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The Max Planck Institute for Physics mourns the passing of Prof. Dr. Norbert Schmitz, emeritus Scientific Member and long-standing Director of the Institute. The internationally highly respected physicist passed away on January 12, 2026, at the age…

Shortly after the Big Bang, tiny black holes may have formed in the young universe. These primordial objects - first proposed in 1971 by Stephen Hawking - have once again become a major focus of astrophysical research. Perhaps these so-called…

Two researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Physics have been awarded coveted grants from the European Research Council (ERC). Karoline Schäffner and Marius Wiesemann will each receive an ERC Consolidator Grant worth around €2 million. Karoline…

Karoline Schäffner has been awarded one of the coveted Lise Meitner positions at the Max Planck Society. The Lise Meitner Excellence Program now opens up long-term prospects for Karoline Schäffner and her field of research at the MPI for Physics. The…

How did the universe come into being? There are a multitude of theories on this subject. In a recent paper, three scientists formulate a new model: according to this, inflation, the first, very rapid expansion of the universe, would have taken place…

Humans have always been fascinated with the question of how the world came into being. Since the early universe cannot be observed directly, there are currently only theories and speculations about the first moments of the Big Bang and the further…

On 1 September 2025, the Max Planck Society, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, USA), and National Taiwan University (Taipei, Taiwan) officially opened the Max Planck–IAS–NTU Center for Particle Physics, Cosmology, and Geometry in Taipei.…

Café & Kosmos on October 21, 2025

100 years ago, physicists such as Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and Born fundamentally revolutionized our understanding of physics with the establishment of quantum mechanics. Although the quantum world often contradicts…

The axion has the potential to solve two of the most pressing open questions in particle physics: the dark matter could be composed of axions, and axions could resolve a mystery in our understanding of the strong nuclear force. MADMAX, an…

The strong interaction is one of the four fundamental forces in the universe. Around 50 years after it was first described, its theoretical foundations have now been tested with unprecedented accuracy in two recent studies. Scientists from the Max…