Latest news

Published on December 10, 2025

Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, two new studies present an in-depth analysis of the atmosphere of the planet β Pictoris b using interferometry with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). These observations extend, for the first time, both the spectral resolution and wavelength coverage of exoplanet spectra obtained through ground-based interferometry. The analysis of its atmospheric carbon-to-oxygen ratio provides key clues about its formation process. The results (…)

Published on December 02, 2025

Already positioned in the global top 200 of the 2025 Shanghai Ranking, Université Grenoble Alpes further confirms its excellence and scientific vitality with the publication of the 2025 Shanghai Subject Ranking on November 18, 2025. This year, UGA appears in 30 disciplines, maintaining its position as the third most represented French university in terms of the number of ranked disciplines—behind Sorbonne Université and Université Paris-Saclay—and reaching the world top 100 in 10 fields .It (…)

Published on December 02, 2025

Between June and October 2025, a team from the institut des sciences de la Terre (ISTerre-OSUG, CNRS / IRD / UGA / Univ. Savoie Mont-Blanc / Univ. Gustave Eiffel) conducted a major geophysical campaign in Albania focused on natural hydrogen. For four months, researchers worked in the Bulqizë ophiolite, one of Europe’s most promising sites, to investigate its deep structure and understand the geological processes that generate and transport this little-known gas.
Probing a Complex Natural (…)

Published on November 26, 2025

The NOEMA radio-interferometer has characterized an accretion streamer feeding a young protoplanetary disk. This flow of interstellar material has a major impact on the physical structure and chemistry of this disk, influencing how future planets would form in this system. This breakthrough was made possible by the work carried out by Maxime Tanious during his PhD thesis at the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics of Grenoble (IPAG-OSUG, CNRS/UGA) and the Institut de Radioastronomie (…)

Published on November 17, 2025

Last week, four lasers were projected into the skies above the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Paranal site in Chile. The lasers are each used to create an artificial star, which astronomers use to measure and then correct the blur caused by Earth’s atmosphere. The striking launch of these lasers, one from each of the eight-metre telescopes at Paranal, in which the Université Grenoble Alpes is participating through its IPAG laboratory (UGA/CNRS), is a significant milestone of the (…)

Published on September 11, 2025

What if glaciers could reveal the hidden history of antibiotic resistance ? The European project Paleo-MARE, supported by an ERC Consolidator Grant, explores a little-known but pressing question : how heavy metal pollution may have shaped the persistence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment.
Why drill glaciers to study a global health threat ?
Microorganisms are at the heart of Earth’s ecosystems. But over centuries, human activities—especially the use of heavy (…)

Published on July 11, 2025

From 16 June to 25 July, an international team led by meteorologists from the University of Innsbruck is conducting extensive measurements in the Inn and Adige valleys, the Sarntal Alps, and the Bavarian Alpine foothills. The data will help deepen our understanding of air exchange processes over mountainous terrain and the links between local, regional, and global weather processes. As part of a year-long observational campaign data are also collected using research aircraft. Among the (…)

Published on June 04, 2025

Most stars in the Universe exist in binary or multiple star systems, where the presence of close-in companion stars in such systems can adversely influence the formation and orbital stability of planets around one of the stars. An international team of astrophysicists, involved scientist from institut de planétologie et d’astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG-OSUG, CNRS/UGA), led by Professor Man Hoi LEE from the Department of Earth Sciences and the Department of Physics at The University of Hong (…)

Published on April 03, 2025

During the Celebrations of the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation 2025 in Paris on the 20th and 21st March 2025 the IGE has presented the results of several initiatives. Among those, the book “The voices of glaciers : stories of grief and hope amidst shrinking glaciers in the tropics”, co-edited by UNESCO and IRD Editions.
As glacier melting continues unabated at all latitudes, the loss of glaciers in the tropics provides an early glimpse of how a world without ice might be. (…)

Published on March 28, 2025

Newly formed stars are accompanied by massive disks of gas and dust in which planets for in a few million years (or less).
The dust particles they contain, which form the building blocks of future planets, asteroids and comets, range in size from sub-micron, as found in the interstellar medium, to mm-sized pebbles and larger. To build ever larger solid particles, models indicate that it is crucial to strongly concentrate the dust in small volumes, which is likely achieved in disks (…)