Latest press releases
A New Era in Exploring the Extreme Universe: the Large-Sized Telescope Sub-Array is Inaugurated on CTAO-North
15 October 2026
La Palma, Spain, 15 October 2026. Two hundred and fifty scientists and representatives from leading research institutions around the world celebrated the inauguration of the Large-Sized Telescope (LST) sub-array at the CTAO-North site at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, Spain. The completion of the four telescopes marks a significant milestone for the global astrophysics community and represents a crucial step toward the full scientific operation of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO).
Photons create golden boxes, electrons lead to shells
15 October 2026
Beauty and mystery – it is hard to imagine a more alluring combination, and this is precisely what we encounter when we observe phenomena in the nanoworld. But are we really sure that observations made using modern microscopic techniques do not influence what is happening there? The answers are provided by Cracow scientists. A comparison of images of copper oxide nanoparticles reacting with chloroauric acid, obtained using electron and photon beams, has yielded unexpected results.
Two decades of blazar observations, and the mysteries keep piling up
6 August 2026
Narrow jets of luminous matter may be emitted towards Earth from the nuclei of active galaxies, billions of light-years away. The galaxy then appears as a point source and is called a blazar. A Polish-German team of scientists has, for the first time, analysed the activity of one such blazar over a long period of time and instead of finding answers, they have been faced with an ever-increasing number of intriguing questions.
One experiment maps multiple isotopes exhibiting pygmy excitations
16 July 2026
In a single experiment, physicists have measured the ‘excess’ emission of highenergy gamma rays from more than a dozen heavy, unstable atomic nuclei. Mapping the gamma-ray emissions of so many isotopes produced in nuclear fission marks an important step towards a better understanding of one of the key phenomena in modern nuclear physics: the fission process itself.
Laser pulses capture unexplored polaronic states
24 June 2026
In an international experiment, researchers observed Jahn–Teller polarons – quasiparticles that could play an important role in future ultrafast spintronic devices. These polarons emerged within the crystal lattice of cobalt oxide that had been activated by carefully tailored laser pulses.