Hiranya Peiris is Cambridge’s new Professor of Astrophysics (1909). She discusses being inspired by Stephen Hawking, the unknown space before you arrive at an answer, and high-risk high-reward research. She is an alumna and Fellow of Murray Edwards College.
An international team of scientists, including from the University of Cambridge, have launched a new research collaboration that will leverage the same technology behind ChatGPT to build an AI-powered tool for scientific discovery.
The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission has released a goldmine of knowledge about our galaxy and beyond. Among other findings, the star surveyor has surpassed its planned potential to reveal half a million new and faint stars in a massive cluster, identified over 380 possible cosmic lenses, and pinpointed the positions of more than 150,000 asteroids within the Solar System.
A new postgraduate programme will train researchers to understand life's origins, search for habitable planets and consider the most profound question of all: are we alone?
An international team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge has used data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to discover methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of K2-18 b, an exoplanet in the ‘Goldilocks zone’. This is the first time that carbon-based molecules have been discovered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in the habitable zone.
Renowned Cambridge astrophysicist and cosmologist Professor Lord Martin Rees has been named this year’s recipient of the world’s oldest and most prestigious scientific award.
Researchers have found a new way to measure dark energy – the mysterious force that makes up more than two-thirds of the universe and is responsible for its accelerating expansion – in our own cosmic backyard.
A European mission to explore how gravity, dark energy and dark matter shaped the evolution of the Universe soared into space from Cape Canaveral on 1 July.
Seven outstanding Cambridge researchers have been elected as Fellows of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences and the oldest science academy in continuous existence.
In the search for life elsewhere in the Universe, scientists have traditionally looked for planets with liquid water at their surface. But, rather than flowing as oceans and rivers, much of a planet’s water can be locked in rocks deep within its interior.
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