News

The infographic presents the chaos of all the different elementary particles - quarks and gluons – inside a proton. (Image: D. Dominguez/CERN)

A familiar particle - newly explored: insights into the inner life of the proton 

The proton is one of three building blocks of the atom. Thus protons, together with neutrons and electrons, form the matter we know. Since the 1960s, we have known that a proton consists of three quarks. However, researchers now have a much more…

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Aliens could use artificially created black holes as quantum computers (Image: Eduard Muzhevskyi/iStock)

Extraterrestrial Intelligence: quantum computing with black holes

Black holes as quantum computers? Sounds like science fiction, but it is a realistic scenario. No other system stores quantum information as efficiently as black holes. It is therefore conceivable that intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations could…

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String theory – the key to the universe

Café and Kosmos on May 9, 2023

String theory is a theory to unify two otherwise incompatible concepts: It creates a mathematical substructure to accommodate both quantum physics and gravity. With string theory our reality would not be composed of particles, but of tiny, vibrating…

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The Belle II detector records and analyses particle collisions produced by SuperKEKB. (Photo: Shota Takahashi/KEK)

Belle II catches up with predecessor experiment

Since March 2019, the Belle II detector has been measuring decays of B mesons, a particular type of quark pair. Previous experiments had shown that B and anti-B mesons decay at different rates, i.e., exhibit CP violation. Belle II is intended to…

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Sabine Krabichler, Verwaltungsleiterin am MPI für Physik (Foto: MPG)

Sabine Krabichler is the new Head of Administration at the Max Planck Institute for Physics

The Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP) has a new Head of Administration: Sabine Krabichler succeeds Andreas Hartmann.

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Particle accelerator sheds light on dark matter

Café & Kosmos on April 11, 2023

Dark matter is essential for understanding the rotation speed of stars in galaxies and the motion of galaxies in clusters. But what exactly is dark matter? This question has occupied researchers for decades. But it is not only observations of…

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The two MAGIC telescopes on La Palma (Photo:Urs Leutenegger/Night Photography)

Telescopes search for dark matter

The MAGIC telescopes on La Palma are on the hunt for dark matter. For 233 observational hours, their cameras were pointed at the center of the Milky Way, our home galaxy. Scientists suspect a particularly large accumulation of non-luminous, invisible…

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Patric Muggli (left) is new spokesperson of AWAKE, David Paneque of MAGIC (Photos: A. Griesch/MPP)

MPP scientists elected spokespersons for two experiments

As of January 1, 2023, there are new spokespersons in the research collaborations MAGIC and AWAKE. The choice fell on two scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Physics. Patric Muggli will in future represent for the AWAKE project at CERN,…

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EM 2021: More Corona cases because many fans watched the games together (Photo: picture alliance/empics/Yui Mok)

European Football Championship with side effects

The impact of the European Soccer (Football) Championship 2020 on the incidence of the Corona pandemic differed a lot among the participating countries. The extent to which the numbers of infections and deaths from COVID-19 increased depended…

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Prof. Dr. Allen Caldwell (Photo: A. Griesch/MPP)

Allen Caldwell is the new Managing Director of the Max Planck Semiconductor Laboratory

Physicist Allen Caldwell is the new Managing Director at the Max Planck Society's Semiconductor Laboratory (HLL), effective immediately. In this role, he works closely with Jelena Ninkovic, who is the head of the HLL and responsible for operation of…

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