The «song» of interstellar cloud Musca reveals Star Formation Mysteries to European AstrophysicistsAn important leap in our understanding of the star formation process was achieved by scientists at the University of Crete and the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser at the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas. Using archival data from ESA’s Herschel mission, Aris Tritsis and Kostas Tassis have discovered, for the first time, an interstellar cloud – a nursery of stars – the magnetic field of which vibrates! Decrypting the «song» in this vibration, they managed to reveal the true 3D structure of the cloud, paving the way to solving one of the biggest mysteries in Astrophysics: what determines the number and kind of stars and planets that are formed in our Galaxy?

FORTH ESTABLISHES THE INSTITUTE OF ASTROPHYSICS A new Institute, the only in Greece dedicated exclusively to Astrophysics, will soon join the big family of the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH), becoming its 7th Institute, after a legislation voted in the Greek Parliament on February 26th 2018.

One more ERC Proof of Concept Grant for FORTHAssistant Professor Xenofontas Dimitropoulos, Affiliated Researcher at ICS-FORTH, ERC Starting Grant holder, was awarded an ERC Proof of Concept grant during the last round of the application process for the PHILOS project.

Seeking the Primordial Light of the Universe: Prof. Konstantinos Tassis, Associated Researcher of IESL-FORTH, receives a Consolidator Award from the European Research Council (ERC) for the implementation of the PASIPHAE project Konstantinos Tassis, Assistant Professor of the Department of Physics of the University of Crete and Associate Faculty Member of the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) of the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH), was awarded a “Consolidator Grant” by the European Research Council (ERC) to implement the PASIPHAE experiment (http://pasiphae.science/).