Exoplanets and Origins of Life

The Exoplanets and Origins of Life research group (led by Prof. Brice-Olivier Demory) focuses on the:

detection of temperate Earth-sized exoplanets (SAINT-EX observatory),
remote sensing of living organisms in diverse solar system environments (MERMOZ, ERC SenseLife),
instrumentation for non-invasive, in-vivo cancer diagnosis and staging (BrainPol).

Find out more about the courses offered by the group, the currently available research positions and the group's peer-reviewed publications (all open access).

NEWS: Research projects for Bachelor and Master students from the University of Bern.

News

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

MERMOZ in the news

The MERMOZ project, led by the SAINT-EX team, has been advertised in the Oct/Nov 2020 issue of the specialist magazine "Ciel & Espace".

Two planets around a red dwarf

The “SAINT-EX” Observatory, led by scientists from the eponymous group, has detected two exoplanets orbiting the star TOI-1266. The Mexico-based telescope thus demonstrates its high precision and takes an important step in the quest of finding potentially habitable worlds.

Questioning theory can be worth it

Where few thought to look, the NCCR PlanetS co-funded telescope "SAINT-EX" is searching for new worlds. After a year of operation, the project has brought some exciting first results.

SAINT-EX detects the CHEOPS satellite

SAINT-EX recently detected a pass of the CHEOPS satellite while it was overflying Mexico at dawn, slightly before sunrise. These data enabled us to estimate the Vmag at 8.4, which leaves no imprint to the night sky as seen by the naked eye.

SAINT-EX Commissioning in progress

Our team was in Mexico in the past two months to install and test our robotic observatory SAINT-EX. Science operations will start in February 2019.

New insights in TRAPPIST-1 planet interiors

A new paper led by members of the SAINT-EX group is providing the most precise calculations so far of the masses of the seven planets around the star TRAPPIST-1. From this, new findings are emerging about their density and composition: All TRAPPIST-1 planets consist primarily of rock and contain up to five percent water. This is a decisive step for determining the habitability of these planets.

The race to trace TRAPPIST-1h

After 60 hours of non-stop work, members of the SAINT-EX team reached their hoped-for goal: They were the first to measure the orbital period for the outermost planet of the famous TRAPPIST-1 system which made headlines worldwide. The new result confirms that the seven Earth-size planets around the ultra-cool dwarf are lined up in a chain with resonances linking every member.

Seven terrestrial exoplanets around a nearby star

An international team of astronomers has discovered a compact analogue of our inner solar system about 40 light-years away. Members of the SAINT-EX team analysed the data collected with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and calculated that the newly detected exoplanets all have masses less or similar to the Earth.

NASA's Spitzer maps climate patterns on a super-Earth

Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have led to the first temperature map of a super-Earth planet -- a rocky planet nearly two times as big as ours. The map reveals extreme temperature swings from one side of the planet to the other, and hints that a possible reason for this is the presence of lava flows.

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