Many massive stars were once part of binary systems, but their exciting past is often lost – at least it was so far. A new study at the University of Bonn and at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics has now found a new method to identify stars that once gained mass from a companion – stars that now appear as single objects but carry the chemical scars of their binary youth. Using a unique “chemical fingerprint” – independent of specific evolutionary models – they were able to reconstruct the binary histories of massive stars. The method has already reclassified the well-studied star γ Columbae as a former mass gainer – challenging long-held assumptions about its origin– and offered new insight into Supernova SN 1987A’s progenitor. The findings have now been published in “Nature Astronomy.”

After two intensive weeks at DESY in Hamburg, the participating research groups draw a positive conclusion: During a joint test beam campaign, scientists from the Universities of Bonn, Dortmund and Heidelberg successfully tested new silicon pixel sensors for the Mighty Tracker, the future tracking detector system of the LHCb experiment, under realistic conditions. The sensors are a key component of the planned LHCb Upgrade II, which will prepare the experiment for Run 5 in the era of the HiLumi LHC.

The search for an as-yet undiscovered elementary particle has been given fresh momentum as the German Research Foundation (DFG) has now greenlit the construction of a special €6 million magnet system in the Color meets Flavor Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn, University of Siegen and TU Dortmund University. Dubbed “BabyIAXO,” it is being built to hunt for the axion, a hitherto undetected elementary particle that could unlock one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in particle physics.

The German eROSITA consortium (eROSITA-DE), which also includes the University of Bonn and which is being led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), has released its second major public dataset, the “eROSITA Data Release 2” (DR2). Built from the first three all-sky surveys done by the eROSITA telescope aboard the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission, DR2 provides the most sensitive and comprehensive catalogue of the X-ray sky currently available to the public. Spearheaded by the University of Bonn, the analysis of a massive galaxy cluster has shown that the theoretical models for how the Universe formed largely match the observations made, albeit with some interesting discrepancies in the finer details.

The winning teams of the 13th edition of the Beamline for Schools (BL4S) physics competition have been chosen. BL4S, initiated by CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, is open to secondary school pupils from all around the world. Participants are invited to submit a proposal for a physics experiment to be undertaken at the beamline of a particle accelerator, either at CERN or at one of the partner institutes DESY and ELSA at the University of Bonn. In 2026, five winning teams have been chosen, based on the scientific merit of their proposals.

Ina Brandes, North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister of Science, presented a funding commitment of 113 million euros for the renovation of the Physikalisches Institut at the University of Bonn’s administration building. The funds come from the “North Rhine-Westphalia Plan for Good Infrastructure.”

Starting in the summer semester of 2026, the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Bonn will offer the certificate program “Advanced Machine Learning and Data Analysis in Physics.”