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Published on February 28, 2025

An international research team, involving numerous French laboratories —including the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics of Grenoble (OSUG - CNRS/UGA), the Institute of Mineralogy, Materials Physics, and Cosmochemistry (CNRS/IRD/Sorbonne University), the Geology Laboratory of Lyon (CNRS/ENS Lyon/Univ. Claude Bernard/UJM Saint-Etienne), and the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (CNRS/CNES/University of Toulouse)—has just detected, thanks to NASA’s Perseverance (…)

Published on January 27, 2025

Author of a publication on nature conservation targets, Ignacio Palomo, researcher IRD at the institut des géosciences de l’environnement (IGE-OSUG, CNRS/IRD/UGA/INRAE/GrenobleINP-UGA) analyses the expectations and challenges of the Biodiversity and Climate COPs.
« As you probably saw in the news, at the end of 2024 world leaders met in Cali, Colombia for the COP16 on biodiversity and in Baku, Azerbaijan for the COP29 on the climate.. For the uninitiated, COP stands for Conference of (…)

Published on January 20, 2025

Astrophysicists led by a team from Trinity have – for the first time – imaged a large number of exocomet belts around nearby stars, and the tiny pebbles within them. Crystal-clear images show light being emitted from millimetre-sized pebbles within the belts that orbit 74 nearby stars of a wide variety of ages – from those that are just emerging from birth to those in more mature systems like our own Solar System.
The REASONS (REsolved ALMA and SMA Observations of Nearby Stars) study (…)

Published on January 10, 2025

Around the edges of the Antarctic ice sheet, glaciers flow toward the ocean, forming long floating ice shelves that regulate the flow of ice from the sheet into the ocean.
The increased loss of mass from the Antarctic ice sheet has been attributed to the significant weakening of these floating ice shelves. This weakening originates from the advection of warm, saline waters of circumpolar origin onto the continental shelf. These waters are then channeled beneath the ice shelves, where they (…)

Published on November 22, 2024

Since the late 1990s, West and Central Africa have seen rainfall levels steadily intensify during monsoon season, leading to more and more episodes of flooding. 2024 has been no exception to that rule: since August, torrential rainfall has already led to flooding in a dozen countries, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Liberia, not to mention Chad and Mali. These catastrophes have claimed over 1,500 lives and displaced more than 1.2 million people. With dramatic scenes like these being (…)

Published on November 15, 2024

Ranked in the top 150 in the global ranking published last August, Université Grenoble Alpes maintains its position in the Shanghai 2024 ranking with a strong performance in the thematic ranking published on 11 november. For 10 disciplines, the university is in the top 100 of the world’s best universities. It ranks 11th among the world’s top universities in remote sensing (1st in France) and 16th (3rd in France) in Earth Sciences, two themes covered by the OSUG laboratories.
The Shanghai (…)

Published on September 04, 2024

Cement is the world’s most widely used material. Despite centuries of intensive use and ever-increasing global demand, many fundamental physico-chemical questions about its nanoscale structure remain unanswered. An international research team has used neutron scattering techniques to study the dynamics of water inside concrete, one of the keys to its strength.
During the cement setting process, various nanoscopic phases, known as hydrates, are formed. Among these hydrates, calcium (…)

Published on July 16, 2024

The air in Andean cities is heavily polluted by traffic, which produces emissions that are very harmful to health, say IRD specialists, involved researcher from the Institut des géosciences de l’environnement (IGE-OSUG) and their Bolivian partners, who recommend that health risks should be assessed on the basis of the dangerousness of the particles emitted and not the quantity.
Low oxygen levels and steep streets are not good for healthy mobility! “At an altitude of 4,000 metres, (…)

Published on June 20, 2024
News from ESA

Detecting faint objects close to bright stars is incredibly difficult. Yet, by combining data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope with ESO’s GRAVITY instrument on the ground, scientists managed just that. They captured the first light signals of so far unseen dim companions of eight luminous stars. The technique unlocks the tantalising possibility to capture images of planets orbiting close to their host stars.
Have you ever tried to take a picture of a firefly next to a bright streetlight? (…)

Published on June 04, 2024

In a context of increasingly rapid climate change, the accuracy of scientific data plays a vital role. Meteorological observations are used in a wide range of studies, enabling us to better understand the complex interactions taking place within the Earth’s climate system. With this in mind, a team including researchers from the institut des géosciences de l’environnement (IGE- OSUG, CNRS / IRD / INRAE / Grenoble INP / Université Grenoble Alpes), examined in detail the precipitation records (…)