News
“Strange animals” in the spotlight
When protons or ions collide with targets or each other, they produce lots of new particles. Some of these are wanted, some are unwanted, but whatever their desired status – they need to be well understood. Neutrons, which belong to these products, are a particular challenge. Their characteristics such as their energy, direction and number are a pain to measure, but knowing them well brings many advantages to various branches of science and its applications. A novel experimental approach based on a new neutron spectrometer recently tested by members of the Laboratory for High-Energy Physics at the University of Bern in collaboration with Politecnico di Milano and its spin-off company Raylab yields promising results that appear to be even more versatile than expected.
Image: U. Bern
A Symposium to celebrate the 400th birthday of Blaise Pascal
2023 marks the 400th birthday of the physicist, mathematician, engineer and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662). The Swiss and the Austrian Physical Society, in partnership with the French Physical Society, will organize a Symposium to celebrate this anniversary during their joint annual meeting in Basel in September.
Image: Gérard Edelinck, Clermont Auvergne Métropole, Bibliothèque du patrimoineInternational Conference of Women in Science: Join Team Switzerland
For the eighth time, the "Women in Physics" conference will take place in India from 10 - 14 July. Interested parties can now register for the Swiss delegation.
International Day of Light 2023 - event planning starts now
The International Day of Light, organised by UNESCO, will take place on 16 May 2023. All individuals and institutions are invited to organise an event and register it in the global events calendar.
Image: UNESCOISSI/ISSI-BJ 2023 Joint Call for Proposals for International Teams in Space and Earth Sciences
The International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern (Switzerland) and ISSI-BJ in Beijing (China) invite proposals for establishing International Teams to conduct, at their respective meeting facilities, research in the Space and Earth Sciences.
Switzerland excluded from European planning of research infrastructures
The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) was created to support a coherent and strategy-oriented approach to policy making in the area of major research infrastructures in Europe. As Switzerland is not associated with Horizon Europe, the EU framework programme for research and innovation, the Swiss ESFRI delegation and Swiss experts in the Strategic Working Groups (SWG) will no longer be invited to participate in ESFRI meetings and activities. According to Hans Rudolf Ott, Chairperson of the Round Table on Swiss Representation in International Organisations and Research Infrastructures (RoTIORI), organised by the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT), Switzerland has lost an important means of contributing to the shaping of the European research landscape as a result of this decision, particularly in the field of major infrastructures. RoTIORI now expects pragmatic solutions to be developed in the interest of the European research landscape.
Image: ESFRI
COSMOS CLUB founded for astronomy enthusiasts
In the newly founded COSMOS CLUB, interested people aged 16 and over can broaden their horizons in the fields of astronomy, space and space travel. The founders are the FHNW and Space eXchange Switzerland - a platform of the Swiss Space Office.
Image: Cosmos Club - Raumschiff.org
Impact of Physics
Study by the Swiss Physical Society shows: industries in which physics plays a central role create added economic and social value
Image: Wikipedia
Antonella Nota is the new Executive Director of the International Space Science Institute
The Board of Trustees of the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) has elected Dr. Antonella Nota from Baltimore, USA, to head the Institute as its new Executive Director as of January 1, 2023.
Image: ISSI
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP Award 2022
At the occasion of the Swiss Geoscience meeting in Lausanne in November 2022, the ACP Award for Atmospheric Research was presented to Lea Beusch for her PhD thesis ‘MESMER – A Modular Earth System Model Emulator with Spatially Resolved Output’. In her thesis, she developed a regional Earth System Model (ESM) emulator, which is able to emulate the output of geographically-resolved ESMs, based on a given global temperature input. Lea Beusch demonstrated how MESMER can be used to recombine global and regional features of ESMs to cover a larger phase space with the emulator, potentially including observational constraints.
Image: NASA
