Newsroom
Stay informed with our latest news and announcements on this page. For more in-depth content, we also encourage visitors to explore our bimonthly STRUCTURES Newsletter magazine, which features a variety of articles, interviews with members, and background information on our latest research and activities.
An international team of researchers led by STRUCTURES member Fabian Schneider predicts that black hole mergers produce chirp sounds in two universal frequency ranges.
They are mysterious, exciting and inescapable – black holes are some of the most exotic objects in the Universe. With gravitational-wave detectors, it is possible to detect the chirp sound that two black holes produce when they merge, approximately 70 such chirps have been found so far. Based on the frequency evolution of this chirp signal, scientists can infer the so-called “chirp mass”, a combination of the two individual black hole masses. So far, it has been assumed that the merging black holes can have any mass. In their new study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, STRUCTURES Member Fabian Schneider (Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, HITS) and his team, however, predict that in this “ocean of voices”, chirps preferentially occur in two universal frequency ranges. The team's simulations align precisely with observations of the "stellar graveyard" – a collection of all known masses of the neutron-star and black-hole remains of massive stars – which reveal intriguing peaks at approximately 8 and 14 solar masses. With gravitational-wave astronomy paving the way for unprecedented insights into the cosmos, this research opens up a new frontier of exploration, helping scientists understand better where the singing black holes in this ocean of voices come from.
Weblinks:
We are happy to present the twelfth volume of the STRUCTURES Newsletter with the following topics:
- New STRUCTURES Professors: Michela Mapelli & Tristan Bereau
- Workshop: Human Intelligence Meets Artificial Intelligence
- CP 2: The Challenge of Understanding Planet Formation
- We Are STRUCTURES
- From Space to Earth: Uncovering the Potential Role of Meteorites in Kick-Starting Life
- Fast Exoplanet Detection with Conditional Invertible Neural Networks (cINNs)
The STRUCTURES Project Management Office is happy to answer questions and to receive feedback.
We are happy to announce the public talk by Anil Ananthaswamy, HITS Journalist in Residence 2023, titled “ChatGPT and its ilk - The rise of large language models and why we should care”. The event will take place on July 5, 2023, 7pm at the “MAINS” (Mathematik-Informatik-Station), located near the main station.
In his talk, organized in collaboration with the Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation, Anil Ananthaswamy will explain the foundations of large language models (LLMs), their training process and their impact on society. He will discuss the curious emergent properties of these AI models, such as their ability to solve math problems despite not being explicitly trained for it. The question of whether LLMs possess genuine reasoning capabilities or merely engage in sophisticated pattern matching will be examined. The talk will also highlight the dangers of large language models, as they are currently designed, and why it’s important for society to become aware of the promises and perils of such AIs, as the technology has reached a point of no return.
Anil Ananthaswamy, currently serving as “HITS Journalist in Residence” at Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS), is an award-winning science journalist and author. With his extensive expertise in science communication, he has contributed to reputable publications such as the New Scientist, Quanta, Scientific American and Nature, among others. Leveraging his background as a software engineer and his authorship of three popular science books, Ananthaswamy brings unique perspectives to his analysis.
Further information:
Strukturen treten in allen möglichen Formen auf und prägen das Universum auf vielfältige und entscheidende Weise. Das Exzellenzcluster STRUCTURES der Universität Heidelberg bietet im Rahmen der Akademischen Mittagspause 2023 spannende Einblicke in die Erforschung von Strukturen von subatomaren Teilchen zur Kosmologie und von der fundamentalen Quantenphysik bis hin zu den Neurowissenschaften.
Das Format der Akademischen Mittagspause besteht aus 15-minütigen Fachvorträgen, allgemeinverständlich und unterhaltend, mit anschließender Frage- und Diskussionsrunde. Ergänzt wird die Veranstaltungsreihe zusätzlich von der Hochschule für Kirchenmusik durch musikalische Beiträge zum Thema „Orgelmusik sehen“. Alle Termine, Details und aktuelle Hinweise finden Sie auf unserer Übersichtsseite.
Zeit & Ort:
Bis 19. Juli Jeden Mo-Fr 13:00 bis 13:30 in der Peterskirche
We are happy to announce this year's iteration of the Schöntal discussion workshop. The topic will be Turbulence & Chaos and will take place between August 22-25, 2023. The Schöntal workshop has been called into life a few years ago and is designed to stimulate discussions between members of the YRC about a specific topic. It is targeted towards young researchers from physics and mathematics and does not require any special prerequisites. For more information, please note the poster below.
Further information:
We are happy to announce the Arepo Development Workshop for ISM simulations, which takes place from September 11 to 15, 2023 in Manchester, United Kingdom, and is supported by the STRUCTURES Cluster of Excellence.
The goal of this highly interactive workshop is to bring together people who use and develop Arepo for ISM studies, allowing them to share their knowledge on improvements and modules they have introduced to the code. The code framework Arepo is a widely used tool for simulations in the astronomical community, whether it be for cosmological, galaxy or cloud scale simulations. In the field of ISM physics, many researchers use it as a basis for their models. Within STRUCTURESthe code is used especially in the context of comprehensive project CP1, which combines multi-scale numerical simulations with data analysis techniques and functional methods to answer the key question: Why is so much of nature structured rather than diffuse? In order to keep up with research of ever-increasing complexity, new and more elaborate physics has been introduced in the code in recent years.
Further information:
Workshop webpage
We are happy to announce the HEGL community seminar talk on Monday, June 26, at 2:15 pm, Mathematikon (Seminarraum C), in which Philip Engel will be talking on "Weaving Quasicrystals".
Abstract: I will begin by talking about joint mathematical work with Peter Smillie on tilings, quasicrystals, and moduli spaces of higher differentials. We will review the beautiful constructions of N. G. de Bruijn, who classified the Penrose tilings of the plane. Then, we will discuss how to generalize some parts of this work to build tilings of closed, flat surfaces.
For the second half of the talk, I will describe a joint art project with fiber artist Victoria Manganiello, on visualizing quasicrystals and higher dimensions. How are patterns made, converted into a format suitable for weaving, and then actually woven?
Further dates and information:
HEGL Community Seminar webpage
