Latest Kiel University Stories

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online A group of porous carbon tubes that is three-dimensionally interwoven at nano and micro level is now thought to be the lightest material in the world. It weighs only 0.2 milligrams per cubic centimeter, and is therefore 75 times lighter than Styrofoam, but it is still very strong. Scientists of Kiel University (KU) and Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) have named their joint creation "Aerographite". The scientific results...

Kiel researchers discover novel state of crystal matterNature knows two opposite types of solids: one that emerges upon compression from a liquid and a second that appears if the pressure on a liquid is reduced. While the former is typical for substances in our everyday life the latter occurs for example in a dense quantum liquid of electrons (such as in metals) or ions (in exotic white dwarf or neutron stars). Now it has been shown that there exists yet a third form of matter that inherits...

Researchers find magnetic skyrmions in atomically thin metal filmPhysicists at Hamburg and Kiel University and the Forschungszentrum Jülich have found for the first time a regular lattice of magnetic skyrmions "“ cycloidal vortex spin structures of exceptional stability "“ on a surface. This fascinating magnetic structure was discovered experimentally at the University of Hamburg by spin-polarized scanning tunnelling microscopy and imaged on the atomic scale. Theoreticians at the...

Physicists unveil processes during fast chemical dissolutionA breakthrough in the study of chemical reactions during etching and coating of materials was achieved by a research group headed by Kiel physicist, Professor Olaf Magnussen. The team from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU), Germany, in collaboration with staff from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, have uncovered for the first time just what happens in manufacturing processes,...

Kiel nano-scientists take snapshots of electronic statesHow fast an intense laser pulse can change the electrical properties of solids is revealed by researchers from Kiel University in the current edition of Nature (09.03.2011). Scientists in the team of Professor Michael Bauer, Dr. Kai Roßnagel and Professor Lutz Kipp from the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, together with colleagues from the University of Kaiserslautern and the University of Colorado in Boulder, U.S.A.,...

Fossils reveal history of marine diversity in ChileBiodiversity decreases towards the poles almost everywhere in the world, except along the South American Pacific coast. Investigating fossil clams and snails Steffen Kiel and Sven Nielsen at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU) could show that this unusual pattern originated at the end of the last ice age, 20.000 to 100.000 years ago. The retreating glaciers created a mosaic landscape of countless islands, bays and fiords in...

An international team of scientists led by the paleontologist Steffen Kiel at the University of Kiel, Germany, found the first fossil boreholes of the worm Osedax that consumes whale bones on the deep-sea floor. They conclude that "boneworms" are at least 30 Million years old. This result was published in the current issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS, April 19, 2010).Six years ago Osedax was first described based on...

MONTREAL and KIEL, Germany, September 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Working in collaboration with Kiel University, researchers at the Kiel- based Collagen Research Institute (CRI) have demonstrated the stimulating effect of special bioactive collagen peptides (FORTIGEL(R)) in the context of cell experiments. Last weekend the CRI presented its research findings at the congress of the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) in Montreal. The investigations of the CRI provide an...

A variation in the gene FOXO3A has a positive effect on the life expectancy of humans, and is found much more often in people living to 100 and beyond "“ moreover, this appears to be true worldwide. A research group in the Faculty of Medicine at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel (CAU) has now confirmed this assumption by comparing DNA samples taken from 388 German centenarians with those from 731 younger people. The results of the study appear this week in the prestigious American...