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Researchers show young stars rapidly destroy Earth-like Nitrogen dominated atmospheres The discoveries of thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system has made questions about the potential for life to form on these planets fundamentally important in modern science. Fundamentally important for the habitability of a planet is whether or not it can hold onto an atmosphere, which requires that the atmosphere is not completely lost early in the lifetime of the planet.

A new conjecture causes excitement in the string theory community. Timm Wrase of the Vienna University of Technology has now published much-discussed results on recent new developments. In string theory, a paradigm shift could be imminent. In June, a team of string theorists from Harvard and Caltech published a conjecture which sounded revolutionary: String theory is said to be fundamentally incompatible with our current understanding of "dark energy" - but only with "dark energy" can we explain the accelerated expansion of our current universe.

Astrophysicists calculate the impact probability and crater size of impacts due to minor bodies The astrophysicists Mattia Galiazzo and Rudolf Dvorak from the University of Vienna, in collaboration with Elizabeth A. Silber (Brown University, USA) investigated the long-term path development of Centaurs (solar system minor bodies which originally have orbits between Jupiter and Neptune).

The International Astronomical Union has agreed on a new reference frame for directions in space. TU Wien played an important role in developing this new frame. In future, when spacecrafts are sent to other planets or when the rotation of planet Earth is studied, a new reference frame will be used. On 30 August, at the General Meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Vienna, the new international celestial reference frame ICRF3 was adopted, allowing for more precise directional specifications in space.

A high-precision experiment led by TU Wien has set its sights on pinpointing the so-far hypothetical "symmetron fields" using the PF2 ultra-cold neutron source at the Institut Laue-Langevin in France. For the existence of symmetrons could provide an explanation for the mysterious dark energy. One thing is certain: there's something out there we don't yet know.

Electrically charged particles from the sun strike moons and planets with great force. The consequences of these impacts can now be explained by scientists from TU Wien. The planets and moons of our solar system are continuously being bombarded by particles hurled away from the sun. On Earth this has hardly any effect, apart from the fascinating northern lights, because the dense atmosphere and the magnetic field of the Earth protect us from these solar wind particles.

By Michael Müller For many people a mission to Mars would be a dream. For Michael Müller, physics student at TU Graz, this was a dream come true - at least almost. He reports on his experiences as a field crew member of the AMADEE-18 Mars Simulation project in Oman - from his arrival on the 'red planet' to the exciting experiments.

Induction heating can completely change the energy budget of an exoplanet and even melt its interior. In a study published by Nature Astronomy an international team led by the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences with participation of the University of Vienna explains how magma oceans can form under the surface of exoplanets as a result of induction heating.

Scientists around Tetyana Milojevic from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Vienna are in search of unique biosignatures, which are left on synthetic extraterrestrial minerals by microbial activity. The biochemist and astrobiologist investigates these signatures at her own miniaturized "Mars farm" where she can observe interactions between the archaeon Metallosphaera sedula and Mars-like rocks.

TUGSAT-1 and UniBRITE have been in space since 2013. During this time 350 stars have been observed, new variable stars discovered, and 12 scientific papers published in international journals. The nanosats of the BRITE mission focus on the brightest, hottest and most massive stars in the immediate neighbourhood of the universe.

Astronomers of the Universities of Tübingen and Vienna are investigating the basic principles of the formation of stars "How do massive stars form?" is one of the fundamental questions in modern astrophysics, because these massive stars govern the energy budget of their host galaxies.

Franz Viehböck took off 25 years ago - the one and only Austrian in space. Researchers at TU Graz performed pioneering work in extraterrestrial materials analysis and facilitated the first ever networked communication between several locations on Earth and in space. Friday, 4 October 1991: the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra played the Blue Danube by Johann Strauss as Franz Viehböck glided into the Soviet space station "Mir".

TUGSAT-1/BRITE-Austria and UniBRITE, Austria's first satellites in space, celebrate their third birthday. "Astronomy & Astrophysics" publishes three papers with the ESA-missions latest results. Photographic material available for download at the end of the text. . "BRITE stands for BRIght Target Explorer.

Stars do not accumulate their final mass steadily, but in a series of violent events manifesting themselves as sharp stellar brightening. According to this theory of Eduard Vorobyov from the University of Vienna, stellar brightening can be caused by fragmentation due to gravitational instabilities in massive gaseous disks surrounding young stars, followed by migration of dense gaseous clumps onto the star.

When soup is heated, it starts to boil. When time and space are heated, an expanding universe can emerge, without requiring anything like a "Big Bang". This phase transition between a boring empty space and an expanding universe containing mass has now been mathematically described by a research team at the Vienna University of Technology, together with colleagues from Harvard, the MIT and Edinburgh.

Researchers in Vienna shed light on the interplay of a worm's inner clocks For a long time, molecular chronobiology has almost exclusively focused on circadian rhythms that are driven by the changes of day and night and hence follow the daily cycle of the sun. However, especially in the sea, the cradle of evolution, organisms set their pace also according to the moon.

Ninety-nine percent of all of Earth's land ice is locked up in the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. However, over the period 2003 to 2009, the melting of the world's other land ice stored in glaciers contributed just as much to sea level rise as the two ice sheets combined. This is the result of a new study led by Alex Gardner from Clark University (USA), which has been published in the current issue of the journal Science.

Where does it rain on a hot day's afternoon? New satellite data show that soil moisture plays an important role. It influences precipitation in a way which is quite different from what models have predicted so far. Summer rain is more likely over drier soil - this is the conclusion scientists have drawn from a detailed analysis of satellite data.

[ Florian Aigner, Wolfgang Wagner Soil moisture influences our climate. For the first time, long-term data for the whole world is now presented by ESA, the Vienna University of Technology and the Free University of Amsterdam. The future of the world's climate is determined by various parameters, such as the density of clouds or the mass of the Antarctic ice sheet.

[ Florian Aigner Previously undiscovered particles could be detected as they accumulate around black holes say Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology. Finding new particles usually requires high energies ' that is why huge accelerators have been built, which can accelerate particles to almost the speed of light.