On Wednesday 30 October, the headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) received a talk by the first Swiss astronaut, Claude Nicollier, who wanted to share his experience in space with the personnel of the IAC. Claude Nicollier is the first Swiss astronaut to have flown into space. After his studies at the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne, Claude joined ESA as a member of their first group of astronauts. Since 2007 Nicollier has been a Professor at the Federal Polytechnical School at Lausanne. He has spent more than 1000 hours in space (more than 42 days) including a

A study published today in Nature Astronomy , in which a researcher from the IAC has participated, outlines the discovery of an extremely rare type of binary system composed of two high mass white dwarfs. The two stars are so close together that they will eventually collide resulting in a supernova explosion which, due to its proximity to the Earth, will appear ten times brighter than the Moon. Type 1a supernovae are a class of cosmic explosion often used as "standard candles" to measure the expansion of the Universe. They occur when a white dwarf exceeds the Chandrasekhar mass - the limit

The existence of dark matter is likely one of the most perplexing problems facing the scientific community, and unraveling its nature has become one of the primary goals of modern physics. In simple terms, we do not know what dark matter is made of, despite accounting for 85% of all the matter in the Universe. A study led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias concludes that dark matter does not behave as described by the dominant paradigm, which states that dark matter particles only interact with each other and with ordinary matter through gravity. The IAC study reveals that dark