News

20 years of MAGIC: The twin telescope on the island of La Palma (Photo: Chiara Righi/MAGIC Collaboration)

20 MAGIC years of gamma-ray astronomy at MPP

In 2003, a success story of astrophysics began on La Palma: 20 years ago in October, the first MAGIC telescope was inaugurated on the Canary Island, a huge instrument with a mirror diameter of 17 meters. Five years later, the twin MAGIC II telescope…

Read more
The CRESST experiment in the Gran Sasso Underground Lab (Photo: CRESST Collaboration)

Cold, Colder, CRESST: The Search for Dark Matter

Café & Kosmos on October 21, 2023

For decades, we have known of the existence of matter. This "dark" matter is five times more abundant than ordinary matter and plays a crucial role in the evolution of the universe. However, we have not yet been able to identify the nature of this…

Read more
Artwork: Josh Worth

Workshop "Current Topics in Fundamental Physics" on 16 August

The workshop "Current Topics in Fundamental Physics" on the 16th of August will bring together experts from theoretical particle physics, cosmology and mathematics to discuss the latest developments at the interface of these three research areas.

Re…

Read more
Installation of the complete version of the Pixel Vertex Detector in the Belle II experiment (Photo: B. Paschen/University of Bonn)

Made in Germany and big in Japan: Pixel Vertex Detector installed in Belle II experiment

The Pixel Vertex Detector (PXD), at the size of just a soda can, forms the innermost detector layer of the international Belle II experiment. It has now been installed at its destination, the SuperKEKB electron-positron accelerator in Japan. The…

Read more

Physics from another universe

Café and Kosmos on September 21, 2023

Normally, physicists try to describe our world. It may therefore come as a surprise that over the last few decades more and more interest has developed in a theory that is at best a caricature of our universe. It bears the mysterious name N=4 Super…

Read more
CRESST detector module with H-shaped temperature sensor made of superconducting material (Photo: T. Dettlaff/MPP)

CRESST: Finetuning dark matter detectors

The CRESST experiment has specialized in the search for light dark matter particles, lighter than 1 Gigaelectronvolts (1 GeV). In order to reliably measure the tiny energy released by these particles in the detectors, those must be very precisely…

Read more
Four different supernova simulations: Top left shows the reference model without neutrino flavor changes, the other three images show simulations with flavor changes after 100 milliseconds in different regions of the proto-neutron star, respectively. (Image: J. Ehring/MPP/MPA)

Supernova explosions: It's all in the flavor

Supernovae, stellar explosions of gigantic proportions, are powered by the lightest elementary particles of all: neutrinos. These come in three different varieties, which are called flavors. Until now, it was assumed that the neutrinos in a supernova…

Read more
Setup of the MADMAX experiment at the Max Planck Institute for Physics (D. Strom/MPP)

MADMAX is an anchor project in German-French Dark Matter Lab

The MADMAX project initiated by the Max Planck Institute is the focus of a newly established research collaboration: the French research organization CNRS and three German Helmholtz centers have joined forces to form the Dark Matter Lab (DMLab). The…

Read more

The matter-antimatter trap

Café and Kosmos on June 19, 2023

When matter meets antimatter, they annihilate each other within fractions of a second. In the process, the entire mass is converted into energy. However, this annihilation process can be delayed if the particle density is extremely low and the…

Read more
Prof. Dr. Siegfried Bethke, director emeritus at the MPI for Physics

Honorary Colloquium on the Retirement of Siegfried Bethke

On the occasion of the farewell of its long-time director Prof. Dr. Siegfried ("Siggi") Bethke, the Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP) cordially invites to an honorary colloquium on May 16, 2023, 3:00 pm.

Read more