Press release

Published on September 07, 2020
Press release published by ESA

A permeable heart with a hardened facade –the resting place of Rosetta’s lander on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is revealing more about the interior of the ’rubber duck’ shaped-body looping around the Sun. A recent study suggests that the comet’s interior is more porous than the material near the surface. The results confirm that solar radiation has significantly modified the comet’s surface as it travels through space between the orbits of Jupiter and Earth. Heat from the Sun triggers (…)

Published on August 27, 2020
Gas reaches young stars along magnetic field lines

Astronomers have used the GRAVITY instrument to study the immediate vicinity of a young star in more detail than ever before. Their observations confirm a thirty-year-old theory about the growth of young stars: the magnetic field produced by the star itself directs material from a surrounding accretion disk of gas and dust onto its surface. The results, published today in the journal Nature, help astronomers to better understand how stars like our Sun are formed and how Earth-like planets (…)

Published on June 30, 2020
Press release published by UGA & CNRS

An international team led by scientists from the Isterre laboratory / OSUG (UGA-CNRS-USMB-IRD-Université Gustave Eiffel) studied the first animal fossil contained in a gem opal from Indonesia. Published in Scientific Report on June 29, 2020, this publication reveals that these opals may contain very well preserved fossils, a larva of the cicada family in this first case. This discovery provides a new avenue to explore the evolution of life on Earth or the possible emergence of life on Mars, (…)

Published on May 20, 2020
Press release published by ESO

Observations made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have revealed the telltale signs of a star system being born. Around the young star AB Aurigae lies a dense disc of dust and gas in which astronomers have spotted a prominent spiral structure with a ‘twist’ that marks the site where a planet may be forming. The observed feature could be the first direct evidence of a baby planet coming into existence. A study including IPAG / OSUG.
“Thousands of (…)

Published on April 16, 2020
Press release published by ESO

Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), involving IPAG / OSUG, have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way moves just as predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Its orbit is shaped like a rosette and not like an ellipse as predicted by Newton’s theory of gravity. This long-sought-after result was made possible by increasingly precise measurements over nearly 30 years, which have enabled (…)

Published on December 04, 2019
Press release published by CNRS

From 7 December 2019 to 25 January 2020, a team of scientists from France (CNRS and Université Grenoble Alpes), including researchers from the IGE / OSUG, and Italy (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto Nazionale Geofisica e Vulcanologia) will traverse the middle of the Antarctic plateau, travelling 1,318 km, round trip, from the Franco-Italian Concordia research station towards the south pole and back. The expedition, dubbed the East Antarctic International Ice Sheet Traverse (…)

Published on October 29, 2019
Press release published by Univ. Grenoble Alpes / CNRS / Sorbonne Université

Surface melting in West Antarctica is triggered by atmospheric rivers that transport heat and moisture from the mid-latitudes and sub-tropics to the polar regions according to a new study from researchers [1] from the University Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Sorbonne University, and from Portugal and the United Kingdom. Their study will be published in the journal Nature Geoscience on 28 october 2019.

Published on October 11, 2019
Press release published by Univ. Grenoble Alpes

The MEET project (Monitoring Earth Evolution Through Time) will receive 12.8€ over 6 years to investigate Earth’s evolution since its creation. The project is led by 3 researchers from 3 institutions in France, Germany and USA, and is held by the Université Grenoble Alpes’ Alexander Sobolev, professor at the ISTerre laboratory (OSUG - CNRS/IRD/UGA/USMB/IFFSTTAR).
This project will investigate two main questions: How has Earth’s chemical composition evolved over time? And what physical (…)

Published on August 20, 2019

A team of astronomers led by Anne-Marie Lagrange, a CNRS researcher at the Institut de planétologie et d’astrophysique de Grenoble (OSUG - CNRS/Université Grenoble Alpes), has discovered a second giant planet in orbit around b Pictoris, a star that is relatively young (23 million years old) and close (63.4 light years), and surrounded by a disk of dust
The β Pictoris system has fascinated astronomers for the last thirty years since it enables them to observe a planetary system in the (…)

Published on May 06, 2019
Press release published by the ESA

Small enough to be an aircraft carry-on, the Juventas spacecraft nevertheless has big mission goals. Once in orbit around its target body, Juventas will unfurl an antenna larger than itself, to perform the very first subsurface radar survey of an asteroid.
ESA’s proposed Hera mission for planetary defence will explore the twin Didymos asteroids, but it will not go there alone: it will also serve as mothership for Europe’s first two ‘CubeSats’ to travel into deep space.
CubeSats are (…)