The Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Bonn will be represented in three Clusters of Excellence in the future - an impressive success that underlines the breadth and international visibility of its research. The University of Bonn was successful with a total of eight approved clusters in the nationwide Excellence Strategy and is therefore once again one of the absolute leaders in the German science system.

The “afterglow” of the universe is an important piece of evidence for the Big Bang. This background radiation also provides important answers to the question of how the first galaxies were able to form. Researchers at the Universities of Bonn, Prague and Nanjing calculate that the strength of this radiation has probably been overestimated up to now. If the results prove to be accurate, it would call into question the theoretical foundation of the standard model of cosmology. The results have now been published in the journal “Nuclear Physics B.”

Technology is being pushed to its very limits. The upgrades to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN slated for the next few years will increase data transfer rates beyond what the current neutrino detector for the FASER experiment can cope with, requiring it to be replaced by a new kind of more powerful detector. This is a task that physicist Professor Matthias Schott from the University of Bonn will be tackling with the help of €1 million in Reinhart Koselleck funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Applications only possible until May 15! The "Stiftung für Physik und Astronomie" in Bonn honors academic performance and commitment in the study of physics (teaching degree and major subject) and astrophysics with the Jasbinsek Kunkelmann-Stipendium  for the Master's program (one-year scholarship of € 300 per month). The scholarship is granted from 01.10.2025 to 30.09.2026.

At the International Masterclasses ‘Hands on Particle Physics’ at the University of Bonn on 11 March (Belle II), 25 March (ATLAS) and 11 April (LHCb) 2025, around 60 students got to know particle physics up close and became researchers themselves for a day.

Clausius Assistant Professor Dr. Lena Funcke of the University of Bonn is one of ten researchers to receive a Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize awarded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Endowed with a purse of 200,000 euros, the DFG characterizes the Prize as Germany’s most prestigious award for researchers in early stages of their careers. 

An international research team has analyzed data from 41 million galaxies in order to estimate the distribution of matter in the universe. The data confirm a long-established model – much to the team’s surprise.

Germany’s members of the Euclid Consortium have played a significant role in producing the mission’s first large set of survey data which the European Space Agency has just released. Researchers from the Argelander Institute for Astronomy (AIfA) of the University of Bonn have been involved in these activities. The data includes stunning images of deep fields with a breathtaking number of 26 million galaxies, many showing their detailed structures. More than 380,000 galaxies have been characterized according to their shapes and distances. Nevertheless, this impressive milestone is only a foretaste of what we can expect in the coming years.