To a hawk an airport can look like the perfect place to settle down. The layout provides ample open space, perches, and nice habitat for a variety of prey species. However, congregations of birds, especially big birds, poses a safety issue for aircraft. A new study focused on Cooper’s Hawks (Accipiter cooperii), published in the Journal of Raptor Research, found that removing a hawk from an airfield and taking it somewhere else, called translocation, can serve as a method for reducing this risk. Researchers also showed that the age and sex of individual hawks as well as the distance moved were all factors that impacted hawk return rates to the airport of origin. Management teams have a higher chance of reducing incidence of raptor-aircraft collisions, without needing to resort to lethal methods, if they incorporate species-specific research like this into their programs. Regarding the safety of the flying public and raptor conservation both, this matters.

While studying layered two-dimensional materials, ICFO researchers observed an anomaly—an unexpected transition in the system’s state triggered by light. That anomaly turned out to be single-photon sensitivity with extraordinary properties which were previously inaccessible: the ability to detect long-wavelength photons (up to the mid-infrared) at relatively high temperatures.

The results of this study, published in Science, open the door to a wide range of applications, from bioimaging to observational astronomy and quantum technologies. 

It sounds like science fiction: a spacecraft, no heavier than a paperclip, propelled by a laser beam and hurtling through space at the speed of light toward a black hole, on a mission to probe the very fabric of space and time and test the laws of physics. But to astrophysicist and black hole expert Cosimo Bambi, the idea is not so far-fetched.   

Reporting in the Cell Press journal iScience, Bambi outlines the blueprint for turning this interstellar voyage to a black hole into a reality. If successful, this century-long mission could return data from nearby black holes that completely alter our understanding of general relativity and the rules of physics. 

A team of astronomers has taken the sharpest-ever picture of the unexpected interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS using the crisp vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble is one of many missions across NASA’s fleet of space telescopes slated to observe this comet, together providing more information about its size and physical properties. While the comet poses no threat to Earth, NASA’s space telescopes help support the agency's ongoing mission to find, track, and better understand near-Earth objects.

 

A piece of GSI/FAIR’s cutting-edge research is scheduled to be launched into space next year: the Biophysics department will be involved in one of the next scientific missions on the International Space Station (ISS) with a highly innovative research project. The “HippoBox” project was successfully reviewed by the German Space Agency at DLR and recently selected for participation in the CELLBOX-4 mission on the ISS. The aim of the project is to use brain organoids (“mini-brains”) to investigate neuroplastic changes in a specific area of the brain, the hippocampus – a question that is highly relevant for the medical preparation of future long-term missions in space.