Exoplanets and Origins of Life

The Exoplanets and Origins of Life research group focuses on the:

detection and characterisation of temperate Earth-sized exoplanets (mostly with SAINT-EX and JWST),
remote sensing of living organisms in the solar system (ERC/SERI SenseLife)

NEWS

- The biomedical research and engineering section has now moved to a dedicated new group at the ARTORG Centre: Medical Sensing Laboratory.

News

Research

The Little Prince's Stars

From 7 to 17 November 2024, a team of researchers and science educators from the University of Bern and the University in Marrakech will be travelling to Morocco to visit primary and secondary schools in remote areas of Morocco to teach astronomy.

Research

Congratulations to Dr. Erik Meier Valdés!

Erik successfully defended his PhD thesis on 24 September 2024, he is now moving to Oxford to pursue his work on rocky exoplanets with a SNF Postdoc Mobility grant. Congratulations!

Research

Hints of a possible atmosphere around a rocky exoplanet

Using JWST, researchers from our team have contributed to the possible detection of an atmosphere surrounding 55 Cancri e, a rocky exoplanet 41 light-years from Earth. This is the best evidence to date for a rocky planet atmosphere outside our solar system.

Award

From mental health to exoplanets: 8 million for international team research

Our team has been awarded a SPIRIT grant to keep the SAINT-EX Observatory's performance at its best, in partnership with UNAM (Mexico).

Research

How global warming affects astronomical observations

Astronomical observations from ground-based telescopes are sensitive to local atmospheric conditions. SAINT-EX group members show that anthropogenic climate change will negatively affect some of these conditions at observation sites around the globe.

Research

Eccentric exoplanet discovered

The SAINT-EX team led the discovery of a sub-Neptune exoplanet on a highly-eccentric orbit around a cool star. The SAINT-EX telescope provided critical data to pinpoint the planet's physical and orbital properties.

Award

ERC Consolidator grant

Brice-Olivier Demory got awarded a Consolidator grant from the European Research Council (ERC). Because Switzerland is not associated to Horizon Europe for this call, the research project will be funded by the Swiss' State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

Research

Scientists detect signatures of life remotely

Our team has detected a key molecular property of all living organisms from a helicopter flying at high speed and several kilometers above ground. The measurement technology could open up opportunities for remote sensing of the Earth and the search for living organisms in our Solar System.

Research

Space technology in the operating theater

The BrainPol project (co-led by the SAINT-EX group), which aims at diagnosing and staging brain cancer non-invasively, is based on an instrument initially built to search for life beyond the Earth.

Research

TRAPPIST-1's 7 Rocky Planets May Be Made of Similar Stuff

The TRAPPIST-1 system has been co-discovered by members of the SAINT-EX team in 2016. We also played a key role in refining the planet masses and sizes. Five years later we now have reached unprecedented accuracy on the physical parameters of these temperate Earth-sized exoplanets.

Contact

University of Bern
Center for Space and Habitability (CSH)

Gesellschaftstrasse 6 (G6)
3012 Bern

Phone: +41 31 684 8534