WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:36.027 [Music] 00:00:36.440 --> 00:00:39.000 In the Galaxies and Cosmology Department,  00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:43.480 we're trying to understand how  the Universe became interesting. 00:00:43.480 --> 00:00:47.880 The Universe started out with the Big  Bang. It was small, and it was hot,   00:00:47.880 --> 00:00:52.360 and it was simple, but simple is another  way of saying it was boring. Every place   00:00:52.360 --> 00:00:57.760 looked like any other place. If you now  look around in the Universe we see that   00:00:57.760 --> 00:01:02.160 there are special places, galaxies,  the great metropoles of the cosmos 00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:07.400 where everything happens. From the formation  of stars to planets to life, and the question   00:01:07.400 --> 00:01:14.960 is how did they come about. And in galaxies  and cosmology we have learned that this is a   00:01:14.960 --> 00:01:22.120 complex process like the formation of cities.  Many things happen at once. On the one hand, a   00:01:22.120 --> 00:01:30.280 mysterious component of our universe, Dark Matter,  brings things together and then normal material,   00:01:30.280 --> 00:01:37.400 gas as we know it, collapses and successfully  becomes stars. These stars explode and pollute   00:01:37.400 --> 00:01:42.520 their surrounding, which gives us a  great way of tracking the processes.  00:01:42.520 --> 00:01:48.880 And magically, at the end, the beautiful  world of galaxies arises. In our department,   00:01:48.880 --> 00:01:54.320 we're doing research to try to figure out  how all these processes work. We're doing   00:01:54.320 --> 00:01:58.720 simulations because it took 13 billion  years and nobody has that much time to   00:01:58.720 --> 00:02:04.280 wait. We're taking observations and if you  want to understand evolution, change with 00:02:04.280 --> 00:02:09.040 time, you need to get to time,  and we have two simple tricks.   00:02:09.040 --> 00:02:14.680 One is looking far back because light  takes time to get to us and a look into  00:02:14.680 --> 00:02:20.520 the distance is a look into the past. And the  other way is to just actually age-date stars   00:02:20.520 --> 00:02:26.440 and see when they formed. And so we have started,  of course with a global community of colleagues,   00:02:26.440 --> 00:02:32.520 to piece these scenarios together, but  there's much more to do. And fantastically,   00:02:32.520 --> 00:02:36.840 both in space and on the ground, we have  new machines that we are helping to develop   00:02:36.840 --> 00:02:44.001 in place that will tell us much more about how  this process works and how galaxies came to be. 00:02:48.520 --> 00:02:53.200 The Apex department at the Max Planck Institute  for Astronomy stands for Atmospheric Physics   00:02:53.200 --> 00:03:00.160 of Exoplanets. And the idea of the department  is that we are a one-stop shop for all things   00:03:00.160 --> 00:03:05.440 exoplanet atmosphere characterization. So  we do observations of exoplanets from the   00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:11.480 ground and also with space telescopes. We build  theoretical models of atmospheres in both one and   00:03:11.480 --> 00:03:18.040 three dimensions. We also build purpose-built  instruments to characterize the atmospheres of   00:03:18.040 --> 00:03:23.400 the planets at the next level of detail. One of  our really exciting science results from the year   00:03:23.400 --> 00:03:32.280 2023 was the direct detection of thermal emission  from a small rocky exoplanet called Trappist 1c.   00:03:32.280 --> 00:03:36.720 We're also interested in larger planets more  similar to Uranus and Neptune or even Jupiter   00:03:36.720 --> 00:03:42.520 in our own solar system, how heat is circulated  what types of clouds and hazes form. This will be   00:03:42.520 --> 00:03:48.320 the place where we can work out these problems  and challenges together and ultimately finally   00:03:48.320 --> 00:03:55.520 push towards our goal of discovering evidence  for life on an alien world similar to our own. 00:04:00.560 --> 00:04:08.080 So, PSF stands for Planet and Star Formation, so  our department is interested to learn how stars   00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:14.040 form from the cold phases of the interstellar  medium, so-called molecular clouds - they have   00:04:14.040 --> 00:04:20.920 temperatures of 10 K and very low densities -  and they end up as stars when they contract due   00:04:20.920 --> 00:04:27.480 to the gravitational forces. On top of that, we also want to understand how planets form. 00:04:27.480 --> 00:04:33.120 This is a process which is combined with  star formation, and it starts with a disk   00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:40.880 around young stars, and then it ends up with the  planets and their atmospheres, giant planets or as   00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:48.010 Earth-like planets. And at the end, we also want  to understand how life forms on the rocky planets. 00:04:54.040 --> 00:05:00.120 Here at MPIA we have very large technical  departments where we build instruments 00:05:00.120 --> 00:05:07.160 for different telescopes and observatories. We  do different kinds of activities for these large 00:05:07.160 --> 00:05:13.320 instrument consortia. For example, we  do mechanical design and manufacturing,   00:05:13.320 --> 00:05:18.680 and also electronics. We also do  control software for these instruments,   00:05:18.680 --> 00:05:24.320 doing optical design, systems  engineering, project management,   00:05:24.320 --> 00:05:29.720 cryogenics. All kinds of different things  that are needed for these instruments. 00:05:29.720 --> 00:05:36.320 And currently, the people are very busy building  instruments for the upcoming European flagship   00:05:36.320 --> 00:05:41.480 facility which is the 39-metre European  Extremely Large Telescope that is currently   00:05:41.480 --> 00:05:47.880 being built in Northern Chile. Of course,  this is a project that is still far ahead   00:05:47.880 --> 00:05:54.240 in the future, the first light 4 years from now  more or less, but we are already busy building   00:05:54.240 --> 00:06:00.320 these instruments because these projects take  usually a very long time. As an astronomer,   00:06:00.320 --> 00:06:04.600 I really enjoy working at the technical  departments because here you feel that you   00:06:04.600 --> 00:06:12.027 are in the front line of science building  these fantastic instruments for the new upcoming facilities. 00:06:17.026 --> 00:06:20.025 The data science group  is a new group within the Max Planck Institute  00:06:20.640 --> 00:06:24.760 for Astronomy, with the goal of  helping researchers incorporate   00:06:24.760 --> 00:06:29.920 modern computational technologies as well  as machine learning and statistics methods 00:06:29.920 --> 00:06:36.720 into their research in order to be able to  accomplish to answer new scientific questions. 00:06:36.720 --> 00:06:42.000 Helping them doing the best science they can extracting the information from their data, 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:45.800 we're really trying to support them as much as we  can. And on the other side, we're trying to teach   00:06:45.800 --> 00:06:51.960 them how to be independent doing new methods,  use the right models, the right tools, the right   00:06:51.960 --> 00:06:56.680 methods to do correct science. We're trying to  help them extract information from their data.  00:06:57.280 --> 00:07:03.400 And even with observational projects like for  example, Gaia or the upcoming Euclid survey, 00:07:03.400 --> 00:07:07.640 we are generating catalogues which  are in the billions of sources. 00:07:07.640 --> 00:07:10.000 The next generation of instruments, ELT,   00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:12.160 will be petabytes, a magnitude bigger, 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:17.160 which would take years to  process on a single machine. 00:07:17.160 --> 00:07:24.012 Data science will be an increasingly  important tool set for astronomers. 00:07:32.011 --> 00:07:36.400 I'm here in front of "Haus der Astronomie", literally House of Astronomy,   00:07:36.400 --> 00:07:42.840 which is where most of the outreach activities  on Königstuhl are centred. So, we have workshops   00:07:42.840 --> 00:07:48.680 for kindergarteners. We have workshops for the  older students. We have internships. We create   00:07:48.680 --> 00:07:54.560 resources such as browser-based apps, such as  educational resources for classroom use. So it's   00:07:54.560 --> 00:07:58.930 really very very diverse, and it's a really nice and great team. 00:07:58.930 --> 00:08:04.210 And we also have in-house events such as classic public talks, but also events like concerts. 00:08:04.210 --> 00:08:11.600 And we also have an international side. So, we have international summer schools. There is a collaboration in particular with Italy and   00:08:11.600 --> 00:08:17.668 since 2020 we've also been the Office of Astronomy  for Education of the International Astronomical Union. 00:08:17.668 --> 00:08:26.033 So, all in all, a very diverse and active  spread of activities and yeah, it's really fun. 00:08:26.700 --> 00:08:58.027 [Music]