human fossils. Using a new procedure, Svante Pääbo and his team can isolate and sequence ancient genetic material from just a few grams of bone powder, allowing them to compare the genomes of different prehistoric humans with one another and with people living today.

However, the first challenge consists in finding usable remains of prehistoric humans: bones normally decay in less than one hundred years; only under very special conditions are they able to survive for millennia. Important discovery sites include caves, such as the Tianyuan Cave near Beijing, shown here. Discovered accidentally by workers in 2001, the cave was examined archaeologically by a research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The excavations yielded human fossils that are around 40,000 years old, making them among the oldest remains of anatomically modern man found outside of Africa.

Genetic analysis revealed that the early modern human from the Tianyuan Cave and the ancestors of many present-day Asians and Native Americans share a common origin. On the other hand, their ancestral line had already diverged from that of the predecessors of present-day Europeans. Moreover, the DNA is not the only material that brought interesting facts to light: chemical analysis of the bone collagen from a lower jaw reveals that the Tianyuan people regularly ate freshwater fish. In other words, fish was on the menu long before the time indicated by archaeological finds of fishing implements.

The setting in which researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry study which substances plants exchange with their environment is artificial, yet still as natural as possible. Nina Knothe, who works at the Mainz-based institute, is preparing such an experiment at the Max Planck Society’s sub-institute in Manaus, right in middle of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. Here, she is checking the lighting conditions in a cuvette covered with an airtight film. Without artificial lighting, the plants that will later be placed in the vessel won’t get enough light. Tubes supply the plant with ambient air and discharge the gaseous metabolic products of the test subject. The second cuvette serves the researchers as a reference.

This experiment helps the scientists to learn more about the natural material cycle, as few other places in the world can match the low pollution level of the air in the Amazon rainforest. When they know more about the natural material cycle between the geosphere, the biosphere and the atmosphere, they will be better able to understand how humans interfere in this interplay.

It's a superlative superbrain and goes by a name that is even a little showy: SuperMuc. "Muc" is short for Munich, which isn´t entirely correct. The 100+ ton computer is actually located at the gates of the Bavarian state capital - in a 500 square meter hall at the Leibniz Rechenzentrum, the computer centre named for the German mathematician, at the Bavarian Academy of Science's campus in Garching - which nevertheless is a separate municipality (of scientists). SuperMuc runs at three petaflops, i.e. three million billion floating point operations per second. If we humans wanted to keep up with it, three billion adults on the planet would have to simultaneously carry out a million computations in the blink of an eye.

It is obvious that the facility, which was dedicated in mid-July, is in the Champions League for computers and number four in the world standings. So it makes sense that SuperMuc is much coveted by scientists, like researcher Stefanie Walch at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. She is interested in the comic maternity ward - molecular clouds in which new stars are born. Within them are also a lot of heavy weights that heat up the clouds, blow the gas apart and thereby reduce the birth rate.

With a cool head, Stefanie Walch has written algorithms for what is the largest simulation of a molecular cloud’s lifecycle to date. However, the computer is going to run pretty hot during calculations of such violent nature events. So that it doesn’t overheat, 40-degree water flows through its bowels. That would be a feverish temperature for humans, but SuperMuc can tolerate 70 or 80 degrees without problem. A superlative superbrain indeed. Copyright: Axel Griesch

For four decades now, a white dish has been the defining feature of the landscape surrounding Effelsberg in the Eifel region. This is where, on May 12, 1971, the 100-meter telescope of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy was unveiled. Since then, the fully steerable radio antenna - for many years the largest of its kind - has impressed the world with its sheer dimensions.

But this precision instrument also has an impressive scientific track record: it has served two generations of astronomers, who have scoured space in the long-wave spectral range and published thousands of articles and essays. The antenna gained fame in the 1970s for its 408-megahertz survey of the radio sky. In addition, to date, researchers have found new molecules and spectral lines in interstellar space, discovered the most distant source of water - 11 billion light-years away - and proved for the first time the existence of giant ordered magnetic field structures in other galaxies, as well as the relativistic effect of geodetic precession outside the solar system and in strong gravitational fields.

Despite its age, the telescope is not yet even remotely a candidate for the scrap heap: thanks to good care, regular modernization and enormous advances in digital electronics, it is better today than ever before.

Around 3,000 physicists from 38 countries have taken on a challenge worthy of a titan. At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, they form the team working on the ATLAS experiment to investigate the fundamental building blocks of matter and how they react with each other. The best known target of their search is the Higgs boson. This elementary particle must exist if the Higgs mechanism is correct. The mechanism is part of the Standard Model of elementary particles and explains how matter obtains its mass.

To track down the Higgs particle and thus prove that the Higgs mechanism exists, a gigantic experimental apparatus is needed: the LHC accelerator ring, which generates the energy needed for the massive particles, has a circumference of 27 kilometers. And ATLAS, one of four experiments at the LHC, measures an impressive 45 meters long and 25 meters high, and weighs 7,000 tons - as much as the Eiffel Tower. The team’s efforts have already been worthwhile, not least because the ATLAS collaboration has now found initial indications that the Higgs boson exists.

The photo shows the cap of ATLAS’ inner detector while it was still under construction. It is now no longer possible to access the detector. In addition, the tubes with the beams of colliding particles now run through the center of the circular facility.

The Dolphin Gull Larus scoresbii lives on the coasts of South America and on the Falkland Islands. The animals breed in colonies that nest near sea lions or other sea birds, such as penguins and cormorants. Dolphin Gulls build their nests in protected areas between boulders or tufts of grass. The clutch contains one to three eggs from which, after nearly four weeks, the chicks hatch.

Dolphin Gulls do not feed from the sea, but from the coasts, on such delicacies as sea lion excrement, cormorant vomit, marine invertebrates, mussels and insects. In their search for food, they also regularly comb through washed-up algae. Scientists working with Petra Quillfeldt at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology are studying the food strategies of these birds. They are investigating whether the individual animals specialize in certain food sources. To follow the birds over a longer time period, they are tagged with a small data logger that uses GPS to capture their position for the coming days, and that stores acceleration data for behavioral analyses. Stable isotopes are used to differentiate the food sources.

To capture the birds, the researchers set a wire basket trap on the nest. The seagull watches and, as soon as the researcher leaves, will try to occupy its nest again. The reader for the data dangles from the researcher’s neck, and the data is read out via a radio link.

To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a sofa is a sofa is a sofa is a sofa. However, this example in the library of the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich has connotations that extend beyond the Wikipedia definition of "a piece of upholstered furniture suitable for sitting or reclining". The designer objet dating from the late 1960s came to prominence thanks to the persistent myth that Jürgen Habermas had sat on it, steeped in thought. Starting in 1971, he joined Carl Friedrich Weizsäcker as Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Living Conditions in the Scientific and Technical World in Starnberg. Nine years later, upon Weizsäcker’s retirement, the institute was renamed the Max Planck Institute for Social Sciences and relocated to Munich. The sofa and Habermas moved with it.

Soon after, however, the sofa acquired a new owner with the arrival of Franz Emanuel Weinert. Habermas took his leave, and Weinert remained, becoming the Founding Director of the new Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research. This also no longer exists: in 2006, it was merged with the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig.

Only the sofa still remains. Perhaps because it is "tainted with odium", as Emeritus Wolfgang Prinz put it, without so much as a hint of disrespect. "Institutes come and go, but the sofa survives", says sociologist Gertrud Nunner-Winkler with a smile. For well over 30 years, her career and that of the sofa have progressed in parallel, as both made the transition from Starnberg to Munich. Whose seat of learning is it now? Library users like to sit on the sofa as they leaf through books and journals. It’s a very comfortable place indeed to seek out information.

Two men, one word: On February 26, 1948, Otto Hahn (right, standing) and Lower Saxony’s Minister of Cultural Affairs Adolf Grimme seal the foundation of the Max Planck Society. High-caliber scientists, including several Nobel laureates, attended the event. The gathering took place in the fellowship house of the dismantled Aerodynamic Research Institute in Göttingen. Such were the modest beginnings of the successor organization of the tradition-rich Kaiser Wilhelm Society.

The rustic rooms, however, still serve as a venue for gatherings today: the place where venerable men came together at simple wooden tables more than 60 years ago to open a new chapter in Germany’s research history is the place where the staff of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization gather today to enjoy their lunch together.

The stereotype of the isolated researcher - that doesn’t apply here at all: Peter van der Veer and Reza Masoudi Nejad, both from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, are studying the religious diversity of India. Their approach involves plunging themselves into the tumult, as here in the streets of Mumbai. Thousands of Shiite Muslims from the Dawudi Bohra community crowd into the Bhindi Bazaar to catch a glimpse of their spiritual leader. This faith originated in Fatimid Egypt in the 11th century. Despite the long tradition, the faithful registered to attend a sermon by His Holiness via e-mail.