Research Highlights

With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of researchers including members from the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics at ETH Zurich measured ammonia in the atmosphere of a cold brown dwarf, showing that the isotopic abundance of ammonia can be used to study how giant gas planets form.

Mid-infrared imaging observations of PDS 70 b, an exoplanet that is still in the process of formation, provide unique insight into its atmospheric properties and the mechanisms by which planets emerge from a circumstellar disk of gas and dust.

In 2019, the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes — to which ETH physicists have made substantial contributions — detected the first Gamma Ray Burst at very high energies. With further analyses of those data, the MAGIC scientists now confirmed that the speed of light is constant in vacuum, and not dependent on energy. So, like many other tests, GRB data also corroborate Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. 

METIS, the powerful imager and spectrograph for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), has passed its Preliminary Design Review. ETH reserachers have leading roles in the project and provide a major hardware contribution.

The observation of a gamma-ray burst by the Major Atmospheric Gamma-​ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes — an international collaboration in which ETH physicists have a leading role — reveals the highest-energy photons released by such violent explosions reported to date.  

Combing Earth- and space-borne observations, first evidence was found for an extragalactic object acting as a source of high-energy neutrinos, and therefore possibly also of cosmic radiation. An important role in this discovery had the MAGIC telescopes, where also ETH scientists are involved.