discovered_01_2016

WWW.HZDR.DE discovered 01.16 PANORAMA At the annual in-service training for teachers in mid-February, some 130 educationalists from all over Saxony took the opportunity to learn about the most recent scientific findings in astrophysics. At various lectures – dealing with topics like the evolution and influence of cosmic magnetic fields – and during visits to selected labs, the participants grasped the chance to refresh their knowledge. They were even able to acquire information on a hot topic: the first proof of gravitational waves. The physics educationalist Karl-Heinz Lotze of the University of Jena redesigned his opening lecture at short notice to address this discovery, which was made by the LIGO Collaboration at the beginning of February. For many years now, HZDR has run in-service training sessions for teachers who are also eligible to participate in further offerings of the DeltaX School Lab. www.hzdr.de/deltax www.facebook.com/schuelerlabor-deltax DeltaX Welcomes the 10,000th Student April, 26, was a very special day for Matthias Streller and his team at HZDR’s own school lab, DeltaX: they welcomed their 10,000th young researcher. The lucky candidate was Aaron Ickert. On this special day, he and his classmates from the Werner-Heisenberg-Gymnasium in Riesa and another advanced course from the Julius-Ambrosius-Hülße- Gymnasium in Dresden conducted experiments on magnetic phenomena. The fact that two classes visited the HZDR lab on the same day is indicative of its popularity. To do their own research-related experiments in a big Helmholtz Center – that catches young people’s imagination. In-service Training Attracts Many Teachers Petrus Peregrinus Medal 2016 That the earth has a magnetic field is no news to anyone. But the fundamental mechanism of how it was formed has only recently been verified in a lab experiment. The name behind the world’s first demonstration of this dynamo effect is Agris Gailitis. Since the 1960s, the professor in the Institute of Physics at the University of Latvia in Riga had investigated magnetic self-excitation. It then all happened on 11.11.1999: together with scientists from HZDR, the self-excitation of a magnetic field in a spiral flow of fluid sodium was demonstrated. And, as coincidence would have it, a few days later, the dynamo at what was then the Karlsruhe Research Center "ignited" as well. For this milestone in magnetohydrodynamics, which also laid important foundations for experiments currently taking place in Cadarache, Maryland, Grenoble, Madison, Zürich and Dresden-Rossendorf, Agris Gailitis has now been honoured. On April 18, he received the 2016 Petrus Peregrinus Medal, which is awarded by the European Geosciences Union (EGU) for outstanding scientific contributions in the field of magnetism and paleomagnetism. Peregrinus was a French scholar and the first to describe the polarity of magnets in his 13th century treatise "Epistola de Magnete". HZDR physicist Frank Stefani (right) nominated Agris Gailitis (middle) for the award. Aaron Ickert from Riesa and the DeltaX team: Matthias Streller, Florian Simon, Nadja Gneist (from left to right)

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