News at MPA

In January, Prof. Dr. Tobias Bonhoeffer, Advisor to the MPG President on Africa Affairs, visited the Partner Group of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics at Kyambogo University in Uganda, led by Dr. Benard Nsamba. Prof. Bonhoeffer met with the university's top management and participated in a productive collaborative board meeting, discussing future research initiatives and opportunities for deeper cooperation.
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A pan-European group of astronomers has used newly developed computer technology to solve a 100 year-old puzzle. While most galaxies in our neighborhood move away from us almost as expected for an unperturbed cosmic expansion, our nearest giant neighbour is approaching at high speed. Systematic numerical experimentation demonstrates this rapid approach is due to massive dark matter haloes surrounding both Andromeda and our own Milky Way, but this mass does not slow down somewhat more distant galaxies because its effects are counteracted by more distant dark matter which lies in a vast flattened sheet out to distances well beyond the neighboring galaxies considered.   more

Million–Solar-Mass Enigma Shows Traits of a Tiny Galaxy—But Its Inner Structure Defies Explanation more

For her excellent graduate studies, Claude Cournoyer-Cloutier, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, received the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal at the McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada at the end of November. more

The School of Frontier Science at Nanjing University has announced the appointment of Prof. Dr. Marat Gilfanov, Senior Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), as a Distinguished Guest Professor. Currently, Gilfanov is working with the Nanjing scientists on a joint project studying intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs). more

An international team of astronomers has found a low mass dark object in the distant Universe, not by directly observing any emitted light, but by detecting its tiny gravitational distortion of the light from another distant galaxy. This mysterious object has a mass of about one million times that of our Sun, and its discovery seems consistent with the current best theory about how galaxies like our own Milky Way formed. more

A new study led by Dr. Alankar Dutta at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics uncovers why cold gas clouds fail to thrive in powerful winds flowing out of galaxies driven by supernovae. These findings, soon to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, challenge long standing assumptions about how galaxies exchange matter with their surroundings.
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