https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from Niels Bohr Institute Among the younger part of the population, sleep problems, anxiety, and depression are widespread and growing issues. But why are our sleep and mental health in such poor condition? And why does it seem so difficult to improve the situation? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-05-young-people-mental-health-poor.html Thu, 21 May 2026 14:40:01 EDT news698586543 Diarrhea claims the lives of 500,000 children each year in low- and middle-income countries. Now, Danish and Ethiopian researchers have linked chronic diarrhea to a specific pattern of gut bacteria, a discovery that could pave the way for new treatments capable of saving lives. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-children-gut-bacteria-key-diarrhea.html Pediatrics Wed, 13 Nov 2024 09:08:05 EST news650711281 In a new study, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have been cultivating "good viruses" from feces. The goal is to replace fecal capsules now being used in so-called fecal transplants. Their new technique has shown potential in studies with mice and the hope is that it will improve this life-saving treatment through standardization and pave its way toward mainstream medicine. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-fermented-feces-transplant-capsules-treatment.html Gastroenterology Tue, 05 Nov 2024 12:26:00 EST news650031948 Air travel, meat in the shopping cart, waste sorting, plastic toys—consumers are faced with a barrage of everyday decisions and priorities when navigating environmental concerns. But what drives these choices? https://phys.org/news/2024-09-eco-guilt-shame-emotions-reveal.html Environment Wed, 25 Sep 2024 14:52:04 EDT news646494722 Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen and University of Southern Denmark have recently published FreeDTS—a shared software package designed to model and study biological membranes at the mesoscale—the scale "in between" the larger macro level and smaller micro level. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-physicists-software-biological-membranes-mesoscale.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 22 Mar 2024 11:36:06 EDT news630326161 Scientists around the world work hard to rinse quantum systems for noise, which may disturb the function of tomorrow's powerful quantum computers. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) have found a way to use noise to process quantum information. This raises the performance of the quantum computing unit, the qubit. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-elegant-noise-quantum.html Quantum Physics Mon, 18 Mar 2024 11:40:03 EDT news629980801 Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) have removed a key obstacle for development of extremely sensitive monitoring devices based on quantum technology. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-major-obstacle-quantum-sensor.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 08 Nov 2023 12:40:40 EST news618669637 In recent years, astronomy has seen itself in a bit of crisis: Although we know that the universe expands, and although we know approximately how fast, the two primary ways to measure this expansion do not agree. Now astrophysicists from the Niels Bohr Institute suggest a novel method which may help resolve this tension. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-colliding-neutron-stars-expansion-universe.html Astronomy Mon, 02 Oct 2023 10:47:42 EDT news615462457 With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are now able to peer so far back in time that we are approaching the epoch where we think that the first galaxies were created. Throughout most of the history of the universe, galaxies seemingly tend to follow a tight relation between how many stars they have formed, and how many heavy elements they have formed. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-astronomers-newborn-galaxies-james-webb.html Astronomy Fri, 22 Sep 2023 09:38:19 EDT news614594244 Using the Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers led by researchers at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, have investigated a galaxy seen almost 11 billion years back in time. Contrary to typical observations, the galaxy was discovered not by the light it emits, but by the light it absorbs. The galaxy itself evades observations, but has at least one nearby companion. Together, these galaxies comprise an early group which may later evolve to resemble the Local Group in which we live. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-team-astronomers-galaxy-group-early.html Astronomy Mon, 11 Sep 2023 15:38:30 EDT news613665507 The first results from the James Webb Space Telescope have hinted at galaxies so early and so massive that they are in tension with our understanding of the formation of structure in the universe. Various explanations have been proposed that may alleviate this tension. But now a new study from the Cosmic Dawn Center suggests an effect which has never before been studied at such early epochs, indicating that the galaxies may be even more massive. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-james-webb-massive-galaxies.html Astronomy Wed, 17 May 2023 10:35:27 EDT news603538524 To better understand observations of the most distant galaxies, an international team of astronomers has built a sample of local galaxies which can be studied in much higher detail. In a newly published study they show how the amount of light that escapes from a galaxy is connected to its physical properties. The result has implication for how we interpret observations of galaxies in the early universe. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-spying-neighbors-local-galaxies-astronomers.html Astronomy Wed, 10 May 2023 13:28:12 EDT news602944088 Astronomers from the Cosmic Dawn Center have unveiled the nature of the densest region of galaxies seen with the James Webb Space telescope in the early universe. They find it to be likely the progenitor of a massive, Milky Way-like galaxy, seen at a time where it is still assembling from smaller galaxies. The discovery corroborates our understanding of how galaxies form. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-webb-telescope-early-galaxy-formation.html Astronomy Tue, 31 Jan 2023 12:58:42 EST news594392318 Less than a week after the James Webb Space Telescope was ready for science, the first reports of discoveries of galaxies at record distances and, consequently, at record-early times appeared in preprints. Even more remarkably, these galaxies seem to be so massive that they challenge our understanding of how structure forms in the universe. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-farthest-galaxy-candidate-james-webb.html Astronomy Wed, 23 Nov 2022 12:33:21 EST news588429195 While developing and testing astronomical software on existing data, a master's student in astronomy fortuitously discovered a group of galaxies in the very early universe. In addition to demonstrating the potential of the software, the finding provides insight into the assembly of massive structures, as well as how some galaxies cease to form stars. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-student-group-galaxies-clustered-early.html Astronomy Wed, 14 Sep 2022 11:19:07 EDT news582373145 Using the Very Large Telescope and the radio telescope ALMA in Chile, a team of astronomers including researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute has discovered a swarm of galaxies orbiting the surroundings of a hyper-luminous and vigorously star-forming galaxy in the early universe. The observation provides important clues to how exceptionally bright galaxies grow, and to how they evolve into energetic quasars, beaming light across most of the observable universe. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-astronomers-swarm-galaxies-orbiting-hyper-luminous.html Astronomy Mon, 12 Sep 2022 11:50:26 EDT news582202222 Using multiple radio telescopes across the world, a team of astronomers from the Cosmic Dawn Center, Copenhagen, have discovered several galaxies in the early universe that, due to massive amounts of dust, were hidden from our sight. The observations allowed the team to measure the temperature and thickness of the dust, demonstrating that this type of galaxies contributed significantly to the total star formation when the universe was only 1/10 of its current age. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-radio-microwaves-reveal-true-nature.html Astronomy Mon, 11 Jul 2022 10:20:37 EDT news576753632 A team of University of Copenhagen astrophysicists has arrived at a major result regarding star populations beyond the Milky Way. The result could change our understanding of a wide range of astronomical phenomena, including the formation of black holes, supernovae and why galaxies die. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-discovery-distant-galaxies-stars-heavier.html Astronomy Wed, 25 May 2022 10:52:45 EDT news572694761 Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have improved the coherence time of a previously developed quantum membrane dramatically. The improvement will expand the usability of the membrane for a variety of different purposes. With a coherence time of one hundred milliseconds, the membrane can for example store sensitive quantum information for further processing in a quantum computer or network. The result has now been published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-quantum-states-record-long.html Quantum Physics Wed, 25 May 2022 09:07:38 EDT news572688454 A new and surprising duality has been discovered in theoretical particle physics. The duality exists between two types of scattering processes that can occur in the proton collisions made in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland and France. The fact that this connection can, surprisingly, be made points to the fact that there is something in the intricate details of the standard model of particle physics that is not fully understood. The standard model is the model of the world on sub-atomic scale that explains all particles and their interactions, so when surprises appear, there is cause for attention. The scientific article is now published in Physical Review Letters. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-duality-theoretical-particle-physics.html General Physics Mon, 25 Apr 2022 09:25:12 EDT news570097507 In the center of most galaxies lies a supermassive black hole. Some of these are actively feeding on the gas and dust around them, expelling excess energy as powerful jets that are seen as quasars across the entire observable Universe. A new study led by astronomers at the Cosmic Dawn Center reviewed this process using new techniques—and the results may change how we think about the diets of these cosmic behemoths. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-analysis-fundamentally-view-supermassive-black.html Astronomy Tue, 01 Feb 2022 09:48:54 EST news562931332 In the vicinity of black holes, space is so warped that even light rays may curve around them several times. This phenomenon may enable us to see multiple versions of the same thing. While this has been known for decades, only now do we have an exact, mathematical expression, thanks to Albert Sneppen, student at the Niels Bohr Institute. The result, which even is more useful in realistic black holes, has just been published in the journal Scientific Reports. https://phys.org/news/2021-07-universe-black-holes.html Astronomy Mon, 12 Jul 2021 10:08:28 EDT news545303305 Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, together with epidemiologist Lone Simonsen from Roskilde University form part of the panel advising the Danish government on how to tackle the different infection-spreading situations we have all seen unfold over the past year. Researchers have modeled the spread of infections under a variety of scenarios, and the Coronavirus has proven to not follow the older models of disease spreading. https://phys.org/news/2021-06-infections-reveals-greater-collaboration-biology.html General Physics Mon, 21 Jun 2021 10:08:58 EDT news543488934 Researchers from University of Copenhagen have investigated what happened to a specific kind of plasma—the first matter ever to be present—during the first microsecond of Big Bang. Their findings provide a piece of the puzzle to the evolution of the universe, as we know it today. https://phys.org/news/2021-05-reveals-microsecond-big.html Condensed Matter Fri, 21 May 2021 09:51:36 EDT news540809488 How do the billions of cells communicate in order to perform tasks? The cells exert force on their environment through movement—and in doing so, they communicate. They work as a group in order to infiltrate their environment, perform wound healing and the like. They sense the stiffness or softness of their surroundings and this helps them connect and organize their collective effort. But when the connection between cells is disturbed, a situation just like when cancer is initiated, can appear. https://phys.org/news/2021-04-transmission-cells-orchestrates-cellular-motion.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 23 Apr 2021 10:49:04 EDT news538393740 New, detailed study of the Renland Ice Cap offers the possibility of modeling other smaller ice caps and glaciers with significantly greater accuracy than hitherto. The study combined airborne radar data to determine the thickness of the ice cap with on-site measurements of the thickness of the ice cap and satellite data. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute—University of Copenhagen gathered the data from the ice cap in 2015, and this work has now come to fruition in the form of more exact predictions of local climate conditions. https://phys.org/news/2021-04-ice-cap-prospects-accurate-local.html Earth Sciences Thu, 15 Apr 2021 10:12:42 EDT news537700359 Throughout the last ice age, the climate changed repeatedly and rapidly during so-called Dansgaard-Oeschger events, where Greenland temperatures rose between 5 and 16 degrees Celsius in decades. When certain parts of the climate system changed, other parts of the climate system followed like a series of dominos toppling in succession. This is the conclusion from an analysis of ice-core data by a group of researchers that included postdoc Emilie Capron and associate professor Sune Olander Rasmussen from the Section for the Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, in Denmark. https://phys.org/news/2021-04-abrupt-ice-age-climate-cascading.html Earth Sciences Fri, 09 Apr 2021 09:31:09 EDT news537179466 Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen have, in collaboration with Norwegian researchers in the ERC Synergy project, ICE2ICE, have shown that abrupt climate change occurred as a result of widespread decrease of sea ice. This scientific breakthrough concludes a long-running debate on the mechanisms causing abrupt climate change during the glacial period. It also documents that the cause of the swiftness and extent of sudden climate change must be found in the oceans. https://phys.org/news/2020-12-climate-rapidly-sea-ice-decline.html Earth Sciences Fri, 04 Dec 2020 12:41:27 EST news526308084 Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have investigated more than 1000 planetary systems orbiting stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and have discovered a series of connections between planetary orbits, number of planets, occurrence and the distance to their stars. It turns out that our own solar system in some ways is very rare, and in others very ordinary. https://phys.org/news/2020-11-solar-galactic-standardbut-rare.html Astronomy Mon, 30 Nov 2020 16:27:28 EST news525976043 Ever since the astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated that the further apart two galaxies are, the faster they move away from each other, researchers have measured the expansion rate of the universe (the Hubble constant) and the history of this expansion. Recently, a new puzzle has emerged, as there seems to be a discrepancy between measurements of this expansion using radiation in the early universe and using nearby objects. Researchers from the Cosmic Dawn Center, at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have now contributed to this debate by focusing on velocity measurements. The result has been published in Astrophysical Journal. https://phys.org/news/2020-10-expansion-universe-importance-velocity.html Astronomy Thu, 29 Oct 2020 13:14:54 EDT news523196091